Last week, on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which marks God’s revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a 90-second video that pitted his supporters against his opponents.
Titled “You Are Not Alone,” the clip depicts a 20-something man “coming out” to his liberal family of Ashkenazi (European) heritage, which is gathered around the table for the festive holiday meal. No no, he says, his big announcement is not that he’s gay, which his parents hasten to tell him they would accept wholeheartedly. Rather, the son wants to tell his family that he has become a right winger. His father assures the son that they will still accept him, even if he supports a right-wing party — and names two prominent politicians who head right-wing parties that belong to the loose coalition that opposes Netanyahu. But then the son continues that he has become a “Bibi-ist,” meaning he has joined the pro-Netanyahu personality cult. (Bibi is the prime minister’s widely used nickname).
The parents are horrified. The father shouts: “But you work in high tech! You read books! You’re a cultured person!” while the mother screams in shock and faints, face planting in the cake she is about to serve. At the end of the video, a narrator intones: “You are not alone. More than 2 million right-wing voters face discrimination, anger and hate. Solely due to their political opinions. Search Google for “Bibi-ist: not half a human.” At this point the father stands up and yells at the son, who is administering CPR to the mother: “But what’s wrong with just being gay?!” And then the tagline, illustrated with a heart and an Israeli flag: “Wishing you a happy Shavuot.”
Israeli viewers will recognize the symbols of Ashkenazi elitism in the clip. The family is nuclear, with just two children, rather than large and multigenerational; the daughter and son are both fair-haired; the family is secular — neither the father nor the son wears a yarmulke, or traditional head covering; they are sipping wine from stemmed glasses, a symbol of European pretentiousness; the food on the table is European-style and not kosher, since it includes both dairy and meat, which are not supposed to be eaten together.
Netanyahu is not religious, but a classic element of his wedge politics is in appealing to his largely Mizrahi base by claiming that they are the real Jews, while the Ashkenazi elite have abandoned tradition.
The Israeli prime minister’s messaging is similar to that of President Donald Trump. Like Bibi-ists, who are loyal to Bibi and Bibi-ism without reference to his policies, which are not substantively different from those espoused by the right-wing parties in the Israeli opposition, the MAGA movement has made Trump into the leader of a personality cult. They support him not for his policies, but for what he represents to them — a figure to identify with. Just as Netanyahu, who is not religious, has the support of religious Jews, Trump is not a practicing Christian but has the support of Christian nationalists, who see him as the imperfect vessel for their eschatological ambitions. Netanyahu tells his base that they are the real Israelis, while Trump tells MAGA supporters that they are the real Americans, in contrast with the godless, liberal coastal elites.
Similarly, Trump weaponizes grievance to his base, telling them that the liberals are responsible for denying them their piece of the American pie. In other words, the specifically Israeli-Jewish discourse and symbols in the video match the discourse and messaging one sees in authoritarian-populist movements around the world. Just substitute MAGA or Unite the Kingdom for Bibi-ist, and the pro-Netanyahu video could easily be customized for Trump supporters, for supporters of Nigel Farage’s Reform party in the U.K. or for any other right-wing authoritarian politician. This explains why both Elon Musk and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz shared an English-subtitled version of the clip on their X accounts, with Musk commenting “lol.”
Gadi Eisenkot, the former chief of staff of the Israeli Army, who recently stepped into the political arena as a member of the opposition, posted a different version of the clip. In it, a camera pans over a replica of the apartment in the first video, with the half-full wine glasses and uneaten food on the table. But the apartment is bullet-ridden, smoke-filled and empty of people. The tagline is: “Search Google for Oct. 7.” The message: Netanyahu is responsible for the policies that led to the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel and has never accepted responsibility. Instead, he blamed the army and the intelligence services. The issue of responsibility for Oct. 7 is one of the main fissures between the Bibi-ists and the opposition; it was exacerbated by the widespread belief among the opposition that Netanyahu gratuitously prolonged the war in Gaza in order to distract from his ongoing trial on charges of serious criminal corruption. (Neither the opposition nor the Bibi-ists discuss Palestinian casualties in Gaza; it is a subject that was and remains a non-issue in the Israeli-Jewish discourse).
Israeli media reactions to the video were entirely predictable, with liberal platforms condemning the divisive populism (not to mention the implicit homophobia), and right-wing outlets celebrating “brilliant” satire that “went viral.”
Adi Shamai Cohen, who co-created “You Are Not Alone” and plays the part of the son, appeared on i24, a right-wing cable news channel, and described to the sympathetic host Sharon Gal his extreme grievance at being rejected — first by his left-wing peers at acting school, because he came “from a Likud home,” and then more recently when he saw the angry reaction from liberals when he “came out” as a Bibi-ist. “There’s no other word,” said Cohen. “I felt as though I had been raped.” He did not mention a recent piece by the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who reported that Israeli prison guards, domestic security (Shin Bet) officers and civilians were engaging in widespread sexual violence against Palestinians. But for anyone who had read or knew about the controversy caused by that article, the echo and the irony were impossible to miss.