Voters have not, to date, understood the importance of toppling Netanyahu from power at all costs.
Tel Aviv, October 16 - Electoral rivals of the incumbent Israeli prime minister, aiming to unseat him in voting that will take place no later than the end of next year, have decided to invest their resources in six-second video spots that disrupt the viewer experience on the world's top online streaming platform, continuing a policy they have pursued since at least later 2023.
The "You're the leader - it's your fault" campaign has run on YouTube since shortly after Hamas's brutal and bloody invasion of southern Israel in October of that year. The short ads, which play right before nonpaying users of the site or app may see the videos they have selected, accuse Binyamin Netanyahu of ignoring warnings of the attack, of corruption, of malice, of incompetence, and of responsibility for the unprepared state of Israeli defenses on that fateful Saturday morning. The activists behind the ads are baking on the campaign to move a stubborn polling needle in the favor of Netanyahu's left-wing opponents - an effort that has so far produced mixed results at best, with "Bibi" racking up a series of impressive, in some cases unprecedented, military and intelligence achievements against longtime strategic enemies, and with the ads featuring in the single most irritating aspect of the YouTube experience.
"This will bring victory," predicted Amos Katz, who has participated in every weekly protest, most of them against Netanyahu but some large ones in which the anti-Netanyahu demonstrators piggybacked on solidarity-with-the-hostages-in-Gaza rallies and pretended the hundreds of thousands in attendance agreed with the anti-Netanyahu message.
"That and blocking people from getting to and from work, doctor appointments, things like that, because our protests are more important," he added.
"The voters will understand."
The problem, according to some on the Left uncomfortable with that assessment, is that voters have not, to date, understood the importance of toppling Netanyahu from power at all costs - an effort that succeeded for a single brief term until the 2022 elections, when the longtime premier landed back in office amid disillusionment with the naivety and incompetence of his rivals.
"If I may," suggested one activist, "maybe we should have some newer YouTube ads? Not the same ineffective ones?"
"I mean," he continued, "it's not like it's our money going into this. It all comes from Soros, various foreign governments, and the European Commission. Heck, there's even some leftover from when Biden was bankrolling us. Are we that pathetic that not only do we have no new political ideas since the 1990's, we can't even come up with something less rusty and clunky than the current slogan?"
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