OPINION:
There is little more beloved by the mainstream media than an opportunity to imply that conservatives are crazy, lying, desperate or all three.
Last week, it got just such a chance when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for a police and security agency investigation into Israel’s Oct. 27 legislative elections.
“Netanyahu falsely claims voter fraud in Israeli election,” crowed MS NOW. The Washington Post: “Netanyahu alleges stolen election as he seeks political survival amid uncertainty.”
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Even Israel’s Haaretz: “Likud Coalition Alleges Foreign Election Interference to Delegitimize Arab Vote.”
The implication is clear: The Likud party failed to garner the 61 Knesset seats needed to secure a governing majority, so Mr. Netanyahu is making up a stolen election story in an attempt to hold on to power.
No party amassed the required 61 seats. In the final election results, Likud garnered 27; former Israel Defense Forces chief Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party, 21; the Arab-Israeli party Ra’am, eight; and the Joint List, a coalition of Arab and Arab-led parties, 11.
Leaders from the remaining parties won the other 53 positions in the 120-chair Knesset: Yashar secured 21 seats; Together, an alliance of Yesh Atid and Bennett 2026, took 12; the Joint List won 11; The Democrats and Ra’am each captured eight; Yisrael Beiteinu, Otzma Yehudit, and United Torah Judaism won seven each; and Shas and the Religious Zionism Party each took six.
Nearly 840,000 people voted for Ra’am and the Joint List this year, according to Israel’s election committee. That is a 64% increase over the last election in 2022.
This record-high turnout has caused concern. Last week, police arrested at least seven people in connection with an alleged vote-buying scheme said to favor Ra’am, led by Arab-Israeli dentist turned politician Mansour Abbas. Mr. Abbas has refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization.
In the run-up to the election, “Political activists visit[ed] the homes of low-income residents and offer[ed] financial assistance ranging from 200 to 300 shekels [$65 to $95]. … Recipients [were] asked in return to support a particular party at the ballot box,” a Bedouin source told Ynet news, adding that in some cases, families received fuel vouchers.
Likud contends that there were “thousands of envelopes containing cash and ballot slips for Ra’am … as well as reports of threats and violence against polling station officials.”
Likud also says it learned of multiple people entering single voting booths at once, people voting under more than one name and “discrepancies … between the number of ballot envelopes and the number of registered voters who cast ballots,” according to Ynet.
In a separate investigation at the behest of Central Elections Committee Chairman and Supreme Court Deputy Chief Justice Noam Sohlberg, Israel’s Shin Bet security agency is looking into alleged foreign interference in the election, “possibly involving tens of millions of shekels from Qatar,” Ynet reports.
The alleged schemes suggest that Islamists may be taking a new tack after Israel’s resilience in the face of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. On that day, terrorists tried to kill as many Israelis as possible in their goal of destroying the Jewish state.
Israel was shaken, but it got up and fought back, vowing to find, capture or kill every terrorist behind the attacks. To date, security forces have neutralized more than two-thirds of the roughly 4,000 operatives and participants involved.
Are Islamist contingents, upset by how long it seems to be taking for Israel to wither and die, trying to “push the Jews into the sea” more subtly, through fraud and illicit funding? Are they leveraging Israel’s own parliamentary democratic system against it?
We have yet to hear uproar over the number of Jews in the vast majority of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s 57 Muslim governments — which is zero. There is one, tiny Jewish state in the world — yet on Saturday, leftist protesters gathered in Tel Aviv to demand a government composed of Jews and Arabs.
The protest, according to the Times of Israel, was “led by left-wing binational socialist group Standing Together,” which has received grant money from the German nongovernmental organization ProPeace, formerly known as forumZFD. According to its own website, among ProPeace’s partners is the Palestinian Center for Peace and Democracy.
In 2021, the center was a signatory to a statement that called for “expel[ling] the apartheid state from the United Nations,” NGO Monitor reports.
Another ProPeace partner, Combatants for Peace, organizes “alternative Remembrance Day” ceremonies featuring the families of Palestinian terrorists, according to The Jerusalem Post and NGO Monitor.
If Ra’am’s Knesset seat allocation is because of fraud, the illegal votes must be discounted swiftly, and those responsible found and held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.
Israel is the land of the Jews, the modern state having been founded after the worst genocide in history. Other religions live and worship freely in the country, as they should. Still, the country must remain Jewish or risk losing its identity as a safe haven for 0.2% of the world’s population.
Israel should not tolerate any efforts at Islamization.
• Anath Hartmann is deputy commentary editor for The Washington Times.
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