Sep 1, 8:01 AM
AI Ads, Real Ruins: How Israel’s Far-Right Transformed Brutality Into Campaign Theater
With October polls looming, ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are using deepfakes and annexation policy to secure their political survival.
When a political coalition finds itself trailing in the polls, standard convention dictates a pivot to economic relief or reassuring moderation. Israel’s current governing partners have selected a different strategy entirely: turning the mechanics of territorial coercion into campaign content.
Ahead of the October elections, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have bypassed subtle rhetoric in favor of explicit digital spectacle. Smotrich, already ubiquitous on West Bank billboards, released a computer-generated video threatening to apply his West Bank settlement strategy to the Negev and Galilee, operating under the explicit warning that Ahmed is right to be afraid. Ben-Gvir matched the effort with synthetic footage depicting Palestinian prisoners entering detention facilities overweight and departing emaciated and weeping, alongside videos of himself confrontationally berating female inmates and planting state flags on seized UNRWA facilities in East Jerusalem.
This digital posturing is hardly disconnected from tangible policy. The theatrical cruelty serves as a live demonstration of government action. While campaign ads circulate, state authorities and settlers work in tandem. Peace Now documents that settlers have established 26 outposts within Area B over the past two and a half years, bringing over 100 square kilometers across Areas A and B under settler control. Meanwhile, official land seizures accelerate, including a recent military order around al-Bireh to encircle the Psagot settlement—one of 46 such buffer-zone orders issued since October 2023.
The destruction on the ground matches the legislative pace. In July alone, official monitoring recorded 80 demolition operations. Where state bulldozers do not operate, vigilantes step in, raiding villages like al-Mughayyir and Qusra under the passive gaze—or active assistance—of security forces. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered a rare official statement regarding settler violence, calling the attackers a handful of rioters. Yet the complete absence of arrests tells a far more candid story about institutional priorities.
In Gaza, the political posturing translates into long-term strategic reorientation. Military leadership in the Southern Command has already framed a post-election ground operation to reoccupy Gaza City as unavoidable, complete with plans to shift populations into designated zones. The human collateral of this strategy continues to mount. UN data indicates that 58 percent of Gaza’s population faces critical or catastrophic shelter conditions, with cumulative fatalities reaching 73,456 since October 2023, including 1,320 since the October ceasefire. Recent strikes damaged medicine warehouses and water infrastructure at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, while drone fire routinely claims civilians, from farmers in al-Qarara to children fetching water in Gaza City.
In modern electoral politics, hard policy usually hides behind sanitized slogans. In Israel’s current campaign season, the policy is the slogan, and the apparatus of state power has become the ultimate election broadcast.
Written by Freya Stensrud freya.stensrud@alpineweekly.com
