Netanyahu operatives boast of driving down Arab turnout with hidden cameras

Political operatives working for Benjamin Netanyahu’s party have boasted that they drove down voter turnout among Arab-Israelis by illegally hiding 1,300 cameras inside Arab polling stations. 

Israeli police intervened in the middle of Tuesday’s election after it emerged that volunteers for Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party were monitoring Arab polling stations with hidden cameras attached to their clothing.

Israeli election forbids filming inside polling stations and police confiscated the cameras. Mr Netanyahu defended the use of hidden cameras as an effort to combat voter fraud in Arab areas.

Arab and Left-wing political parties said the cameras had deterred Arab voters from turning out because they were intimidated. Overall Arab turnout was at 50 per cent, down from 63 per cent in the 2015 election. 

The heads of Kaizler Inbar, an Israeli PR firm, wrote on Facebook that they were behind the hidden camera operation and boasted “the percentage of [Arab] voters dropped to 50%, the lowest seen in recent years”. 

A photograph alongside the post appeared to show the PR firm’s leaders with Mr Netanyahu and his wife on election night.

The low Arab turnout helped propel Israel’s Right-wing to victory.

Mr Netanyahu made antagonising Israel’s Arab citizens a part of his election campaign. He said at one point that Israel is “not a state of all its citizens” but only a nation state of the Jewish people.

The comments led to a rebuke from Reuven Rivlin, Israel’s president, who condemned the “entirely unacceptable remarks about the Arab citizens of Israel”.

On the day of the 2015 Israeli election, Mr Netanyahu infamously warned that Arab voters were coming to the polls “in droves”. His comment was criticised by the White House and he later apologised.

It seems more likely that Arab turnout was low this year because of frustration with Arab political parties, rather than fear of Likud’s hidden cameras.

Many Arab voters were frustrated when the Joint List, a coalition of all the Arab parties, broke apart after a bout of political infighting.

“All of the Arab parties are hopeless and nobody deserves my vote,” said Hamzeh Sahleh, a 47-year-old resident of Tamra, an Arab city in northern Israel.

The Arab parties appear to have won only 10 parliamentary seats in this election compared to 13 seats in the last election.