Netanyahu is Source of Palestinian Election Fraud Hoax

In the days leading up to last Tuesday’s Israeli election, rumors began to swirl about alleged election fraud committed by the Raam Palestinian party.  Israeli media alleged that Qatar had stuffed cash into envelopes given to Raam election workers, to bribe Palestinian voters.  Four such figures were arrested by Israeli police.  The vague claims originated with Shin Bet chief, settler messianist and Netanyahu chum, David Zini. He, in turn passed them on the the settler Supreme Court justice, Noam Sohlberg, election committee chair.

He tasked Zini with investigating to determine whether the charges were true.  Sohlberg hedged his bets proclaiming: “I cannot attest to the nature of these suspicions…”  Of course he knew they weren’t credible.  But he and Zini were doing Bibi’s bidding because, like the dog on old RCA records: they “hear their master’s voice.”

The hoax

Now, an Israeli investigative journalist, Guy Peleg, reveals the entire thing was a hoax invented by Netanyahu and disseminated by his chief of staff.  He was the source of the since discredited information offered to the police, who judged it to be “weak.’

Before I go on, it’s worth noting that his chiefs of staff have been embroiled in serial scandals.  Most recently the salary of PMO official in that position on October 7th was funded by Qatar.  He was also separately charged with altering the phone record of the first call to Netanyahu about the Hamas attack on 10/7. These reveal a pattern of lies and self-dealing meant to protect the prime minister from accountability for his criminal conduct.

A separate investigation charges that Qatar interfered in the election–again–to bribe Palestinian voters and inflate the vote results. Though media reports on the claim says it is “exaggerated” and offered by a source with a political agenda, presumably (again) Netanyahu. The police told the journalist that it was compelled to open an investigation, suggesting it didn’t believe the charges had merit.  The invented scandal confirms the racism infecting the Israeli political process.

If this sounds familiar to a US audience, that’s because it’s a page ripped out of the MAGA playbook. Going back to his first presidential run, every time Trump feared he would lose he accused his Democratic opponent of stealing the election. Sabotaging the election process by seeking to disqualify the hundreds of thousands of votes in Blue States, is no different than Likud’s campaign to discredit the Palestinian vote. Because those unprecedented 19 seats strengthen the Joint List’s power and that of the Opposition. For the Likud Judeo-fascists, the greater the exercise of their democratic right to vote, the greater the threat to Judeo-supremacy.

Unbelievable. Four days BEFORE the elections, Likud was already planning to challenge the Israeli elections over fraud among Arab voters. According to the report, the plans included saying that women in veils voted repeatedly. They were just looking for any excuse to besmirch the entire population and delegitimize the elections. Then they found the excuse.

— Shaiel Ben-Ephraim (@academic_la) October 31, 2026

Channel 12 reported four days before the election, that the Likud had already gamed out a plan to intimidate Palestinian voters and motivate its own voters to head to the polls. By claiming the former were stealing the election, they hoped to stampede their own supporters. They waited to enlist the government officials, Zini and Sohlberg, to legitimize the charges after the election.

Another scandal buffeting Netanyahu was his plan to permit Qatar to smuggle billions into Gaza in order to bolster Hamas rule there.  It became known as Qatargate, and involved payment of $2-billion to support Hamas and everyday life in Gaza. The Israeli prime minister wanted a weak, barely functioning Gaza; but not one facing total collapse. So he resorted to Qatar to offer bare living conditions to Palestinian residents. It’s a bitter irony not lost on Israelis, that Netanyahu routinely railed against Qatar as a supporter of Hamas terrorism.

It’s no accident that the Israeli leader chose to invoke Qatar as the central player in his hoax.  He hoped it might take some of the heat off him for orchestrating the Qatari financing scandal. One of the classic deflections of the bully is to accuse the victim of the very offense he has committed.

Anyone who has followed his career for any length of time knows how corrupt, ruthless and petty Netanyahu can be.  A sociopath in full. That includes lying about anything and everything that might give him a boost politically.   One of the better-known anti-Bibi slogans invoking Israelis’ sheer disgust is: Liar, son of a liar. שקרן בן שקרן

If it can be believed, Netanyahu’s Likud is one of the milder racist parties in the constellation of Judeo-Nazi politics.  Ben Gvir and Smotrich are the avatars for the worst-of-the-worst elements.  Nevertheless, the Likud became one of the chief disseminators of the hoax:

…The party said the affair was intended to bring about a foreign takeover of the Knesset, the “Islamization” of Israel, and the fall of the right-wing government. In Likud’s account, that outcome would lead to withdrawal and defeat for the Israel Defense Forces on every front, with Iran named first….The reports do not present evidence supporting them.

The goal was to motivate the Party’s right-wing base to vote.  Not to uncover an election scandal, since there was nothing there.

This affair also reveals the panic of Israeli Jews over the rising political power of the Palestinian community.  It’s 80% voting turnout is the largest since 1960.  It’s 19 seats are the most ever.  Racist politicians may deny them a seat at the government table. But they cannot deny them for long.  Eventually a politician, if not Eisenkot, will be prepared to break a taboo and invite the parties representing 20% of Israel’s population into the government, and award them ministerial portfolio commensurate with their electoral power.

Israeli police have conceded that all the charges brought by Zini and Stolberg were unfounded.  One of the chief purveyors of this story, was a journalist, Amit Segal, whose father was a Jewish terrorist guilty of horrendous West Bank bombings. After Peleg’s expose was published, the former wrote that “unfortunately” the claims turned out to be false.  Either he meant that the false claims were unfortunate. Or that it was unfortunate the claims weren’t true.  In this he would not be alone, as most Israeli Jews despise their fellow Palestinians. They are quick to believe the worst of them, which only confirms the worst in them (the former).

After the controversy over the UK Green Party’s resolution declaring Zionism to be racism, this incident is another nail in the coffin of Israel and Zionism.  Clearly, Israel is a racist state and Zionism, the nation’s founding ideology, is as well.