Since the Israeli Right first came to power in the 1977 election, the Left has found a plethora of reasons to explain why voters decided to abandon it. Since that election, the Right has won nine more, and every time the losing side knew who was really responsible for its failure – the public. In 1981, writer A.B. Yehoshua referred to the voters who couldn't understand what was best for them "rabble we don't need," and in 2015 actress Anat Waxman described right-wing voters as people "who when you say 'Arabs' come out of their holes."
Now there is a new reigning explanation for the success of the Right – the "bot." According to the new theory, the wizards who brainwash the amulet-kissers and thugs have made technological advances and are spreading false information using sophisticated technological means, hiding behind fake social media profiles and anonymity.
There really are bots and other attempts at online influence, which are employed by powerful entities and even by government, but it has never been proved that these attempts cause the public to change its political stance and elect officials who tricked them into doing so on the Internet. That doesn't stop the Israeli Left from building up its theory.
Amid the ongoing investigations involving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unnamed police officials and journalists working for them told us about widespread online activity intended to undermine law enforcement officials in an attempt to clear the prime minister's name. They even pointed out certain people overseas who were supposedly operating the campaign. Labor advisor Eldad Yaniv and his cohort are demanding international oversight for the next Knesset election, and former advisor to the Israeli Police Commissioner Lior Horev even went so far as to claim he had information that the Iranians were behind similar activity.
Another such case was recently exposed by an information security expert who reported on Twitter that he had discovered a network of right-wing bots. His tweets went viral. But then users who went over the information discovered that the network of bots wasn't right-wing at all; and was, in fact, a network that was haphazardly operated from the United Arab Emirates and wasn't even targeting Israel.
Despite the discoveries, Haaretz decided to publish an English-language article that completely ignored the facts and featured a prominent picture of Netanyahu. The Hebrew version made do with an op-ed scare piece about the terrible bots. Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, whose own party used databases to disseminate political information, also warned about the bot threat, arguing that the only reason hundreds of thousands of voters voted the way they did on election day was that they received a text message from the Likud.
The hidden assumption of the bot scaremongers is that we need to elect a new public. If at one time they were afraid of the "baboons" who crossed our borders because they were "fascist revisionists" who had been brainwashed by Menachem Begin's fiery speeches – today it's important to take care that the herd of cud-chewing beasts doesn't get trapped by algorithms set up by the prime minister and his minions.
The truth, of course, is the opposite. Humans are sentient creatures who vote according to their beliefs. They aren't less able to withstand manipulations than journalists or failed politicians. They know how to screen information. Exposure to online remarks doesn't upend their world and send them dizzily to the ballot box.
Instead of blaming its failures on the opponent's evil secret activity, the Left should invest its effort in updating its worldview and tailoring it to a changing reality. Who knows, it might manage to convince us.
