Haaretz reports:

An Israeli public relations company headed by a settler leader boasted Wednesday that it was behind the Likud initiative to place 1,200 hidden cameras in Arab polling stations on Election Day. The firm added that it was to thank for the historically low turnout among Arab voters.

“Thanks to us placing observers in every polling station we managed to lower the voter turnout to under 50 percent, the lowest in recent years!” the PR company, Kaizler Inbar, posted on Facebook.

“After a long preparation period, an amazing logistical base and deep and close partnership with the best people in Likud, we put together an operation that contributed crucially to one of the most important achievements of the right-wing bloc: Keeping the Arab vote legal!” the post went on.

Arab-majority slate Hadash-Ta’al told Haaretz that, “as soon as the cameras were discovered, there were riots and confrontations, halting the voting process at some stations.” According to the slate, “the situation caused fear among many voters, who were afraid to get to the polling sites — which was the intention of Likud and the camera operators.”

Early on Election Day on Tuesday, it turned out that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party provided activists with 1,200 hidden cameras “to monitor” Arab polling stations — a move that prompted Israel’s Central Elections Committee to file a police complaint. [Continue reading…]