This is how the flydubai hijacking attempt is reshaping Israel's election debate

Recent polls suggest that the attempted hijacking of the flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv has strengthened Israel's right-wing bloc. Although Ofer Winter's party has fallen below the electoral threshold in the polls, hurting the bloc's projected election results, the total number of voters supporting the bloc, including Winter's supporters, has increased. How has the attempted hijacking produced this effect? The incident should have no bearing on voters' preferences between the policies of the two competing political blocs or on their assessments of their leaders' abilities. The warning of potential attacks that Netanyahu disclosed several days before the hijacking concerned only general intentions to exploit the period surrounding the elections and did not include any specific warning. Therefore, the claim that "Netanyahu warned us, but the opposition didn't believe him" is foolish. The counterargument that "if Netanyahu knew, why didn't he prevent the hijacking?" makes even less sense, since it is clear that the political leadership does not manage operational readiness in response to specific security alerts. The claim that Transportation Ministry officials failed in their duties, and that this supposedly carries political significance, is equally baseless. Although a State Comptroller's review, initiated during the Bennett government, recommended a comprehensive assessment of aviation security, it certainly did not propose conducting security background checks on every pilot arriving in Israel aboard foreign flights. There is a theory that heightened security tensions generally benefit Netanyahu because he is perceived as "Mr. Security." Yet it is unclear how much of the public still believes Netanyahu's security expertise surpasses that of other political figures. Gadi Eisenkot probably holds a comparative advantage in managing military operations, as did many of Netanyahu's former rivals who have since become politically irrelevant: Benny Gantz, Moshe Ya'alon, Shaul Mofaz, Yoav Gallant and others. Netanyahu's appeal among his supporters, then, has more to do with their belief that his policies are more determined or more intelligent. In any case, the attempted hijacking does not lead undecided voters to view Netanyahu's security policies more favorably. Rather, it operates on an emotional level, highlighting the powerful feelings underlying the electoral appeal of Israel's two political blocs. Israeli voting patterns are shaped to a considerable extent by how comfortable people feel identifying as Israeli. A central sentiment among a large segment of opposition voters is their strong desire to feel like full members of the club of Western civilization, coupled with a somewhat provincial sense of embarrassment toward their distant relatives who do not appear to belong to that club: religious and Mizrahi Israelis, with distinctly Israeli accents and body language. By contrast, coalition supporters often feel a strong sense of pride in their Israeli or Jewish identity, even a kind of underdog pride that generates an alternative form of symbolic capital. And then, along came Yaniv Hayun, offering both groups a perfect embodiment of the positive side of the stereotypical Israeli man. Of course, setting aside the representativeness bias, Hayun himself might turn out to be an animal rights enthusiast who drinks nothing but matcha with oat milk. But for our purposes, it is the image that matters. Even Donald Trump, whose storytelling abilities are beyond dispute, immediately recognized Hayun as a muscular, working-class folk hero, reminiscent of "Joe the Plumber," a favorite among Republicans, and "Super Mario," the character with the exaggerated Italian accent who repeatedly rescues the kidnapped Princess Peach through his plumbing skills. And therein lies the connection to voting behavior. What drives some undecided voters back toward the traditional right is a renewed sense of pride in their Israeli identity and a fresh wave of optimism inspired by this display of down-to-earth heroism, alongside a rejection of what they perceive as the sour disposition of the center-left. Professor Ron Shapira is president of the Peres Academic Center