How the weekend’s Jewish extremist violence reverberates through election campaigns - analysis

Jewish extremist violence in the West Bank of the kind witnessed over the weekend is, to the country’s discredit, nothing new. Nor is it unprecedented for journalists or foreign dignitaries to be caught up in it.

What is different this time is the timing.

With elections just a week and a half away, incidents involving Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine and a delegation of European diplomats have become another battleground in the campaign. The violence demands attention regardless of the electoral calendar. But that calendar helps explain how the politicians are responding, and which voters they hope are listening.

The shadow of the election is particularly apparent in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response. He condemned violence in principle while questioning what happened in these cases. His office said the circumstances remained unclear and that investigators needed to establish the facts.

Demanding an investigation before determining individual responsibility is understandable. But the statements went considerably further.

They highlighted the diplomatic delegation’s failure to coordinate its visit with the IDF, the Communist affiliation of a French mayor accompanying it, and reports of Palestinians and far Left activists confronting Jewish youths near Abu Falah. They also warned of a coordinated campaign to smear Israel and the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria.

“The facts must determine the conclusions. Not the headlines,” his office said.

The effect was to shift attention from the alleged perpetrators to the credibility and motives of those accusing them.

Netanyahu's statements deviate from definitive condemnations by US officials

Netanyahu’s qualified statements do not match the unequivocal response of US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who can hardly be accused of hostility toward the settlement enterprise. Huckabee condemned the assault on Levine as terrorism by “masked cowards” and demanded an investigation, arrests, and prosecution.

Nor was he alone. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington was disturbed by the images and had repeatedly asked Israel to crack down.

Huckabee’s statement is significant. When an outspoken friend of the settlements calls such violence terrorism, it becomes harder to portray it as just another predictable attack on settlers. His response demonstrates that defending Jewish settlement and demanding forceful action against Jewish extremists are compatible.

For Netanyahu, however, the violence puts two political assets in tension: his partnership with the hard Right and his claim to be the indispensable manager of Israel’s relationship with Washington.

Netanyahu has several audiences to satisfy.

Washington expects enforcement. His right-wing partners and voters expect him to resist what they see as efforts to exploit confrontations and provocations to discredit the settlements. And mainstream Israelis, including many on the Right, recoil at images of masked Jews rushing civilians with clubs.

His statements try to satisfy all three by condemning the violence, withholding judgment on the incidents, and rejecting collective blame.

Does Netanyahu's response reflect political spin?

The question is how he can sustain that balancing act. Condemning violence is one thing; going after the perpetrators at the risk of antagonizing elements within his own political camp is quite another. Is Netanyahu’s caution just responsible fact-checking, or does it reflect political dependencies that constrain his ability to impose order?

For the opposition leaders, the answer is obvious. But their responses also reveal different electoral calculations.

Yisrael Beytenu’s Avigdor Liberman made the connection to Netanyahu’s political survival most explicitly.

“Bibi is putting out statements in English,” he wrote, while the prime minister and his defense and national security ministers are “doing nothing to stop this madness.”

The reference to English was pointed: Netanyahu’s concern, Liberman was suggesting, is to reassure foreign audiences while avoiding the confrontation at home that effective enforcement would require.

Liberman’s implicit accusation is that Netanyahu’s political dependence on Otzma Yehudit leader Itamar Ben-Gvir and Religious Zionist Party head Bezalel Smotrich limits his willingness to act.

It also challenges Netanyahu’s diplomatic credentials: What good is privileged access to a sympathetic administration in Washington if his coalition’s conduct keeps generating friction with it?

In his social media post on the violent incidents, Gadi Eisenkot placed greater emphasis on security and leadership. He described the violence as Jewish terrorism under government auspices, warning that a handful of criminals were eroding Israel’s legitimacy, endangering security forces, and damaging national security.

He also, notably, identified the settlement enterprise as a victim, saying these acts harm it. By taking this approach, he appeals to voters who support settlements but reject lawlessness. Eisenkot is arguing that tolerating extremists endangers what those voters value, and that protecting the settlement enterprise requires confronting people committing violence in its name.

His final warning carried a clear post-October 7 resonance: “No one in the leadership will be able to claim that they weren’t woken up in time and that they weren’t warned.”

The language evokes the debate over when Netanyahu was awakened on October 7 and reinforces Eisenkot’s broader campaign argument that Israel needs leaders who recognize danger and act before disaster strikes.

Opposition heads speak to settlers, vow to change tide

Naftali Bennett made a similar appeal, but spoke more directly to the settlers themselves.

He stressed that the perpetrators do not represent half a million residents of Judea and Samaria. “This is an un-Jewish, immoral act,” he said, promising that a new government would confront the criminals and “restore governance.”

Bennett’s message is that the government’s self-proclaimed champions of settlement are endangering its future, and that he would protect it more effectively.

There is considerable overlap with Eisenkot, but their emphases differ. Eisenkot speaks as a prospective national leader sounding a security alarm. Bennett speaks more explicitly as a defender of the settler community who would restore order in its interests.

Democrats Party leader Yair Golan, in his response, provided the most detailed account of what a different government would do.

“Jewish terror must be fought with an iron fist, just as Palestinian terror is fought,” he said.

He called for restoring administrative detention for “dangerous Jewish terror activists,” dismantling centers of terrorist activity, evacuating illegal outposts, and arresting and prosecuting offenders. He also promised full government backing for the military, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and police.

That specificity may energize his voters. It also gives Netanyahu material to portray the prospective government as a threat to the settlement project, particularly his call to evacuate illegal outposts.

In the immediate aftermath of the weekend’s incidents, Netanyahu tried to prevent the violence from becoming an indictment of his government or the wider settler population. Meanwhile, the leaders of the opposition strove to make Netanyahu’s handling of it a test of his fitness to remain in power.

The prime minister and his opponents – with the exception of Golan – describe the perpetrators as a small minority. But that leaves the question his opponents want voters to ask: If the minority is so small, why has his government been unable – or unwilling – to stop it?