In Smotrich’s AI Video, He Doesn’t Win by Argument. He Wins by Force.

Jewish tradition treats disagreement as a value. Pirkei Avot promises that a dispute “for the sake of Heaven” will endure. This week, during the Ten Days of Repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Religious Zionism party released an election video with no disagreement in it at all. The only words its opponents are given are a slogan the video itself puts in their hands: “No Smotrich.” Then they are dragged away.

The AI-generated video was released on Tuesday, September 15, which was also the International Day of Democracy, about six weeks before the October 27 election. It accompanied the justice-system plan presented by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and MK Simcha Rothman: an override clause, curbs on the powers of the courts, splitting the role of the attorney general and a new method for appointing judges. Supreme Court President Isaac Amit, Justice Daphne Barak-Erez and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara appear in it as protesters blocking a road, holding that slogan on protest signs. Security personnel in yellow vests grab them and drag them through burning streets. In the final scene, Amit walks alone down an empty street, defeated, trailing the sign behind him. The campaign’s name: “Clearing the Blockage.”

Smotrich and Rothman believe the courts and the attorney general overstep their authority. Presenting the plan, Rothman described it as a way to put Israeli democracy back on its proper course, arguing that unelected judges and civil servants hold too much power. That is a legitimate claim to make, and the plan makes it: it proposes defined changes that one can support or oppose. The video makes no claim at all. It does not explain why the judges are wrong; it gives them no argument to answer. That is the difference between disagreement and removal, and it is the heart of the campaign. Nor does this distinction depend on which side you are on: an opposition video portraying Smotrich this way would deserve exactly the same criticism.

Every choice in the video turns the judges from officials into a public-order problem. They are not sitting in a courtroom or writing rulings; they are standing on a road. The institutional authority that allows them to tell the government “no” becomes a protest against one man. The image is familiar: it is borrowed from the 2023 demonstrations against the judicial overhaul, when protesters blocked Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv and the Ayalon Highway and police cleared them from the road. You don’t argue with a blockage; you clear it.

One could argue that this is satire, or a fantasy in the style of Tarantino: no one thought “Inglourious Basterds” was proposing a policy toward Hitler. But Tarantino is a director, not a party seeking power, and he takes revenge on the past rather than imagining a future for people who hold office today. This is not a film but an election ad. Even if one accepts the genre comparison, it does not answer the criticism; it identifies the device. The fantasy works precisely because it skips the argument and delivers the defeat. And that is how this video is structured: it ends not with an explanation of why Amit is wrong, but with the image of his humiliation. That is the payoff.

Which brings us back to the tradition. The Talmud preserves minority opinions alongside its rulings, and in Tractate Eruvin, when it asks why the law was decided according to the School of Hillel, it does not answer that their arguments were stronger. It answers that they were gentle and forbearing, that they taught the views of the School of Shammai and cited them before their own. The Mishnah in Tractate Yevamot adds that despite their deep disagreements, the two schools did not refrain from marrying into each other’s families. Disagreement did not turn the other side into an obstacle to be removed. This tradition is no standard for governing a democracy, but it is a mirror worth holding up to the video. And held up to it, the video neither cites its opponents’ positions before its own nor voices them at all.

Asked about the video in a 103FM radio interview, Rothman said that part of the public got the message and part is angry about its form, and that it is all legitimate as long as the message gets through. To those who didn’t like it, he offered an apology in honor of the Ten Days of Repentance; to those who did, he said he was glad. An apology for the offended, and exactly the same video for those who enjoyed it. But if the video stays as it is, the form is not a flaw to apologize for. It is what appealed to those who liked it, and so it is the message.

In a few days, Yom Kippur will arrive. Perhaps this is the time to ask not only whether the video offended anyone, but what kind of victory it imagines.