Why is Netanyahu accusing Arab voters of "stealing the election"? | The News Agents

What has changed in this Israeli election is just how well the Arab parties did. Netanyahu coming out and saying, this election was stolen. What, you mean they got their voters to turn out in huge numbers because they were so pissed off? There is more than a racist overtone. There is a, these people are coming to kill you, implied in the idea that Arabs who absolutely have a legitimate vote in Israel are somehow trying to threaten the state. The News Agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. This is a global production. It has started. Benjamin Netanyahu trying today to delegitimize the Arab vote, a vote that could knock him from power. He is alleging that the election was stolen. Is there any basis for this? Or is this Netanyahu just using the Trump playbook? Welcome to The News Agents. It's John. It's Maitlis. And as we speak, there is still no Israeli government. And it looks like that might still be some way off. The negotiations go on. But it's hard to see how either main party bloc, whether it's Likud, Netanyahu's party, or Gadi Eisenkot's kind of opposition party, get a majority. What has changed in this Israeli election is just how well the Arab parties did, possibly gaining 19 of the seats in a Knesset made up of 120 parliamentarians. So a huge block for the Arab parties. And that, in turn, has resulted in Netanyahu coming out and saying this election was stolen. And I thought, oh, hang on. I'm back to I'm back to November 2020 when Donald Trump had lost an election. And of course, the only reason he could possibly lose an election was if it had been stolen. This has a bit more racist overtones to it because he's saying it's the Arab parties that have stolen an election. What you mean? They got their voters to turn out in huge numbers because they were so pissed off. Oh, no, no, no. It must be more than that. So the allegation goes a bit further and says that Qatari money, Qatari money came in to support the Arab parties. And you think, well, OK, but I bet you some American money, maybe British money, maybe even French money has gone in to support Likud or the opposition parties as well. Yeah. And to give you a sense of the significance, there are some 800,000 votes in the Arab parties this time round. That's around 15 percent of the population. And if that makes up 19 seats in the Knesset, then they really unarguably should hold the balance of power. They should be a deciding factor, frankly, in whether the opposition can oust Netanyahu from power, which is why he finds them so intimidating. Last week on the podcast, we heard from the writer and commentator Ayala Paniewski. And I'm just going to read you her thoughts today, because as soon as this started, as soon as those lines came from Netanyahu saying the election has been stolen, the votes have been rigged. She said it's as expected. Claims from Likud about fraud in the Arab community. These are the things worth remembering. Likud started claiming fraud in the Hebrew community. That means, you know, you wouldn't necessarily read it in the English press, but in the Hebrew community, even before the elections got underway. Tick Trump. Even when Arab-Israeli citizens vote legally, Likud sees it as an existential threat. The language that they use is the Arabs are flooding in. In other words, there is more than a racist overtone. There is a these people are coming to kill you, implied in the idea that Arabs who absolutely have a legitimate vote in Israel are somehow trying to threaten the state of Israel and then she goes on for those especially worried about Qatar's involvement in Israel's elections don't worry Qatar isn't an enemy state but a complex country that funds Israel's prime minister's advisors during wartime and somehow that's totally fine and not grounds for anyone to resign what she's referring to is the fact that one of Netanyahu's closest advisors is actually Qatari. And there was, I guess, a scandal surrounding whether Netanyahu himself was being backed by Qatari money, Qatari advisors, which he has just flipped on its head. And now the Home Intelligence Service, MI5, Shin Bet, has actually been called in to investigate what they're calling Qatari Turkish funding to boost Arab turnout in the Israeli elections yeah I think that when you hear stolen election I think of stuffed ballots of people voting twice or three times or four times or people kind of gathering up all the ballot papers of a community and just you know deciding that they're going to vote in one way that is obviously electoral fraud it's obviously electoral fraud to go up to Emily Maitlis and say here's 500 quid please vote for me because you can't do that Trump just suggested he was going to do in Dallas didn't he five thousand dollars five thousand dollars to everyone fair point fair point well made but of course this is about donations to the political organization the campaigning you know just as we've been talking about i don't know reform in the uk getting kind of tons of money from these people overseas i mean british people overseas um that it's transforming their ability to operate so look there may be a legitimacy in saying did foreign money come in that shouldn't have done but to say the election was stolen gives a completely different understanding of what is going on and you know people you speak to say there isn't much to this this is netanyahu who has got a grip on the Likud party i mean far stronger than donald trump has over the republican party and donald trump has the republican party in a vice-like grip and you know netanyahu just kind of stirring the pot and i think the other point to make is i think a lot of people you know forget this the israeli arabs are israeli citizens they have passports they have the vote they can vote in elections it's not the same in the west bank it's not the same in the gaza strip which are kind of seen as different territories but within israel there is a significant arab population and there are certain towns which have got is you know arab majorities and they will have arab mayors in those towns and they play a part in civic public life the idea that it's the arab parties that are stealing an election is ridiculous what's happened is that there are an awful lot of arabs who are deeply pissed off with the the way that They have been governed for the past three or four years with Netanyahu, with Smotrich, with Ben-Gvir, following these extreme right-wing nationalist policies, anti-Arab policies. And what's happened is the Arab population have said, we've got a voice and we're going to vote and we're going to vote in large numbers. I think clearly what Netanyahu is doing, not just here. I think it has been part of his playbook, his populist racist playbook for the last 30 years or so, is trying to use the word Arab in a way that will be triggering, frankly. And it all follows the events of October the 7th, which has left, I mean, if you talk to Israelis, they will say not just PTSD, not just post-traumatic stress, but current traumatic stress. And that by using the word Arab repeatedly in election campaign or post-election campaign, you are trying to make people feel that those people who are absolutely legitimate Israeli citizens were somehow the people that massacred Israelis in 2023 and that they are somehow the people that are threatening your very existence. I mean, to kind of spell out the obvious, Netanyahu is not talking about Gaza. He is not talking about the destruction and the killing of the Palestinian people here. That is not ever going to be part of what he talks about on the campaign trail. What he will do is say, I am the person that can keep Israel safe. I mean, laughably for many who think that it was his failures that led to October the 7th in the first place. But every time he invokes this idea of the Arab vote, the Arab-Israeli, the Palestinian Arab-Israeli voters, he's basically saying, oh, how safe do you feel about this? How comfortable do you feel about this? How do you know that they aren't coming for you? I mean, it is utterly unrelated to what happened from Hamas on the 7th of October. And yet that is the linguistic trickery that it involves. And the other thing that is going on, and never underestimate Netanyahu's sort of wiliness and kind of serpentine-like skills as a politician, is that he is trying to kind of portray the Arab vote, the Arab Knesset members, as sort of people who've essentially got bubonic plague. And if any other political party, Israeli political party, touches them, they're going to get bubonic plague too. And so what he's trying to do is to make them out of bounds for the opposition party, because if Gadi Eisenkot said, OK, well, let's do a deal with the Arab parties. He's got his majority and Netanyahu's gone and he's trying to make it frame it so that Israeli public opinion would just never accept a coalition that is formed and built upon Arab votes. And I think that's part of what he's doing as well. 100%. And, you know, up to this point, it has worked. Netanyahu said there's no way he will work with the Arab parties. Some of the adverts, the campaign adverts, were so hideously racist over the course of this, showing, you know, parties working with sort of hookah-smoking Arabs with their legs on the desk. You know, the whole the whole thing, you can sort of every single trope. And yet Eisenkot is also, it seems, too scared up till this point to work with the Arab parties. And one of the things that they are trying to work out is, is your political life over if you let Netanyahu have another term or is your political life over if you sign up to a deal with an Arab coalition? and at the moment that there is complete deadlock because nobody knows which is going to be more damaging, now we still don't know what's going to happen whether we're going to find ourselves you know reporting on another Israeli election in 90 days if they fail to form a government whether there's going to be a revolving premiership where a number of different people get the chance to be prime minister for you know half an hour and then it's someone else's turn and these things are still so complex and labyrinthine that we just have to wait on that Well, joining us down the line now from Jerusalem is Anshel Pfeffer, the Economist Israel correspondent, author, as you can probably see, of Bibi, The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu, and really somebody who has become the go-to voice on Israeli elections. Anshel, we've been covering, we've been trying to decipher the results in the last 48 hours what has actually happened now that is of significance in terms of the messaging coming out so now what we have is the beginning of the election you might think the election has ended but the real real business is happening now it's both the horse trading the uh the fight between different uh candidates and parties to form a coalition and also very much a battle for the narrative here in Israel over what is the legitimacy of the votes uh casted on Tuesday mainly the legitimacy of that incredible Arab turnout which has resulted in 18 or 19 seats 15% of the incoming Knesset so Netanyahu this morning put out a tweet saying talking about the Arab-Israeli voters, they stole the elections in Israel. I mean, does this have the currency to actually change minds? Does it have the currency to change what the president will do next? What is he doing with this? Well, if you mean by currency, is there any hard evidence to back that up? From what I'm hearing and speaking to people here on the ground, it doesn't look like there is any hard evidence. There is an investigation that does seem to have been some funny money circulating, but it certainly doesn't suggest that there's any legal way to invalidate one of the votes of 800,000 voters. I mean, like I said, that's over 15% of the people who voted on Tuesday. But if by currency you mean the kind of currency that we deal in, in the media and politicians who are trying to build narrative, Yes, there is currency there, because Netanyahu has been working on this for 30 years, on trying to delegitimize Arab votes. It's been a very long-time project for him, and to a degree it's worked. It is not just amongst his own voters, it is among his base. It's also something which opposition leaders are scared to touch, trying to talk about what the Arab participation means, how can they be part of the political process. that that's almost kryptonite here in Israeli politics and very much the work the long long term work of Netanyahu as a political player and Anshel I think some of the one of the things that people misunderstand particularly when accusations are made about it being an apartheid state is the fact that if you're an Israeli Arab you do vote if you're in Haifa or somewhere like that you probably have got quite an important say in how the city is run through the council and all the rest of it um is there anything in these allegations other than that there was a very high turnout i'm just trying to understand you know look we all saw what Donald Trump said in 2020 when he said the election was stolen and we know it wasn't there was just a big turnout of people who wanted to get rid of him i mean is what is this is this just high turnout or is there something else what is the basis of all this i've been on the ground for months going to various communities here in Israel including to Arab Israeli or as some call them call themselves Palestinian Israeli citizens and i've been hearing the same thing over and over again this time we're going to come out and vote like never before because this government the Netanyahu government with Itamar Ben-Gvir as the policing minister is is a government which has has pursued such uh strident anti-Arab policies the the and also the other thing that's bothering bothering them, bothering, that's a light word, is the wave of crime within the Arab community. We've seen murder rates jump to twice their rates pre the Netanyahu government. And this is in part at least due to a diversion of policing resources away from the Arab communities. So those are the two things that are foremost in their minds. They're trying to block, trying to do something about the crime wave and trying to get rid of the Netanyahu-Begin government. And the talk of the fact that there's going to be an incredible Arab turnout has been around for months. So even if there is, if there turns out to be some evidence of some kind of tampering there, it doesn't mean that this wasn't going to happen. This was going to happen all along. It was clear to anybody who's done any reporting among Arab communities in the last few months. You've just opened the door to the possibility of tampering. I'm trying to work out how seriously you're taking this as an allegation, having explained that you've been covering this kind of propaganda from Netanyahu for 30 years. Well, foreign money in and around an election campaign is a problem which I think isn't just unique to Israel, and it's certainly not unique to the Arab parties. I can talk about how various American groups have been funding lobbies and campaigns here in Israel for many years, including Netanyahu's campaign of other people who are close to him. So it's not as if this is like a sudden unique thing that happened, that some Qatari money may have been involved. And that's something that's going to be investigated. But the way Netanyahu is blowing it up is, I mean, it's very convenient for him at this moment. So let me just understand the ramifications, because at the moment, the biggest question that overhangs this whole result is, I guess, where the rising court and the change coalition would agree to work with the Arab parties in some shape or form. Will these kind of allegations push them away from even suggesting that? Will the Arab parties themselves feel that if they're being delegitimized like this, they don't want to play game? They don't want to join in? I mean, what is going to be the result of these kind of claims, do you think, Anshul? Well, I don't think anybody is surprised. We've seen for the last weeks how the Likud campaign have basically been laying the foundations for they-stole-the-vote kind of allegation post-election. Netanyahu was already saying on election day that they're stealing the vote. So, like I said, it's convenient that this investigation has suddenly come to light. So nobody's going to back down at this point. And, you know, you began your question with the question of will the Arab parties be in the coalition? There are several levels of political participation, participation beyond the vote and the and the election result there's first of all what happens in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, even before a new government is sworn in and the Knesset is going to be inaugurated on on November 10 all these new members are going to be sworn in and there is a plan of the opposition this is the opposition both the Jewish and the Arab parties to try and elect a new speaker from the from what is what has been the opposition to take over parliamentary business and start doing things that Netanyahu's tried to block, like set up a commission of inquiry into October 7th. The parliament can do that. Now, that is what Netanyahu's fighting right now. He's petrified by the possibility of the Knesset being overtaken by the opposition. And his only way to try and counter that is to delegitimize a big chunk of the opposition vote, which is the Arab parties. But is there any kind of constitutional mechanism which can say this is a foul we're we're we're holding up a red card here the election needs to be rerun or whatever um you know is there is there is there a process there is there a constitutional arrangement there where that could happen so the law allows for certain polling stations to do a rerun so if if it's found that there was tampering or any kind of major problem with vote counting at a specific polling station and there are 13,000 of those, then that specific polling station can hold a rerun and usually votes of one polling station won't make that much of a difference. It could potentially move a seat either way, but that's it. Sorry, let me understand that because obviously if people have been stuffing ballots or they've been producing their own ballot papers, that's fraud. And that is, you know, what Netanyahu seems to be alleging is that too many people came out to vote and maybe they came out to vote because their money had gone their way, you know, to to encourage them to vote. That is very different from ballot stuffing or something like that. So that's not that it's not addressed by law. It is illegal to pay someone to vote. sure but but there isn't any legal mechanism with it how can you afterwards you know redo that vote so even if these allegations are proved in which which right now from what i'm hearing that you know they're being massively ballooned beyond any proportion but even if there was something here that you know that could be grounds for an individual prosecution it's not it doesn't invalidate in any way the vote so what Netanyahu is trying to do here is to muddy the waters but doesn't have any legal base for that so where do we go from here what where do you think we are now in terms of coalition building a block getting 60 plus knesset members so that they can form a government they you know you can elect a prime minister so the problem is is that the opposition is bound by two election promises of all the parties there are basically committed not to working with Netanyahu so that would rule out a unity government of some form and some of the parties there, mainly Israel, Beiteinu, Avigdor Lieberman's party, but also Gadi Eisenkot's party sort of in an evasive way have said, well, we don't want to work with the Arab parties. We want to have what's being euphemistically called the Zionist government. So one of those promises has to be broken for there to be a government, either a unity government, which will include Netanyahu, or an opposition government. That is currently what's moving the, or what's kind of like limiting the room to manoeuvre here which is why Netanyahu I think will try and bide his time in the hope that they'll exhaust the 90 days for forming a coalition and then there'll be another election in early 27 which gives him another six months as Prime Minister and he hopes I think with good reason he could probably get a better result there Why doesn't Likud work just to oust Netanyahu? I mean if they know that he is the real roadblock to them being back in power or to any kind of unity government been backing power why don't they just shove him overboard well it could it historically in its various evolutions it's been around for over 100 years now has always been very devoted very very loyal to its leaders Likud has only had five or six leaders in the last 102 years Netanyahu certainly is one of the most dominant of those and today's Likud includes very very few figures who are prepared to to rebel against Netanyahu in public probably none today in public would rebel against him. And the rank and file of the party is extremely loyal. God, it does sound like you're describing the situation in America. You know, why don't the Republican Party get rid of Donald Trump? Well, because they can't. Was it a stolen election? Who says things like that? I mean, it really does... You're setting up the midterms for us quite nicely. Yeah, the parallels. And don't forget, Bibi has been in Likud politics since the late 80s. Donald Trump has only been doing it since 2016. I mean, if you need a British comparison, And Bibi is someone who was doing politics when Thatcher was still prime minister. Anshel Pfeffer, thanks so much. Thanks for your time. Now it's time to thank our partner HSBC UK Commercial Banking. When you're growing your business, you need a banking partner as invested in your success as you are. And with HSBC UK, business financing is about more than just money. They support ambitious UK businesses looking to grow, whether that's accelerating technology adoption, expanding into new markets or strengthening their workforce through upskilling. And they're not new at this. With over 160 years of experience, sector specialists, regional expertise, tailored financing solutions and a global network to tap into, they bring deep insight into what it really takes to grow your business. That's why they've launched the second edition of their HSBC Financing for Growth report, offering an in-depth look at what's driving business growth ambitions and borrowing trends, and how investing is turning ambition into action. So, whatever your business ambition, HSBC UK is here to support you. Just search HSBC Financing for Growth. Lending is subject to status. Eligibility criteria and T's and C's apply. It is the day after the budget and John Healey is touring the television and radio studios opining on what he delivered to the House of Commons yesterday. And he's thinking it's all going so terribly, terribly well. It's quiet, it's understated, it's modest and then suddenly he finds himself in the thick of it. Yes, well, the announcement that you didn't make today, you did. No, I didn't, and there were television cameras there while I was not doing it. **** that. I'm not quite sure what level of reality I'm supposed to be operating on. Look, this is what they run with. I tell them that you said it. They believe that you said it. They don't really believe you said it. They know that you never said it. Right. But it's in their interest to say that you said it, because if they don't say that you said it, They're not going to get what you say tomorrow or the next day when I decide to tell them what it is you're saying. That was Malcolm Tucker, of course, telling Minister Hugh that he basically has to go back and correct what he has said so that everyone who knew what he said originally manages to retract what that was. John Healey had this moment on the Today programme this morning when he was asked whether welfare spending would be cut before the next general election. And this was his reply. Though there will be a reduction in the benefits bill, we'll do that in a Labour way. We'll do that because it's simply not good for Britain or progressive to have a bigger and bigger benefits bill. He was asked specifically whether that would happen before the next election. And a few minutes later, up pops the BBC political editor, Chris Mason, with a retraction or a clarification, I suppose we should say, from the Treasury, who clearly heard that go out live and had a sharp intake in breath and now say that Healey's remarks had been misinterpreted. Now, I'm not quite sure how you can misinterpret something that he'd only just said, that hadn't yet gone through a process of interpretation. But they have now had to explain that what the Chancellor was doing was not committing to achieving that reduction before the next election. He was just expressing the government's ambition to reduce the benefits bill. And you have to wonder whether they have made things any better. I'm sorry, Emily, to interrupt you. I'm sorry. It goes even further. Apparently, one Treasury source said that Healey was explicitly attempting to avoid that impression being left that they were going to cut the benefits bill. I'll just read the quote again. There will be there will be a reduction in the benefits bill. We'll do that in a Labour way. I'm sorry I'm sorry he said it he said it clearly there is no doubt over what he said he wasn't giving the completely opposite impression I think what is interesting about this just to pull out for a moment is that it was what we described yesterday on the show as a very sort of quiet budget there were lots of tweaky things and I don't know if you've seen the Instagram account that I absolutely love at the moment which is you know Andy Burnham promises to offer help for people looking to find the end of the roll of sellotape. Andy Burnham, obviously, is to close the loophole on people who find they need scissors to open the new packet of scissors. I mean, the sort of piss take is that we have a government who is so much micro at the moment that all the macro is just sort of, you know, going to hell. If Andy Burnham could find odd socks, honestly, he's got my vote. Odd socks in the drawer. Yeah, there you go. That's how he's going to do it. But it points to the fact that, really, at the end of this hour from the Chancellor, we had a whole raft of of really kind of thoughtful measures you know anti-gambling measures anti-vape measures pro high street measures pro paternity measures lots of small things for lots of people who will be grateful but the big questions of the day on welfare the big questions of the day on defense the big question of the day really on on where growth comes from now were not really answered and i guess this is what nick robinson was trying to get to when he put the chancellor through his paces where are you on welfare and i guess healy comes to that interview thinking i've got to give them something otherwise i'll just i'll just be known as the guy who avoided the big question so he gives them something and the treasury immediately slaps him down and says oh no no no that that was not what he meant to say at all and i suppose the the reason that they the treasury have been swift to act and contradict the chancellor of the exchequer which sort of does raise a trust question of who actually governs i mean who's in charge if the treasury is correcting what the chancellor of the exchequer has said is that i guess that you know it would lead the commons uh to the speaker to say hang on i'm calling the chancellor back because he didn't say that in the budget he didn't say that in the budget wasn't in the red book we've got no numbers that show this is the government's intention so can you please come back and to the commons and clarify and maybe it was that was the lesser of the two evils for Treasury officials to start briefing and saying no no no John Healey didn't mean that at all I think he wanted to give absolutely the reverse impression of that yeah or in Malcolm Tucker's words you didn't say that yeah you didn't say that but I mean I think it shows fundamentally just the sensitivity for Labour for this government around the whole issue of the ballooning welfare benefits bill and how you're going to grapple with it what number you can attach to cuts in welfare spending because it doesn't feel as though the government are anywhere close to giving a number for that and they don't know what to say and Healey as you say Emily he tried to give an answer uh he didn't want to say nothing he didn't want to dead bat and has ended up getting himself contradicted by his own Treasury officials we'll see what tomorrow brings that was the interesting thing about how the administration responded to the speech I gave the other day they did not dispute what I said about them being directly responsible for rising prices they did not argue with that they did not deny tariffs were contributing to higher costs for families they didn't say anything about that I accused this administration based on the facts that they were engaging in unprecedented levels of corruption. They didn't say anything about that. The president wasn't even mad about the Saddam Hussein comparison That part didn't bother him. But he was very upset about the Cheesecake Factory comments So in case you missed it, Obama had been stumping a couple of days earlier when he made a reference to Trump's taste in interior decor, exterior decor I guess on the White House and compared it to this sort of slightly flashy um suburban mall restaurant in America called the Cheesecake Factory which loves its chandeliers and its glitz and its glass and its you know mirror surfaces and he threw this out there the um republicans around trump all accused him of being a snob but trump actually who is quite a snob just said, it's not, it's not. How dare you say it looks like the Cheesecake Factory? And so what they missed in this whole riff from Obama was that he was pointing to the graft, to the corruption, to the absolute impunity of that money-making machine that sits right at the heart of the White House right now. And that seemed to all go over their heads. That seemed to be fine but please don't criticize the president's taste in interior decor no don't do that right we're off to america tomorrow mateless yes i've got a proposition for you oh i love one of those we're going to go to a cheesecake factory we'll send photos of us can i admit something let's not turn it too confessional well i i peeked at the menu and i was relieved to see that there is a section called All Day Morning Cocktails. Oh my God. All Day Morning. So we're going to get lashed first thing in the morning. We're going to try an All Day Morning Cocktail. Yeah. Right. We'll see you tomorrow with a kind of curtain raiser on the midterms. Until then, bye bye. Bye for now. 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