When you come at the kingmaker, you best not miss: 8 things to know for August 4

1. Pledge of allegiance: Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman has earned the moniker of kingmaker ahead of the September vote, with his predicted 10 seats seen as the deciding factor in any possible coalition. But juggernaut or flamethrower may be just as appropriate names, with the political veteran seemingly relishing his ability to throw new wildcards into the race.

• On Saturday, Liberman broached the possibility of asking someone else in Likud to lead the party if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to enter a coalition government with him, and challenged Netanyahu to a televised debate.
• Netanyahu has long expressed worries/paranoia about a coup against him from within the party, and Liberman’s comments appear to play right into that.
• On Sunday morning, Ynet reports that former coalition whip David Bitan is pushing Likud members to sign a pledge not to oust Netanyahu.
• While MK Osnat Mark decries the report as poppycock on Galei Yisrael Radio, several MKS say they proudly signed.
• Bitan later tells the Kan outlet that 90% of lawmakers have already put their John Hancock to the pledge, and threatens to publish the names of those who refuse.

2. ‘Paranoid’: Blue and White head Yair Lapid further trolls Netanyahu, tweeting “Bibi is right. Everyone in the Likud party is already looking for his heir and talking to us about it. For now, it is whispers. But not for long,” Lapid tweets, using the prime minister’s nickname.

• Labor head Amir Peretz slams the initiative, saying Netanyahu’s “paranoia has crossed all lines,” Ynet reports.
• Kan anchor Asaf Liberman jokes on Twitter that “only a traitor would scribble their name on paper. A real believer will tattoo ‘Bibi forever’ on their arm.”

3. The son also criticizes: Liberman specifically mentioned Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein as a possible replacement, which means the former refusenik can probably kiss his Likud career goodbye and look forward to convalescing as Israel’s ambassador to Siberia.

• Edelstein is sure to express his support on Twitter for dear leader, but it may be too late.
• Netanyahu’s son Yair tweets that “Liberman accidentally revealed his plans for a putsch with Edelstein.” He quickly deletes the tweet, but not before earning wide coverage for the comment, and some charges that he’s tweeting on behalf of his dad.
• Responding to a Channel 12 news story about his erased tweet, Yair Netanyahu shoots back: “Maybe stop already with all this garbage like everything I write comes from my dad. I am an adult and I write on my own iPhone whatever comes into my head.”
• As if to prove he is an adult and has no filter, Yair also tweets a picture comparing Liberman to a sea lion.
• Appearing in court to seek a restraining order against a vocal activist known for haranguing him and others, younger brother Avner Netanyahu appears to try and sic him on his brother Yair instead.
• “My dad chose politics and so he gets criticism. My friends [criticize him] to my face. My brother also chose politics and the claims he gets from you are also legitimate. I did not choose a political path,” he says, according to the Kan broadcaster.

4. Kingmaker without a crown? Liberman’s comments provided Likud with fodder to attack him, not for the first time.

• “Now it’s clear that Liberman wants a leftist government,” reads the front page story on Israel Hayom, a Likud mouthpiece that has been pushing the Liberman leftist narrative.
• “Liberman strives to build his power on post-election manipulations rather than on actual public support,” writes the paper’s Amnon Lord. “Given his manipulation skills, the right has its work cut out for it if it wants to stop Liberman from plunging Israeli politics into utter disorder.”
• A Channel 12 poll published Saturday night shows that were Israeli elections held today, 59% would oppose a unity government made up of Likud, Blue and White, and Yisrael Beytenu. A unity government that would exclude Liberman would be slightly more popular, with only 54% against it.

5. Time for change? But Channel 13’s Akiva Novick writes on the channel’s website that Netanyahu and Likud’s various attacks on Liberman are not having an effect on the Yisrael Beytenu head.

• “A month and a half before elections, the question must be asked: Does Netanyahu need to change course, and instead of going against him every time anew — move closer to him?”
• A lead editorial in Haaretz, meanwhile, says everyone battling Netanyahu needs to change tack and get back to bashing him over corruption allegations against him: “the opposition parties that aim to win the upcoming election must once again put the Netanyahu corruption cases at the top of the public agenda, not make them disappear as if they were yesterday’s news.”

6. They hate us, even when they kill others: It’s little surprise that the rash of mass shootings in the US on Saturday and Sunday makes major headlines in Israel.

• Neither has any nexus to Jews or Israel directly, but at least in El Paso, where a white supremacist motive has been identified, Jews see some connection as another target of the same hate that this time was turned against Hispanics.
• Brian Levin, director of Cal State San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, tells the LA Times that political polarization and a rise of far-right nationalism is contributing to hate crime around the globe.
• “We’re seeing a coalescence of traditional hate crime with political violence,” he says in a story originally published Friday and then unfortunately updated since.
• Channel 13’s Nadav Eyal writes that the replacement ideology espoused by the El Paso shooter, in which white culture needs to be protected from so-called invaders, “is a Nazi theory that is also advanced in Israel.”
• But scholar Tomer Persico notes that unlike in Israel, in the US and Europe replacement theory also targets Jews, “hence ‘Jews will not replace us.’”

7. Terror is terror is terror: Many agree that the shooting should be regarded as a terror attack, even though most Israeli sites, which usually have no compunction calling everything terror, use words like “massacre” and “shooting” here.

The question is when we will begin to speak about domestic, white supremacist terrorism the same way we speak about foreign, jihadi terrorism. Both are coherent ideologies, spread by the internet, exacerbated by extremist politicians. Both demand a similar response.

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— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) August 4, 2019

Just shattering news in El Paso to come back online to. My heart breaks for all those affected, America grieves with you.

As I have said repeatedly and will continue to: There is an ISIS-style 'jihad-in-place' threat from white nationalists, and it should be treated as such.

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) August 4, 2019

• Speaking on Army Radio, a security official uses the shooting to defend the treatment of Israel’s ambassador to Panama at Ben-Gurion Airport, after he complained of being racially profiled and pulled to the side because he is not Jewish.
• “Just like we saw in El Paso, we are trying to make sure something like that doesn’t happen here.”