Netanyahu's Last Stand: When Reality Is Low, Go Lower

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a news conference in Jerusalem on Monday. Credit: Ronen Zvulun/AFP

Just a few weeks ago, political adverts for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his governing coalition were kind of funny. The cleverly scripted video poking fun at caricatures of secular-left wing Israelis, while a closeted right-wing family member tried to "come out" as a Netanyahu-supporter, made even some lefties chuckle at themselves. Now things have taken a darker turn.

This week, the videos pumped out by the prime minister and his loyalist entourage, some AI-generated, raise a grimace rather than a smile. These are no cheeky, surrealist Iranian-sponsored, antisemitic Lego-hip hop trolling videos ; rather, the scenes look like they were developed by solitary incels, trolling the dark-web for evidence of conspiracies against them.

Moreover, each of the two prominent pro-government (rather, anti-opposition) videos look guaranteed to backfire. One was posted by the prime minister himself. It shows a perturbed looking young man, alone in his dimly-lit room reading George Orwell's "1984." The guy then turns on the TV and watches escalating incidents of political persecution against right-wingers by a new government led by Naftali Bennett and other opposition figures.

These include his buddy getting arrested for a right-wing Facebook post, police raiding the ultra-right-wing Channel 14, and the nefarious new government replacing all major appointments to Israeli security services with political loyalists. The anti-government protest movement from 2023 Brothers and Sisters in Arms then establishes a civilian militia. The clip repeats age-old accusations that such a coalition includes an Arab party and is establishing a Palestinian state while paralyzing security policy.

הם באמת מתכוונים למה שהם אומרים.

מבוסס על הצהרות אמיתיות.
(לא נעשה שימוש בAI) pic.twitter.com/TUJwp1Zc2H

— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) June 14, 2026

Most of this is not new. In fact, Netanyahu's political ads have been trying to terrorize Israelis with left-wing security threats or the specter of a Palestinian state for at least 27 years since 1999 (back then, the ads were still funny; they also didn't work – Netanyahu lost).

The real problem for Netanyahu is that each accusation in the three-minute mini-drama actually happened. The video is a deadly efficient reminder that under this government, citizens really were arrested for criticizing Israel's wars on Facebook or dragged from their homes for handing out flyers supporting the release of hostages.

Israelis know how hard this government is working to undermine independent media, and how it has energetically filled key professional positions with fundamentalists or political loyalists, in the Shin Bet, the police, and Mossad and even most recently, Netanyahu's personal lawyer as the state comptroller (in a Knesset vote currently being challenged in the High Court, which on Thursday proposed a revote). And nobody can forget that the Minister of National (in)Security Itamar Ben Gvir has been handing out weapons to Jewish civilians like candy.

Watch the video here

But more than anything else, Netanyahu's back-to-the-basics fearmongering campaign, warning of Palestinian terror if the opposition wins, unleashed a flood of posts about October 7 on social media. This should put to rest the popular speculation that Netanyahu was so worried about reminding Israelis of those events that he would avoid an October election date, or at least one that included the number 7 (such as 27).

I always thought such speculation was off; Netanyahu actually believes he can still convince voters that he is Mr. Security and the left will be soft on terror.

In fairness, the "day after" scare tactic has a long history on campaigns. In 2001, I worked on Ehud Barak's campaign, and our ad team developed a TV clip warning of a host of disasters that could occur if Ariel Sharon won the elections. (It took over two decades, but the full-blown wars, closed airspace, isolation from allies and the crisis of relations with the U.S. – finally came true under this government).

But the second video of the week tried a much more bizarre strategy. This one was AI-generated. It did not warn about the future but rather imagined the counterfactual horrors if the "change" government from 2021-2022 had remained in power. These awful visions included the Arab coalition partner Mansour Abbas blocking the infamous exploding beeper operation against Hezbollah in 2024. But the most dizzying part was when the same Abbas drives the Israeli government to a "capitulation agreement" with Iran.

חלום הבלהות הזה כמעט התגשם.
למזלה של מדינת ישראל, המציאות היתה אחרת.

שמחתי על הזכות מבורא עולם לעזור לכך >>

*הוידאו הופק באמצעות ai pic.twitter.com/LR2kjcayNm

— Idit Silman - עידית סילמן (@iditsilman) June 17, 2026

The genius who came up with this ad – how to put this nicely – should be fired. So should the person who shamelessly posted the clip, Likud minister Idit Silman. She was a key member (and core defender) of that dastardly government, before toppling it in return for better political fortunes under Netanyahu's protection.

It certainly took cutting edge technology to create something quite so fake. But it took idiocy to publish it this week.

Not a day after the video was posted, Trump was scrawling his signature at a Versailles dinner table, inking a document that will stop the war with Iran, flood that country with money, grant it leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, and defer the nuclear issue for some hypothetical 60 days of negotiation – "extendable with mutual consent."

Astonishingly, there was Trump defending Iran's right to have ballistic missiles, the scourge of Israeli life over the last year and a source of right-wing "epic fury" against the 2015 deal between the U.S. and Iran, which failed to curtail the missile program.

US President Donald Trump signs a memorandum of understanding with Iran to end the Middle East war, inside Chateau de Versailles, in Versailles on Wednesday. Credit: AFP

That beeper operation? Israelis were gaga about it at the time, but less so after Hezbollah came back resurgent, and continued to fire mercilessly at northern residents since March 2 this year. This week, U.S. President Donald Trump warned that Netanyahu must cease the military assault on Lebanon, which isn't destroying Hezbollah anyway. Now the American memorandum of understanding with Iran requires it.

It turns out that AI "what ifs" can't block Hezbollah drone fire, save soldiers' lives in South Lebanon, or win wars. AI ads couldn't stop Trump from signing a deal with Iran that Israel loathes. And no Orwellian script can make Israelis who dislike this government fear a different one more than they weep over October 7.