Controversial cameras bill, backed by Netanyahu, fails to pass Knesset committee
A-G orders probe of Gantz’s company • Activists say ready to monitor Arab polls
The MKs who opposed the “cameras bill” want the election to be “fraudulent and stolen,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday, shortly after the proposal was stopped from going to a vote in the Knesset earlier in the day.
The Knesset Arrangements Committee stopped the Likud-backed bill – which would allow observers on Election Day to bring cameras to polling stations, but not into voting booths – from going to a first reading Monday. The committee vote came down to 12 in favor and 12 opposed – and in the Knesset, a tie is akin to a rejection.
The cameras bill could technically still go to a vote on Wednesday, but it would be too late to pass it as law before the September 17 election.
“There is no reason for those who really want clean elections to oppose the cameras bill that prevents election fraud,” Netanyahu said.
The prime minister accused Yisrael Beytenu and Blue and White’s leadership of voting with the Joint List against the bill, “because they are going together to a left-wing government, where [Joint List MKs] Ahmad Tibi and Ayman Odeh will be ministers.”
The proper response to the bill being blocked is to “come in masses” to vote for Likud, Netanyahu added.
When asked if Likud would try to find a way to bring the bill back, committee chairman Miki Zohar said “it’s a lost cause.”
The tie in the committee was due to Kulanu MK Roy Folkman’s absence. Folkman is not running in the upcoming election, and refused to come to the Knesset. Kulanu did not have any other MKs to replace him for the vote, because the rest of them are ministers, meaning they cannot be members of Knesset
committees.
In addition, Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman announced hours before the vote that his party would be voting against the bill.
Liberman described the bill as an attempt by Netanyahu to “steal the elections.”
“This [current] bill is being advanced only to disrupt the elections,” Liberman said at a press conference in the Knesset Monday morning. “Supervision of the elections cannot be carried out by Netanyahu’s private militia, who are only interested in stopping the smooth running of the elections and to harm the results.
“Yisrael Beytenu is in favor of supervising the elections, but only through a state body,” he added.
The Yisrael Beytenu leader said his party would only support the bill if Likud adopted a change to the text of the legislation stipulating that the Central Elections Committee be the body to send representatives with cameras to polling stations, not party-appointed election observers.
The Central Elections Committee already planned to send out 3,000 “election integrity observers,” with 1,000 body cameras borrowed from the police, and who would visit every single polling station in the country. In addition, the entire vote-counting process would be filmed in stations that the committee designated as problematic.
Blue and White No. 2 Yair Lapid said the cameras bill being blocked shows that Netanyahu has become “a serial loser.”
“He wants to be a strong prime minister, but he turned into a hysterical prime minister,” Lapid said. “He’s surrounded by a bunch of blackmailers and extremists that trick him. They’ll give him immunity [from prosecution]; he’ll give them billions. He’ll give them religious coercion – all at our expense. All at the expense of our children’s future. He’ll give them; we won’t.”
A group of settler leaders organized a team of “gatekeepers” to stand outside polling stations in Arab towns, ostensibly to protect official election observers, they announced Monday. The group includes Benny Katzover, Binyamin Regional Council chairman Yisrael Gantz, Bet El Local Council chairman Shai Alon, Kedumim co-founder Sara Eliash and others.
The group released a statement, in which it pointed out that Central Elections Committee chairman Hanan Melcer has hired election supervisors.
“He knows there will be fraud and he doesn’t trust the police and the observers, therefore, he established an anemic system of his own that will supposedly help,” the statement read. “But we don’t trust his system, and therefore, we established our own... to put an end to fraud.”
The Joint List declined to comment. Meanwhile, Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit has asked the state prosecution to determine whether there was any wrongdoing by Fifth Dimension, a cybersecurity company that was owned by Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, which went bankrupt last year, Channel 12 revealed on Monday.
According to the report, the prosecution asked the office of the state comptroller for information and documents to check if there are criminal aspects. But there is no suspicion of criminal activity by Gantz.
Former state comptroller Joseph Shapira wrote in March that the police had acted improperly in giving preferential treatment to Fifth Dimension, which received a contract from the police. Shapira’s report accused Fifth Dimension of making misleading statements to the police in order to win an NIS 4 million payment in 2016 to carry out a pilot project in the cyber technology sector.
Gantz’s company went bankrupt after the US sanctioned its main investor, a Russian tycoon linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Blue and White called the report “recycled and ridiculous.”
The Likud responded: “Gantz stole NIS 4m. from public funds for software that did not exist, from a corrupt NIS 50m. contract he made with the police. We hope the authorities will investigate the matter, although they usually follow the rule: ‘No Bibi, no investigation.’”
Gil Hoffman and Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.