Dr. Anjuli Pandavar left Islam in 1979 after growing up in a Muslim family in South Africa. She writes about politics, religion, and social critique.
The bottom of the barrel is a desperate place. The global Jew-hating and anti-Israel battalions, including the Israeli Left, just a few weeks ago scrambled to capitalise on Hamas’s resumption of psychological warfare against Israel, children with kites, to expose “monstrous Israel taking kites from kids". But with this propaganda depending on Hamas putting children in harm’s way (which can be relied on) and their releasing an endless stream of kites (which cannot be relied on), the kites offensive was a short-lived Israel-bashing opportunity. It is already abandoned for propaganda that gives a bigger bang for your Jew-hating buck.
2026: The end of the post-1973 electorate
“Settler violence" is back. It is easy and reliable, because Palestinian Arabs do not have to do anything. The Jews do not have to do anything either, but for this psyop to work, you need Jews and you need them in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories". Half a million Jews live in communities interwoven with Arab villages and towns in Judea and Samaria. It’s a no-brainer. On the back of a world well-primed with Israel “shooting women and children", “starving babies" and “genocide", no one has any interest in whether: Jews had attacked Arabs; if so, why; whether Arabs had anything to do with it; or whether the Arabs are the violent perpetrators? Minister Bezalel Smotrich drew more outrage for saying he wanted to burn down Huwara after a bestial murder, than did the two Arabs from Huwara who shot dead two Jews in a traffic jam -- as if they had the right to kill the Jews.
A Palestinian Arab shot dead a father of six the day before Yom Kippur and another tried to ram IDF soldiers. Note Reuters' way of telling the story: "Violence flared in the 'occupied West Bank' on Sunday when a 'suspected' Palestinian gunman shot dead an Israeli man, police said, and Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian Arab motorist who the military 'said' was attempting to run them over." (quotation marks added)
The hitherto successful psychological warfare against the Jews and Israel achieved unquestioned global acceptance of whatever Jews and Israel are accused of. Blind acceptance is virtuous; to suggest that there might be more to this “settler violence" business makes you a “Zio," a broad sweep of questioners rendered an archetype in order to be rendered non-persons.
There is, therefore, no point in proving that the violence in Judea and Samaria comes from Arabs, not Jews, and it is violence that pre-dates the re-founding of Israel, the Trans-Jordanian invasion, occupation an annexation of Judea and Samaria and the Egyptian invasion and occupation of Gaza. The Jew-hating mind is not receptive to either arguments or proofs, whether historical, legal or empirical. We already know that from the failure of hasbara.
October 7 was a major, internationally-coordinated, multi-front jihad effort to finally rid the world of Israel. After almost three years of war, Israel is stronger than ever and her enemies either destroyed, crippled or in disarray. But it’s not over yet. The Israeli Left is as determined to destroy Israel as are Hamas, the Palestinian Arabs, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Left’s way to accomplish the dissolution of Israel is through becoming the next government.
The October 2026 election is their last chance, and it is a slim one.
The composition of the electorate is changing, and very significantly so: the generation that led the country and the armed forces during the Yom Kippur War, the first capitulation generation, is dying off after decades of destructive retirement; the youth that so surprised everyone in the way they gave account of themselves, their valour, their Judaism and their Zionism after October 7, are entering the electorate for the first time. The age of military service is 18; voting age is 18.
From 1973 till now, the Israeli electorate has remained essentially unchanged. The generation of Israeli rulers that militarily won, but psychologically lost, the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and out of the following two generations, created capitulating leaders like themselves. Their children and grandchildren, who lost electoral power in 1977, entrenched their power in the commanding heights of society, in the instruments of state and, after 1992-1995 especially, in the Supreme Court, now effectively a Politburo.
Over the last decade or so, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whatever we may think of him, emerged as the single obstacle to the Left’s consolidation of power and disestablishing of the country. Unfortunately for the Left, Netanyahu held onto power long enough to be able to hand over the reins to an electorate unlikely to let the Left prevail. When that will occur and whether he has the humility to do so gracefully is another question.
Like the Left and jihad globally, the Israeli Left will have to fall back heavily on the tribalism of Israeli voters, hoping that not too many people have come to their senses since October 7, and if they did, that most will have reverted to past patterns. Hatred of Prime Minister Netanyahu runs deep, and it is by no means certain that his superhuman performance during the still-ongoing war will dislodge that hatred. The ideologically-depressed are impervious to both reason and evidence, and might fall right back in line should the Left redouble their activism to converge with the global “settler violence" psyops. For the Prime Minister to run a campaign on his record will connect only to recent memory, inseparable from Kaplan Street; “Crime Minister" draws on a deep well of the ugliest hatred.
The electorate that will choose the next Israeli government in 2026 will see a dramatic drop in the 75-79 age group, together with an even more dramatic rise in the 18-24 age group. Those who want nothing more than to hand over Israel to the Palestinian Arabs will lose their grandees, while those who for three years demonstrated their selfless determination to defend their families, their homes, their Jewishness and their country, the 18-24s, will replace the lost 75-79s by more than 20:1.
The Left’s dirty tricks are well underway. The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, Channel 12, Israeli academics, etc., (not to mention most Hebrew papers) are all smearing the government and especially the Prime Minister, while devising further strategies to achieve maximum damage. No centrist or Leftist politician wants to be too candid about their eagerness to get to power via one of the Muslim Brotherhood parties.
Such people having just one shot left, only the most naïve would not expect fraud to be built into several levels of the upcoming election, and for the Left to instigate violence and intimidation, including from the Arab sector. Rendering the country ungovernable creates the chaos for insurrection. In such an event, Prime Minister Netanyahu cannot be relied upon to impose the Lincoln Option on the Supreme Court, for he does not, and almost definitely will not, recognise the Left as enemies, only as “adversaries".
So, assuming an election actually takes place, the solution for the Right lies in making their victory too big to rig. And the key to that is the first-time voters. All effort should be directed towards raising the profile of these voters, reminding the country of their exemplary conduct and sacrifice during the active war, and, most crucially, mobilising the youth to vote. These young people are the only people the Left cannot slander.
The wider population needs to be made to see that they do not owe their country, or any part of it, to the Palestinian Arabs; they owe their country to these, their own young people, the next generation.
The Israeli Left finds itself at the bottom of the barrel alongside the global jihad, whose last great hope they are, as these first-time voters are Israel’s.