The Spin Engineer: Bennett is trying to frame Netanyahu with Submarine Affair 2.0 | Mati Tuchfeld

The political history of Israel in the last decade teaches that when there is no real news for the public, one can always "create" a security affair that will shake the foundations. Anyone experiencing déjà vu these days in the face of attempts to inflate the "Qatar affair" into a severe strategic event is not mistaken. It looks, sounds, and feels exactly like the new edition of the submarine affair.

As you recall, the submarine affair (Case 3000) was presented at the time as "the most serious corruption affair in the history of the country." Newspaper headlines screamed, and political rivals rushed to determine that Benjamin Netanyahu had sold the country's security for money. At the end of the day, the facts defeated the spin: Netanyahu was not a suspect, and the affair that began as an earthquake ended with a whimper, without any connection to the Prime Minister.

Now, we are witnessing an attempt to repeat the move. This time, the spearhead is Naftali Bennett. Two weeks ago, Bennett launched a strange campaign calling to declare Qatar an enemy state. The public, what can you do, responded mainly with a yawn. It was clear from the first moment that this was a transparent political move intended to attack Netanyahu, in the hope that "something would stick" ahead of the next election cycle.

When the "enemy state" campaign did not gain altitude, the engineers moved to stage two: inventing a story about the transfer of materials to Qatar by Netanyahu's advisors. This is a claim without evidence, which does not appear in any legal or evidentiary document related to the ongoing investigations. Although the investigation began as a security check by the Shin Bet led by Ronen Bar, it seems that political elements are trying to "hijack" it and turn it into a political attack tool, far from the original purpose for which it was established.

This campaign is doomed to failure for the same reason that the submarine affair dissipated: it is simply not connected to reality. An attempt to create a "severe security affair" out of nothing, while using partial and distorted information, testifies mainly to the desperation of the planners. The Israeli public has already learned to identify when it is a matter of genuine concern for the country's security, and when it is an invented story intended to serve narrow political interests. This time too, the spin will shatter against the facts.