Israeli legislative election and Netanyahu's politics of enmity - Anadolu Ajansı

Tugce Ersoy Ceylan is a professor of International Relations at Izmir Katip Celebi University in Türkiye.

Israel is heading to a legislative election on Oct. 27. This election marks the first time since 1988 that a Knesset has completed its full four-year term. It is worth noting that the survival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition -- comprising far-right, ultra-Orthodox, and religious Zionist parties -- was driven less by popular domestic policies and more by the regional war that erupted in Gaza following Oct. 7, 2023.

As soon as the election date was finalized, Netanyahu wasted no time launching his campaign. It was no secret that a core pillar of his strategy would involve dodging responsibility for the events of Oct. 7. However, it was equally clear that he would struggle to convince the Israeli public of this. Consequently, Netanyahu has built the second pillar of his campaign using a new narrative of hostility, fueled by AI-generated videos.

In a recent AI-generated video posted on Netanyahu’s official X account, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iranian leader Mojtaba Khamenei, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are depicted preparing to celebrate Netanyahu's electoral defeat. The celebration is cut short when it becomes apparent that Netanyahu is going to win. The underlying message here is unmistakably clear: "My defeat is a victory for these actors."

But why is Netanyahu grouping such vastly different figures together on a shared stage of "enemies," and how does this rhetoric serve him in the upcoming election?

Rather than inventing a new enemy, Netanyahu is drawing false equivalencies between his existing and potential adversaries. By lumping together figures ranging from the Iranian leader and President Erdogan to Mamdani and Abbas, he conflates tensions of these actors with Israel and political and legal criticisms directed at him personally, framing them all as a single security issue. Consequently, an attempt is being made to portray the election not as a democratic assessment of the government's track record, but rather as a referendum on "defending Netanyahu against Israel's enemies."

It is worth noting that this video is the second phase of a Likud billboard campaign launched in August. This proves the video isn't just a throwaway social media stunt, but a carefully calculated campaign narrative. The original August billboard featured the Iranian leader, Erdogan, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem, and Mamdani alongside the slogan: "They want Netanyahu to lose; don't let them win." In the latest video, Mahmoud Abbas replaces the Hezbollah leader.

Taken together, the two campaigns place an armed non-state actor, the president of a NATO member state, the President of Palestine, and a democratically elected American mayor at the exact same threat level. This reveals that the campaign defines threats not by their actual capabilities, but solely by their opposition to Netanyahu.

The reality is that President Erdogan is hardly a new bogeyman in Israeli right-wing rhetoric. Tensions between Türkiye and Israel were already deeply personalized, fueled by Israeli genocide in Gaza, geopolitical rivalry over Syria, and competition for regional dominance. Türkiye's push for Netanyahu to face accountability -- coupled with its vocal backing of the ICC arrest warrants against him -- has only poured fuel on the fire.

Mamdani's inclusion is equally telling. In the campaign video, his political critiques -- specifically his remarks on the ICC warrants -- are treated as indistinguishable from the kinetic security threats posed by Iran and Hezbollah. This framing tries to strip President Erdogan and Mamdani of their actual status as critical foreign politicians, and goes on to try to typecast them instead as the regional and American proxies of an anti-Israel enemy front.

Ultimately, the "enemy" label has been hollowed out, losing any connection to actual intent or military capability. In this narrative, wanting Netanyahu out of office is made perfectly synonymous with wanting the destruction of Israel itself. The true target of this fear-driven messaging is not the foreign leaders shown on screen. While not a single Israeli opposition figure appears in the video, they are undeniably its real intended audience.

The underlying logic is straightforward: Khamenei, Erdogan, Abbas, and Mamdani want Netanyahu to lose; so does the Israeli opposition. Therefore, putting the opposition in power would be handing a victory to Israel's adversaries. Rather than labeling his domestic rivals as outright traitors, Netanyahu frames them as the vehicles that will deliver the enemy's desired outcome. This deliberately blurs the line between legitimate political dissent and national betrayal.

Thus, the campaign peddles the idea that Netanyahu's political survival is a matter of state security. His traditional claim of "Only I can keep Israel safe" has mutated into a more straightforward warning: "If I fall, the enemy wins." This conflation of personal and national security is a classic, highly effective page out of the Netanyahu playbook.

It would be misleading to suggest that this campaign has won over the entire Israeli public. Moreover, attributing the backlash entirely to the political left ignores the deep complexities of Israeli society. Tellingly, condemnation of the AI-generated video didn't just come from the left-leaning Haaretz. Even an op-ed in the right-leaning Israel Hayom described the August billboard campaign as Likud's desperate "search for an enemy to survive at the ballot box." Meanwhile, opposition lawmaker Naama Lazimi released a parody of the campaign, replacing the original targets with figures from Netanyahu's own inner circle who have come under fire for their ties to Qatar.

Still, it would be naive to assume that Netanyahu's rhetoric doesn't have any electoral base. Although polling varies by firm, Netanyahu hasn't completely lost his "Mr. Security" persona, even amidst widespread domestic discontent. However, a Sept. 7 poll orchestrated by Channel 12 showed Gadi Eisenkot edging out Netanyahu 42% to 35% as the preferred choice for prime minister.

Currently, the pro-Netanyahu bloc lacks a clear path to a majority, even though the margins between the opposing camps fluctuate wildly. Ultimately, this aggressive campaign strategy is not the product of a confident incumbent, but rather a symptom of a polarized and volatile electoral landscape.

The objective of these provocative visuals is to feed on the security anxieties of right-wing voters, driving turnout at the ballot box and enforcing strict bloc loyalty. Far from a simple stunt, Netanyahu's AI-generated video executes four political maneuvers. Firstly, it actively pivots the electoral debate away from the government’s culpability for Oct. 7, the staggering toll of the war, the hostage crisis, and Israel’s deepening diplomatic isolation. Secondly, it rebrands vulnerability as strength by framing the sheer volume of Netanyahu's detractors not as a diplomatic collapse, but as proof of his defiant strongman leadership. Thirdly, it is purposefully designed to consolidate a fractured right-wing base -- which risks bleeding votes to marginal parties hovering near the electoral threshold -- by weaponizing the fear that a split vote only serves the enemy. Lastly, the campaign methodically hollows out the legitimacy of domestic democratic dissent by treating opposition to Netanyahu as perfectly synonymous with hostility toward Israel itself.

Netanyahu may be deploying the technology of tomorrow, but the playbook he is running is as old as statecraft itself. It relies on tethering the survival of the leader to the survival of the nation, turning foreign adversaries into the ultimate referees of domestic politics, and casting an electoral loss as a national capitulation.

The true artificiality in this video, then, is not in the pixels; it is in the premise. The real fabrication is the claim that these vastly disparate actors constitute a single, monolithic threat. Rather than discovering new adversaries, Netanyahu is simply constructing a catch-all "enemy" category broad enough to swallow anyone who opposes him. In the process, the distinctions between a kinetic military threat, a diplomatic rival, a legal critic, and a democratic opponent are consciously and deliberately erased.

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu.