Israel Investigates Suspected Election Interference by Turkey and Qatar
“Qatar and Turkey … funneled money into Israel to influence voting in Arab communities.”
Israeli authorities have opened investigations into possible election interference by hostile Muslim countries. The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, is looking into allegations that Turkey and Qatar funneled money to Arab parties to mobilize the vote.
“The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) is investigating suspicions that funds were transferred from foreign sources, including entities in Qatar and Turkey, to organizations working to encourage voter turnout among Israel’s Arab population,” The Israel National News (Arutz Sheva) reported Wednesday. “Thus far, seven suspects have been arrested, and the case has been transferred to the management of Israel Police’s Lahav 433 Unit.”
Report: Huge Qatar scandal developing , apparently involving the funding of Arab vote in Israel’s election https://t.co/g4iVOciWNJ
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) October 29, 2026
The allegations range from vote-buying to election tampering. “The suspected foreign interference appears to involve Qatar funneling tens of millions of shekels to influence Israel’s election, with Central Elections Committee officials describing the intelligence as ‘solid,'” Israel’s Ynetnews reported.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “Likud [party] alleged that Arab parties supporting terrorism and the destruction of the Jewish state had manipulated the results through serious criminal offenses, including vote-buying, threats against election officials, fraudulent voting and the use of prohibited software to mobilize supporters,” the news website added.
The revelations lend credence to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s claims of widespread election fraud by the Arab parties. “The elections in Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terror and the elimination of the Jewish state through serious criminal offenses of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries and the use of illegal software to mobilize voters,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.
The Jerusalem Post reported:
The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) is investigating suspicions that foreign entities, potentially including Qatar and Turkey, funneled money into Israel to influence voting in Arab communities, following a directive from Central Elections Committee chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg to investigate suspected foreign funding and election bribery.
The investigation will not delay publication of the final election results, a Central Elections Committee source told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. The source said it would also not prevent President Isaac Herzog from selecting a party leader to begin the coalition-building process.
Asked whether the investigation could lead to another election, the source said it was “far too early for such a question.”
“First, we need to examine whether there was any impact and whether it affects the distribution of Knesset seats at all,” he said.
Notably, N12 News reported that the Shin Bet had intelligence information about potential illegal money transfers, but did not inform the CEC, including Solberg.
The report noted that Zini presented information to the CEC that was “extraordinary in its seriousness,” on Wednesday night.
With almost all votes counted, the Arab bloc is poised to win a record 19 seats, up nine seats from the previous Knesset. Arab Israelis make up about 20 percent of the population.
🔴 99% of votes counted following Israeli elections: Coalition bloc holds 53 mandates, opposition has 48, Arab parties with 19
— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) October 29, 2026
Contrary to media portrayals of a benign bloc representing Israel’s Arab minority, these parties comprise a toxic mix of Muslim Brotherhood groups, Baathists (remnants of Saddam Hussein and Syria’s Assad regime), and Communists.
The mainstream media has been cheering the Arab parties’ unprecedented showing, hoping they would decide the fate of the next Israeli government. The New York Times hailed Mansour Abbas, the leader of the Islamist Ra’am party, as “Arab Kingmaker in Israel’s Election.” The newspaper described the head of Israel’s Muslim Brotherhood outfit as “a dentist-turned-lawmaker.”
The Arab parties are unlikely to play a role in the next government, as the opposition bloc led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot has ruled out entering a post-election alliance with them.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s prospects of forming the next government rose today after Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beytenu party, appeared to have broken away from the opposition bloc. “Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman has largely cut off contact with his opposition partners, though there is some communication with their campaign staff,” The Times of Israel reported. “Liberman is not answering calls from Yashar chairman Gadi Eisenkot or B’Yachad chairman Naftali Bennett, according to the report.”
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N Y Times hailed Mansour Abbas, leader of the Islamist Ra’am party, as the “Arab Kingmaker”.
If they’re in Israel, Arabs are the Kingmakers.
If they’re in the USA, they sponsor no kings protests.
Surprised anyone?
If Israel doesn’t curb their left and Muslims, they will be speaking Arabic
The left is practically non-existent any more, in politics. The only non-Arab leftist party remaining in the Knesset is the Democrats, which got 8 seats. All the major opposition leaders, Eisenkott, Bennett, and Lieberman, are firmly on the right, some further right than Netanyahu. Their differences with him are personal; he stabbed them in the back too many times and they now refuse to work with him.
But the left controls the judiciary and the career bureaucracy, which between them are the real government. Israel only pretends to be a democracy; there are elections, but the elected government has no real control because the judges have decided that the politicians must obey the career civil servants rather than the other way around as it is in an actual democracy.
And for too many years Netanyahu refused to take them on, and sabotaged all efforts to do so. When he finally, reluctantly agreed to make some minimal moves against the judiciary, the left erupted in “mostly peaceful” protests, which in part led to the Hamas attack three years ago. As a result he backed down almost completely, and the judiciary remains in power.
its going to be worse in america with the blmplo vote watchers now assigned for nov3
what a world we live in.
No Citizen of a foreign Nation, no Foreign govt or any other foreign entity should be allowed to influence an election in another Nation and here at home we should expand that to individuals/entities from out of State if not District.
On the contrary, it is every human being’s God-given right to express his opinion on the affairs of every state and country, and to do whatever is in his power to try to persuade those who govern those places, or those who choose the governors, of his opinions.
K, though you’re probably not gonna like the use some are willing to make of your very broad claim without any limiting principle that folks have a ‘God given right to …do whatever is in his power to persuade’. No backsliding if someone uses terror to ‘persuade’ there’s no crying about it or claiming you didn’t mean it.
While I’d agree that the Citizens of a particular Nation or State or District have the right to peacefully and lawfully influence/persuade others I’d also put a second limiting principle that folks from outside those political jurisdictions should not seek and IMO should be prohibited from such in jurisdictions they don’t reside within at least so far as campaign contributions and PAC $/ad buys flowing from outside the Nation, State or District.
That at least puts everyone on a more even footing where their influence is restrained to their own Nation, State, District. If a Billionaire lives in the jurisdiction he probably has the biggest voice but it is limited to his own residential jurisdiction. Otherwise the $= speech concept creates a very uneven field which grants more influence to the larger bank account regardless of jurisdiction. I’d do the same for Corporations since they are ‘people’ and limit them to the State/District in which they are legally domiciled. If they choose Delaware for tax/financial/legal reasons then they are shut out of other jurisdictions.
Not sure why anyone would argue that it is desirable for out of District, out of State or Foreign Citizens to seek to ‘influence’ jurisdictions they don’t reside within. Seems to me the opposite is true.
Threats are not persuasion.
But the reason Americans are “allowed” to do everything in their power to persuade people in other districts and states to vote the way they would prefer is because it’s their God-given right to do so, and the government simply has no right to suppress such attempts at persuasion. Attempting to do so would make the government members fascist tyrants, who would deserve to be strung up by their heels from lampposts.
I don’t live in Michigan, and I don’t think you do either, but we both have very strong opinions on how Michiganders should vote in the senate election. How can it possibly be right to place any limitations on our communicating that opinion to Michigan voters, and trying to persuade them that we’re right?
Now if that’s the case with Americans, then there is no possible moral argument that can be made to exclude foreigners doing the same. They too might have a vital interest in who wins the MI senate race. Jews, for instance, and particularly Israelis, care very much about it and therefore have the same moral right to communicate their views to MI voters. That the US constitution doesn’t protect their rights is neither here nor there. All it means is that if the US government chooses to violate their rights they have no recourse to US courts. But their moral case is unassailable.
It turns out that the 300,00 Qatari citizens are the ones controlling the world.
What have the 300K Qatari citizens got to do with what their government does? Do you think they have elections there?!
I believe Israel has a requirement that any MK needs to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist (no-brainer). How about they put all the Arabic MK’s on TV and make them do that…all while Shin Bet etc has any goods on them saying otherwise….cuz we know about taqiyyah, even tho that is supposed to be reserved for only emergency, life-threatening situations.
They all take the oath as required. Of course they don’t mean it, but they say the words.
There are regular attempts to kick them off the ballot, including this year. The Supreme Court always strikes those attempts down.
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