In the video below Katie Halper “translated” Netanyahu’s racist emergency election appeal to get out the vote. Titled “An American Translation of Benjamin Netanyahu’s own words”, she noted in the video all the words are Netanyahu’s with a few changes:

The only changes were replacing:

“Arab” with “Black”

“right wing” with “Republican”

“Likud” with “Republican”

“Labor” with “Democrats”

“Israel” with “United States”

The alarmingly racist appeal has been cited as being responsible for a surge in the polls for Likud. Let’s watch the video:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=78U6r4zHVrQ%3Flist%3DPLDDD7923B7FAEE7BB

The Republican leadership is in danger.

Black voters are coming out in droves to the polls

Left wing organizations are busing them out. Get out to vote, bring your friends and family, vote Republican in order to close the gap between us and the Democrats. With your help and the help of God,

We will build a nationalist government that will protect the United States of America.

We’re grateful to Halper for making Netanyahu’s screed more accessible to the American public. There’s something very eery about hearing the tone of his voice while reading those words.

At the end Halper asks “Can you imagine if an American politician said that?” There’s been an excess of commentary about the racist nature of the speech on social media with many wondering how it would fly in this country. Of course all hell would break out in the press if during a U.S. presidential campaign one of the leading candidates warned blacks, or Jews, were flooding to the polls funded by foreign interests and we should all go out and vote to counter them. It would be condemned (even if there is a history of doing just this). But the issue here is that Netanyahu did exactly this in 2015, and in a place like Israel it works. Why is that? And what does it say about the supposed shared values between Israel and the United States?