The election results leave no room for doubt: Netanyahu has been defeated. The first to understand this was Netanyahu himself. From the outset, he acted to delegitimize the Arab vote and anyone who dared to come to a deal with the Arab parties.
The allegations of election fraud, the immediate actions taken by high court judge and right-wing Noam Solberg, serving in the election committee and David Zini, pro Netanyahu head of the Shin Beit as well as Likud’s call to arrest the leaders of the Arab parties are nothing more than a an outright fake-news campaign.
These methods come straight from Trump’s “Stop the Steal” playbook. And attempt to follow Trump, as he turned turned the US Department of Justice into an arm of the government, designed to take revenge on his opponents.
The will of the Israeli electorate is clear: millions of citizens, Jews and Arabs, went to the polls to oust the Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir government—the government of October 7, the government of racism and messianism.
Arab citizens of Israel turned out to vote with an unequivocal demand for their representatives: do everything, absolutely everything, to bring down the government and replace it with a government of change. The high turnout leaves no room for doubt. These are ordinary citizens, most of them unaffiliated with any party, who are now putting the Arab leadership to the test: set nationalist ideology aside and save us from the terror of the current fascist coalition.
Hundreds of thousands of workers in the West Bank, stripped of their jobs and deprived of their livelihoods, are making the same demand of the Arab parties: put the issue of the occupation aside. Right now, you must ensure the formation of a government of change that will reopen the crossings and allow us to return to work. In the West bank Palestinian residents are crying out: rid us of Jewish terror. We will not forgive you if you fail to do everything in your power to bring down this government of terror.
The Bloc of Change also turned out in force. Thousands of Israelis living abroad traveled enormous distances at their own expense to save Israeli society from those seeking to impose a messianic dictatorship. They too are demanding that their leaders of the Anti-Netanyahu block do everything possible to prevent the return of the man responsible for the disaster of October 7, the man who joined forces with Ben Gvir and Smotrich, threatening to turn Israel into a Messianic and Fascist country where creative and liberal people will no longer be able to live.
We call on the leadership of the Bloc of Change and the Arab leadership to reach an agreement that will preserve Israel as a democratic state—an Israel that allows Arab citizens to be full partners in determining its character and destiny.
If Netanyahu succeeds in driving us apart, he will wipe out every trace of Israel as a liberal state, and destroy the status of Arab citizens as equals. Netanyahu’s methods leave us no choice: only unity between Jewish and Arab citizens can save democracy. Let us make history.
“¡No pasarán!”
