Israel is heading into what may become the most toxic election cycle in its history, with local, regional, and international circles of influence. Not because the country lacks real crises to debate, but because its political system increasingly rewards those who manufacture internal enemies rather than confront national failure.

The warning signs appear not only in speeches by politicians or viral social media clips, but in hard data. Two recent studies by the aChord Center at the Hebrew University and FakeReporter provide a disturbing glimpse into how anti-Arab discourse is being engineered online and how public perceptions are being shaped accordingly. The findings describe a coordinated, manufactured, and timed political atmosphere in which Arab citizens of Israel are gradually reframed not as a minority with complex identities and legitimate grievances, but as an extension of Israel’s external enemies: Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, criminal networks, and terrorism itself. This matters now more than ever because election campaigns do not merely reflect society. They manufacture emotional realities. And Israel is entering an election season primed for scapegoating.

The first study by aChord examined more than 1,100 posts and comments across X, Facebook, Telegram, and TikTok relating to Bedouin citizens in the Negev between January and March 2025. The researchers found that 56 percent of the discourse was explicitly negative, while only 17% was positive. But the more alarming finding was structural:

A tiny network of only seven accounts generated just 2% of the content yet was responsible for 18% of total exposure, reaching approximately 1.87 million views. These accounts repeatedly amplified one another, circulated similar narratives, and pushed themes........

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