Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister and criminal defendant, removed another barrier between his public persona and the army of supporters and bots serving his agenda on social networks and media outlets under his control. In a video he published (22/3/25), he hinted that the Shin Bet investigation of the Qatari connection in his office is intended to prevent completion of a Shin Bet internal investigation that would expose the involvement of Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar in the October 7th massacre.

The "Traitors from within" conspiracy theory, according to which elements in the security establishment and among government opponents collaborated with Hamas and aided the October 7th massacre, has gained alarming hold among the Israeli public, according to polls published since the end of 2023.

Already on the day of the massacre, the "Traitors from within" conspiracy theory began being spread on social networks by Netanyahu supporters, including by Yair Netanyahu, the Prime Minister's son who emigrated from Israel for unexplained reasons months after the outbreak of the judicial revolution. Other prominent promoters include Knesset members Tali Gottlieb (Likud) and Almog Cohen (Otzma Yehudit).

The "Traitors from within" blood libel lacks any basis or grip on reality and has already resulted in libel lawsuits worth millions of shekels, currently being decided in courts. Despite this, it continues to be spread, openly or implicitly, by Knesset members, media figures affiliated with Netanyahu, and Netanyahu supporters on social networks.

Netanyahu typically distances himself from the messages of the Poison Machine - the nickname for the propaganda mechanism serving him, composed of ordinary citizens, paid spokespersons, political activists, and entire media outlets. However, as Netanyahu's criminal trial progresses on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, the defendant removes more and more barriers between himself and the more toxic messages of his propaganda machine.

Already in October 2023, Netanyahu tweeted the beginning of his campaign to shift blame for the October 7th failure from himself onwards to the security establishment. A few hours later, the tweet was deleted. This conduct is also characteristic of Netanyahu, aimed at "testing the waters" regarding the acceptance of messages of incitement, concealment, and division; normalizing them in public discourse and signaling to his base of supporters.

In June 2024, PM Netanyahu appeared on The Patriots, the flagship program of Channel 14, the propaganda and incitement channel devoted to him, and echoed the conspiracy theory associated with MK Cohen. When Netanyahu was asked by host Yinon Magal about the "Traitors from within" conspiracy, he responded: "I don't buy it," but quickly added: "There are things that need to be checked, there's also some strange espionage case, after the war..."

Thus, messages that until then were spread on social networks and by agents of the Poison Machine, considered marginal statements that were even removed from Channel 14, received the Prime Minister's stamp of approval in a live broadcast. Since then the conspiracy continued to be promoted, and on March 22, Netanyahu took one step forward - one step before an explicit and blunt presentation of the false conspiracy from his own mouth.

Netanyahu expressed this in a video he released against the backdrop of the chaos that engulfed the State of Israel in the past week: Netanyahu led a government decision to dismiss Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, at a time when the service is investigating solid suspicions that three of Netanyahu office staff received money from a so called enemy state, Qatar, before and during the war; and immediately after he violated the ceasefire Israel signed with the terrorist organization Hamas. That decision torpedoed the deal for the return of Israeli hostages held by Hamas and the end of the war.

At the beginning of the video, Netanyahu, known as a skilled performer and famous as an artist of manipulation and deception, promised "dramatic exposure of facts that will shake you." Then, while presenting printed papers, he wove a conspiracy according to which the Shin Bet began investigating the Qatari connection in his office on the day Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar was scheduled to present him with the Shin Bet investigation - which would have revealed that Bar "didn't alert me or others" on the morning of October 7th.

Netanyahu's "proof" is that the announcement of the investigation's opening came on February 27th, the day the Shin Bet's internal investigation was supposedly to be submitted. This is, Netanyahu declared, "a rare coincidence that cannot be invented," and therefore "the facts prove unambiguously that the dismissal was not intended to prevent the investigation - the investigation was intended to prevent the dismissal." "So you tell me," he concluded, "who here is acting from ulterior motives?"

This is, of course, a blatant lie: The investigation regarding the Qatari connection began earlier, and it is based on solid evidence, some of which has already been published, known to the public, and confirmed by those involved - especially the payment from Qatar that was transferred through intermediaries to Netanyahu's security spokesperson, Eli Feldstein. Additionally, Netanyahu himself continued to work with Bar and even praised the organization's work repeatedly since October 7th, despite his claim that they "didn't wake me up."

However, Netanyahu's explicit statement and approach to the "Traitors from within" conspiracy is a milestone in the Prime Minister's path of deterioration - and of the state he leads. It joins the escalation Netanyahu is leading in promoting other conspiracies as well.

In recent weeks, he has been exploiting his testimony in his criminal trial to promote explicitly and bluntly, in his own voice, the false conspiracy of "Framed cases" - a mad blood libel according to which for years, the Israel Police, the Prosecution, and the judicial system, from simple investigators to those heading the organizations, have been persecuting him and trying to frame him.

Additionally, in the past week he published another video, and before it a tweet in English and Hebrew, in which he promoted the "Deep state" conspiracy, according to which a secret society covering all public service operates in Israel - judicial, enforcement, and security systems, all working against him.

Of course, the reasons for Netanyahu's persecution, within each of the different conspiracy theories, change and sometimes contradict each other.

The various conspiracies - "Traitors from within," "Framed cases," and the "Deep state" - are false and malign tens of thousands of honest public servants. Worse, they tear Israel's social fabric, fatally damage trust in state institutions, and deteriorate the state into anarchy. For Netanyahu, this is a price he is willing to pay to try to escape criminal conviction.