Has Likud Been Infiltrated By a Political “Fauda”?

As time goes by, a troubling suspicion is taking shape: Benjamin Netanyahu’s election campaign may have fallen into the hands of undercover agents working for the opposition. It sounds like a conspiracy theory, I know, and the evidence is circumstantial, I admit. But as the October 27 election approaches, conventional explanations for what is happening are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

Consider what sophisticated political saboteurs might advise if they managed to infiltrate Likud campaign headquarters, operating as a kind of undercover commando unit, a sort of political Fauda. Compare their hypothetical recommendations with the actual headlines of this campaign, and you will discover no little correlation.

First, the agents would advise Netanyahu to remind Israelis that military service is an obligation best imposed on other people’s children, preferably those who do not belong to his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners.

Following the detention of ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers at Ben Gurion Airport—an event many Israelis regarded as a kind of divine intervention—Netanyahu declared that the world of Torah must be preserved, but anyone who does not study should enlist. In other words, those who study Torah, as opposed to computer science, business or medicine, should be exempt from military service. Hardly a popular message, to put it mildly.

To stir up further trouble, the saboteurs would persuade Likud’s natural partners in Shas to release campaign videos featuring soldiers—a transparent deception that might well boost turnout in communities where people actually serve in the military, out there in the absurd world of reality. And for the finishing touch, they would recommend making no effort to distance the government from Rabbi Dov Lando, one of United Torah Judaism’s spiritual leaders, who explained that Zionism had brought disasters upon the Jewish people, that life under Arab rule would have been preferable, and that religious Zionist soldiers were being killed because their rabbis taught them “distorted Torah.”

Second, our undercover operatives would arrange a Donald Trump endorsement based on the assumption that Israeli voters are eager to return to their bomb shelters.

Trump enthusiastically endorsed Netanyahu ahead of the election, suggesting that further American action against Iran depended on who occupied the Israeli prime minister’s office. Without Netanyahu, Trump explained, the United States might have to finish the job alone—an option he did not find particularly appealing.

Netanyahu embraced the endorsement with delight. Exactly what you would expect if an undercover operative with polished English and a few years of experience in Qatar had convinced him that the prospect of spending another month, two months or three months running to reinforced safe rooms would strike the masses as a compelling reason to vote Likud.

Next comes education. Here, the undercover agents find an enthusiastic mark in the person of “Education Minister” Yoav Kisch.

After disturbing figures emerged about Israeli students’ academic performance, Kisch turned on the National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation. An independent review, however, affirmed the authority’s professionalism and recommended closer cooperation with it.

Kisch responded by suspending the tests and barring the authority’s employees from operating inside the Education Ministry. It is a wonderfully economical approach to educational reform. If students cannot pass the tests, simply abolish the tests.

The whole business is so preposterous that, on the face of it, it lends further support to the undercover-saboteur theory. Then again, perhaps there is a deeper logic at work. The more the education system struggles to equip students with the tools of critical thinking, the larger the future audience potentially willing to accept whatever explanation the government offers. Further research is required.

Finally, there is the matter of racism, with a little reverse psychology thrown in.

Yinon Magal, an influential Netanyahu mouthpiece, called former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot a “monkey” and claimed that Ashkenazi elites were pulling his strings. After the ensuing uproar, Magal explained that he was using a term from the criminal underworld: a ridiculous stooge known as a “monkey,” manipulated by people cleverer than himself.

Netanyahu condemned the remark but hastened to invoke insults supposedly directed at Likud voters, even inventing quotations that had never been uttered. Another participant in Magal’s program subsequently repeated the slur, to the laughter of those present.

Things like this do not happen by themselves, I think.

Or perhaps they do. Perhaps this sort of thing comes naturally to them, just as naturally as their endlessly draft-dodging coalition partners. After all, we have already heard Nathan Eshel, Netanyahu’s confidant, explain in a recording exposed in 2020 that “this hatred is what unites our camp.” Eshel spoke with particular contempt about the voters he called “non-Ashkenazim,” boasting of the campaign’s success in inflaming their anger.

Curious indeed. Perhaps undercover agents were already at work back then.

Of course, there are explanations for all this that require no conspiracy.

The first is hubris, regrettably, and one cannot help feeling a certain compassion. Netanyahu has survived so many scandals, defeats, investigations and political near-death experiences that he may have convinced himself the ordinary rules of politics apply only to lesser mortals. One cannot envy a leader afflicted with such a syndrome, especially if, heaven forbid, his wife has contracted it too.

The second explanation is contempt for the public. After decades of watching Netanyahu escape political consequences, his associates may genuinely believe that enough Israelis can be persuaded to overlook almost anything, provided the message is delivered with sufficient confidence and repeated often enough. I know, it is difficult to imagine such cynicism. But we must keep an open mind.

The third explanation is more sophisticated. Perhaps Likud’s actual strategists have concluded that the persuadable center of the electorate has all but disappeared. If few voters are willing to switch camps, elections become an exercise in mobilization. Anger, provocation, tribal loyalty and fear become tools for energizing the base. Under this calculation, antagonizing half the country is perfectly acceptable, provided the other half becomes sufficiently enraged to turn out and vote. Could it be? That would hardly be patriotic—and we are, after all, talking about the self-proclaimed “national camp”!

The more one turns the question over, the more one is drawn back to the possibility that opposition agents have been planted among Bibi’s poor, innocent, unsuspecting advisers.

And then, as I was pondering these possibilities, another mystery floated into my consciousness.

Consider the extraordinary collection of campaign issues the opposition has been handed: the October 7 catastrophe, the failure to achieve the war’s objectives, the unequal burden of military service, the colossal crisis involving the ultra-Orthodox, appalling corruption, the very existence of Shlomo Karhi, Tally Gotliv and Simcha Rothman—and on and on (and on).

A more energetic opposition could have turned this mountain of material into a devastating indictment, enough to chill the blood and pulverize the bones. Why does its campaign seem to boil down to “This time, Eisenkot”? Why is Bibi even still in the race?

And suddenly, everything became clear as day on a gloomy afternoon!

The opposition had indeed dispatched cunning undercover operatives to conduct a Fauda-style raid on Likud headquarters. But in its enthusiasm, it had sent every last one of its talented political strategists.

And not a one was left to advise its own campaign.