Israelis have changed. Will they change their leader?

I'm Aisha Roscoe and this is a Sunday story from up first. Next week, Israelis will vote in national elections. It's the first vote since Hamas attacked Israel three years ago on October 7th. And since Israel retaliated with war in Gaza, the devastation in Gaza has prompted international outrage toward Israel. But what many people in the US may not realize is just how hardened and polarized Israelis themselves have become. It's a huge deal. This is about this election is about the existence of Israel. It's like coming to say the country to put Israel back what it should be. Benjamin Netanyahu is the longest serving Prime Minister in the country's history. And now he's campaigning for a seventh term. He's one of the world's most controversial and consequential leaders, heading a far right, ultra-nationalist, religious coalition. He's launched attacks throughout the region from Gaza to Iran and he says his job isn't done yet. We will continue to win because we have no other choice. He faces a challenger in the former chief of staff of the Israeli military. Gadi Eisenkot leads Israel's more moderate, center-right opposition. And he's offering Israelis something many have asked for and Netanyahu has blocked. A formal investigation into the security failures that led to the October 7th attacks. Today on the Sunday story, MPR's correspondent in Israel, Daniel Estren, talks to Israelis about how they see their conflict with the Palestinians and explains why many think these upcoming elections are the most important in their country's history. I think you really need to hear directly from Israelis to understand what matters to them because their vote will shape the future of the Middle East, including the lives of Palestinians and millions of others across the entire region. We're back with the Sunday story. I'm joined by MPR's correspondent in Israel, Daniel Estren. Daniel, thank you for being here. You're welcome. So, Daniel, the way the last three years have gone, I would imagine there are a lot of emotions heading into this election. There are. I have covered Israel for 20 years, and I have never seen an election like this. The Israelis I've been speaking with basically say that what's at stake is their country's very survival. Wow. I mean, that's really intense. Yes. Well, let me tell you about one moment I witnessed that really illustrated this to me. A couple of weeks ago, I saw protesters chanting outside a Netanyahu rally in Tel Aviv. And there was this one protestor who was yelling at Netanyahu's supporters. She was saying how dare you support Netanyahu after he failed to prevent the Hamas attacks October 7th. And as I'm standing there with my microphone recording this, one man comes up to me. His name's Osheri Karuchi. And he says he supports Netanyahu because of what happened after October 7th. The way Israel went after enemies, not just in Gaza, but across the region, and even convinced the U.S. to bomb Iranian nuclear sites. He says that lady protesting and me, we wouldn't be standing here if Iran had launched a nuclear weapon at us. So Israelis are really thinking about matters of life and death. Yes, that is what this moment means for many Israelis. October 7th was the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. And many Jewish Israelis actually talk about it as a second Holocaust. You know, Jews are the majority of Israel's citizens. Palestinians in the occupied territories don't get a vote. And as election day nears, many Israelis are asking themselves, should Netanyahu be voted out because he presided over that dark day, October 7th, or should he be re-elected so he can continue his wars to reshape the Middle East as he's done since October 7th? Israelis have heard what the world says about what their country has done to Palestinians. They've seen the global backlash that's only getting stronger. Some Israelis say, forget what the world thinks. Others say if their country doesn't change course, they'll pack up and leave. That is why the stakes of these elections feel so high. And you know, Aisha, because Israelis feel this moment is so important, we are expecting tens of thousands of Israelis who live abroad to actually come back for election day. So tens of thousands of people are going to get on planes and fly back to Israel from all over the world just to vote. Those are the estimates, yeah, Israel doesn't do absentee voting, you have to physically be in the country on voting day. And the other day I had coffee with an Israeli lawyer who flew in early just to vote. She came all the way from Kansas City, Missouri. Her name is Shula Romano-Horing. You know, I bought a megaphone in the street. You bought a megaphone here in Israel? Yes. And what are you doing with it? What are you going to be saying in the megaphone this year? In vote this time. If you don't vote, the existing of Israel is at stake here. If I get all the way to America, you could go down, stay and vote. You know, because we almost could have been destroyed on October 7th. And that's the most important. This is why I'm voting for Netanyahu to make Israel so secure and so safe. And if Netanyahu is not reelected, what happens? Wow, I think it will be the scariest thing I ever heard. But there are many other expats, Israelis, who say the scariest thing would be if Netanyahu was reelected. Like this one guy, Yochai Benchaim. The actions of these government cause Israelis in general, in Jews in general, to be tagged is, you know, mosquitoes, is a war mongers. He spoke on Zoom from California. He has a job there in renewable energy. And this government is led by extremists that do not represent who we are and we need to change it. You know, the moment the elections will announce, a few hours later, I already had my tickets to Israel. Within hours of Israeli elections announced, you had already bought a ticket to fly back. Yeah. We plan to leave here on a Sunday afternoon. We get to Israel Monday, noon, day before the elections. And we leave back to Los Angeles Tuesday night. So just come cast out that out and leave. He said the total journey cost him just under $4,000, but he said it was worth it. For me, it's like coming to say the country to put Israel back what it should be. I mean, these are pretty powerful statements. They are and overall what I've learned over the course of many very raw, very blunt conversations with Israelis is that really one date casts a shadow over Israel's elections. That date is October 7th, 2023, when Hamas attacked. It is a day of violence and fear in Israel. Nearly 1200 people were killed, around 250 taken hostage. Unprecedented in its scale, in the words of NPR's Daniel Lester and Israel. The deadliest day in Israel's history. Today, as the elections near, Israelis are asking, didn't anyone see this attack coming? New reporting suggests some people did. Let's go back to the early months of 2023. Israel is in the midst of civil unrest. Benjamin Netanyahu and his far right government are trying to weaken the powers of the courts to give themselves more unchecked power. Israelis pour into the streets to protest. Israel's president says the country's current crisis is a powder kick. As the protest continued, I reported that Netanyahu's security chiefs were afraid of where all this turmoil could lead. Well, now leadership security officials are meeting today. Reportedly, they met and said that there is an immediate threat that Israel's regional enemies could attack at this moment when the country is weak and divided. What we know now, according to new reporting by NPR and other outlets, is that behind the scenes, Israel received direct warnings that Hamas was planning something big. I mediate between Hamas and Israel, me. This is Palestinian negotiator Sufyan Abu Zayda. He told me Israel and Hamas had been holding secret talks for more than a year leading up to October 7th. They both had demands. Israel wanted Hamas to release some Israeli hostages they'd held for many years. Hamas wanted Israel to free Palestinian prisoners and help ease Gaza's long-time humanitarian crisis. When the negotiations stalled, Abu Zayda says the leader of Hamas and Gaza dictated a message for him to deliver to the Israeli leadership. Do you have the exact words there of the message that you could read in Arabic? The message was, "By the end of September, we will put cards on the table. There will be an earthquake in the negotiations, and the Israelis should prepare to empty their prisons." Abu Zayda didn't know what kind of earthquake the Hamas leader meant, but he says he relayed the message to Israeli intelligence right away. It was mid-September, weeks before October 7th. How do you feel now after all of this? Very frustrated. Why, your message was not taken seriously? Because all what happened in the seventh of October is needless. All the death and destruction in Israel and in Gaza, the death of his sister and dozens of his relatives ever since. All that could have been avoided, he says, if the warning had been heated. Benjamin Netanyahu has denied he was warned. I spoke with Amos Haral, an Israeli defense analyst for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. He wrote a book tracing the missing warnings and miscalculations that failed to prevent the October 7th attack. He points to a failed strategy Netanyahu had employed going back years, allowing Qatar to send financial aid to Gaza to keep a lid on simmering unrest there. Hundreds of millions of dollars were sent to Gaza, literally suitcases stuffed with cash, even as Israeli intelligence officials warned that Hamas was diverting some of the cash to its military wing. It was clear that some of the money was actually used by Hamas to dig tunnels, to pay its gunman, and yet he ignored the whole issue. He assumed that Israel had the upper hand, and this of course ended in a terrible failure on October 7th. This is the first air raid siren I recorded in Tel Aviv on October 7th, 2023. It was 6.30 in the morning. Hamas had begun to fire rockets at southern Israel, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. When Hamas and other militant groups stormed across the Gaza border and attacked army bases, they entered residential communities. They filmed themselves going door to door, room to room. They killed elderly women and children. They gunned down young people at an all-night music rave, and they took hostages back to Gaza. That same morning Netanyahu declared war on Gaza. And he also began fighting another battle over the October 7th attacks, a public relations battle. Who was responsible for the security failure? Netanyahu as the leader of the country or his security chiefs. Again, Amos Haral. Very, very soon, within days, his PR people were trying to shape the public narrative about events and trying to shift the blame towards the professionals, towards the heads of Shinn-Bet Internal Security Agency and the heads of the top brass of the IDF. But he never admitted any kind of responsibility. For much of the war, Israeli protesters flooded the streets, demanding that Netanyahu strike a deal with Hamas to release Israeli hostages. But Netanyahu said he was aiming for total defeat of Hamas. It would take two years of fighting before a hostage deal was reached in October 2025, making this Israel's longest ever war. Today, former officials who worked with Netanyahu are coming forward and questioning what took so long. Did Netanyahu prolong the war to delay the reckoning about October 7th? I'm absolutely convinced that this is what happened. For political reasons, he felt that if this would move on too fast, then there will be more of a significant public demand for a national commission of inquiry. A national commission of inquiry. Like the 9/11 commission in the U.S. investigating the September 11th attacks, there's a huge demand for something like that in Israel, an official investigation into the October 7th security failure. Netanyahu has refused to allow one, but Israelis want answers. Today, many Israelis go to one main memorial site to grapple with what happened. We're at the site of the Nova Music Festival, the deadliest attack of October 7th, where more than 400 people were killed. It's not some big official memorial with a building and a visitor center and a statue and a unified feeling. This is handmade. This is a dusty field with a sea of rickety plaques with pictures of young people smiling and their families writing descriptions of who they were and what they loved about them. Here I find Kati and Mayer Zohar. They lost their 23-year-old daughter, Bar, on October 7th. You guys probably don't remember, but I met you in the hospital on October 7th. They later learned that their daughter had been killed at the music festival. They showed me her photo on a memorial sign, a screen grab from a cell phone video where you see Bar laid out, being treated by a paramedic. Kati and Mayer Zohar helped build this memorial with other families. The Israeli government didn't contribute any money. She says Netanyahu as the head of the country bears the responsibility for what happened to her daughter and to Israel that day. Israel is about to face elections. What do these elections mean to you? It's a hope that something will change. What kind of change are you looking for? I hope that someone will come and take his place and be the one who is trying to keep this country together. Like Kati and Mayer, many in Israel want these elections to be a reckoning over Israel's failure on October 7th. But other Israelis are focused on what came after. I'll be right back. This is the Sunday story. I'm Daniel Estrin. There's a song of vengeance that came out a month after October 7th and topped the charts in Israel. It's a battle cry for young Israelis to join the war in Gaza. Let me read some of the lyrics. Who do you think you are coming and shouting free Palestine? You sons of Amalek. That's the biblical enemy of the ancient Israelites. We brought the whole army on you, and I swear there will be no forgiveness. It was a nation in a state of shock. Israeli defense analyst Amos Harau. I think the general line of thinking, not only among decision makers, not only among ministers of the government, but also among commanders in the field, was that something biblical has happened to us, and that something biblical needed to happen in return. What did happen in return was an Israeli military onslaught that was exponential in its proportions. More than 74,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks. Most of Gaza destroyed. Today Israel is fighting back charges of genocide. Prime Minister Netanyahu faces an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Gaza, and all the Israeli soldiers who have fought in the war now risk arrest in some countries. Like Lior, a friend of a friend of mine. I'm proud of what I did, and I know what I did. I was the commander to my soldier. I gave order, so I don't mind to be in front of the judge. I will go. go and get arrested, I don't mind. Leore is among the nearly 300,000 young Israeli military veterans who were ordered to leave their civilian lives, their work, their partners, and service reserved soldiers after October 7. They are the ones who have fought in Israel's latest wars and have been forever changed by them. His generation is the one that will shape Israel's future. When you inside Gaza, your life is under danger 24/7. There is shooting, there is booming, there is sometimes you hear about his Baran Hamas, what they're doing. So your body, your mind, is under a survival tension 24/7. Leore asked that we just use his first name to protect his family overseas from harassment. Because of the nature of his role in these wars, he commanded an Israeli sniper unit in Gaza and Lebanon. He's 34 years old and has served over 500 days in uniform. And today he's among the nearly 19,000 Israeli soldiers who have been newly diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or related illnesses. He says it touches every part of his life. He imagines snipers on the streets. He randomly breaks into tears writing the train. He struggles in his sex life. He and his fiance are now broken up. All of this, after his time in Gaza and Lebanon. There's one memory that comes to him often. When he gave an order to shoot and kill a man, he described as a Hamas terrorist, as the man stood next to his child. Leore said the man crossed a line where he shouldn't be. And unfortunately, yeah, the kids saw his father dying in front of him. You don't regret any decisions you made to open fire. No, none, none. Even at the cost of civilians being killed? Yeah. And to be honest, in my opinion, I don't have any mercy of people in Gaza. I know what's going on there. I know of the poverty. I know about the lack of water, electricity. I don't have any mercy on them. Why not? Because when you see things on your own eyes, and you remember what happened on the 7th of October, I'm not forgiving for that. Is there anybody in the sentence, Gaza? You know, my Jewish identity saying that I'm sure there is. But first thing, I don't see that way. That's what I told you about the kid. I know that if he have the chance, he will kill me. Even a five-year-old, five-year-old. No mercy for people in Gaza. That's the prevalent view of most Israelis I meet. No matter their age, no matter whether or not they served in uniform or support Netanyahu. There are no innocent people in Gaza, or I don't have room in my heart for the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. These are not phrases that are whispered. This is everyday conversation. So is, "Kale all the Arabs. Everyone in Gaza should leave. What Israel did in Gaza wasn't enough. These are phrases Israelis have told me just over the last few weeks. And if you turn on primetime TV news in Israel, you hear journalists saying similar things, like, "There are no uninvolved civilians in Gaza." That's a reporter early last year speaking on Channel 12, the leading nightly news network. Israeli media censorship of the Palestinian perspective in Gaza began 20 years ago after Hamas took an Israeli soldier captive in Gaza. Israel responded by practically sealing Gaza's shut to Israeli journalists and to all Israelis. There were years and years of Hamas' rocket fire and Israeli retaliation. Israeli jets are again today hitting targets associated with Hamas inside Gaza. This is the third time in five years that Israel has bombed Gaza in response to Hamas' rocket fire. And many Israelis are skeptical things can change this time around. During the last few years of active war in Gaza, most Israeli media chose not to show what Palestinian journalists were reporting day after day. The tens of thousands of men, women and children killed. The forced displacement. The starvation. The misery of trying to survive. In a year into a declared ceasefire, Israel continues airstrikes regularly, killing both militants and civilians. I spoke about this with Anat Saragusti, an Israeli journalist who used to cover Gaza. The majority of the Israeli journalists didn't do one story. Not even one story was done on Gaza. I tried to see whether you know what the Palestinian journalists are claiming is true. We were afraid of the pushback by the audience if they dare say something about Gaza. But there is one place where even some war hardened Israelis say anti-Palestinian sentiment has gone too far. And that is the occupied West Bank. We are now entering the West Bank. We just now enter the West Bank. Since the October 7th attacks, Israeli settlers have become increasingly violent toward Palestinians and have seized even more land in the West Bank, with the support of Netanyahu's government and the military. I joined an SUV convoy going there with a group of retired Israeli security officials a few weeks ago. They wanted to see for themselves how things have changed in the last three years. We arrived at a small village on Melcher. It's on a hilltop surrounded by an expanse of empty desert. Palestinian activist Aida Hatlin took us inside a Palestinian family's home. We looked at a window into their backyard and saw Israeli settlers in a trailer home. And there's all this barbed wire around here? They put it here. He says the settlers have blocked the family's outdoor bathroom, and the Israeli army has blocked the path to their sheep. I approached one of the Israelis in our group, Ari Shuali, a former senior Israeli intelligence official. What is your reaction to seeing this? I think it's idiotic. I think it's shiitani kal. I think it's non-human in no other respect. This is not the way you'd expect a veteran of the Israeli establishment to speak. He's taking lots of pictures. This is nasty. This is evil. I don't believe that we as a people became such kind of unhuman behaviors. I'm an Israeli. I'm in proud Israeli, and I'm ashamed to be an Israeli at the same time. It's one reason why some Israelis like him want to vote Netanyahu out. Netanyahu has downplayed settler violence in the West Bank, and his allies are campaigning on a pledge to expel Palestinians. They call it encouraging emigration. Netanyahu, meanwhile, is campaigning on what he's done to fight back against external threats, with the wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran as examples of how he's making Israel safer. On that darkest of days, our enemies expected us to collapse. Well, we didn't collapse. Instead, we rose and fought like lions. In speech after speech, he has promised to change the face of the Middle East, and he's commended Israelis for carrying out his plans. Israel has killed the leaders of Hamas, Hasbala, and Iran. It has sent soldiers to capture new territory in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria. It's fought Houthis and Yemen, and militias in Iraq. Everywhere in Netanyahu goes, he talks about the fight. We all ganged up on us to wipe us off the face of the earth. They failed. The problem is that all of these fronts remain open. Amos Harel, the military affairs columnist, says Netanyahu prolonged the war in Gaza, and now is using the same strategy across the Middle East. We're entangled in endless wars, and this was done on purpose. So it's not a bug. It's a feature. The whole idea is for Israel to keep fighting, because endless wars serve Netanyahu to maintain a sort of a constant state of emergency. Many Israelis believe the only way to break this cycle is to elect a new leader. It's the only way to elect a new leader in the West Bank, and that's why it's called a new leader. It's the only way to elect a new leader, and that's why it's called a new leader. [BLANK_AUDIO] conservative Netanyahu stronghold. This crowd knows Eisenkut as the former military chief of staff appointed by Netanyahu a decade ago. He came back into the public spotlight days after October 7th when he joined Netanyahu's war cabinet. Very soon, the nation saw Eisenkut crying over his son's casket. His son was a soldier killed in Gaza. The very next day his nephew was killed fighting in Gaza. Eisenkut tells this crowd that after the first three months of war, he thought things were going in the wrong direction. I saw a deep dysfunction in the decision-making process, he says. I saw that political and personal considerations were put above everything else. He means Netanyahu. He's pledging to voters. The first thing he'll do as Prime Minister is to do the thing Netanyahu has refused to do, to launch an official national investigation into the security failure of October 7th. In the crowd, I met Ya'eer Amar. He told me he always used to vote for BB, Benjamin Netanyahu. But he says Netanyahu is responsible for all the Israelis killed on October 7th. And Eisenkut, he says he's straight, like a straight shooter, down to earth. He's everything Netanyahu isn't, says Amos Har el, the Israeli columnist. Many Israelis wish for a saner future, for somebody who perhaps is not as charismatic and doesn't look at the part of an American senator, but is one of us, and it's seen as somebody who sacrificed a lot. The race is very, very tight. Most polls show Eisenkut's camp ahead of Netanyahu's camp. But those same polls show that neither Netanyahu nor Eisenkut have a clear path to victory. The election could tip based on a small amount of votes, or it could end in a stalemate and force a repeat election next spring. If that were to happen, Netanyahu would stay in power, without a new mandate from the public, but with full authority to make fateful decisions, like going to war. And if Netanyahu loses the election, what would change under a Prime Minister Eisenkut? Apart from his promise of an official investigation into October 7th, he's spoken of cracking down on settler expansion and violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. He talks about reaching diplomatic agreements and all the wars Netanyahu has kept open. But there's one thing he's made clear. He would not withdraw troops from Lebanon and Gaza anytime soon. He would be told, Eisenkut told the crowd, "It will take a lot of time." He said the Israeli military presence in both places is necessary until Hamas and Hisbalah's military forces are dismantled. And on the biggest question of all, how to solve Israel's conflict with the Palestinians. Eisenkut boasted to the crowd that he never said the solution was two states for two peoples, creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel. That is the vision that the U.S. and the majority of the world has advocated for decades. Eisenkut thinks Israel should preserve possibilities for a solution in the future. After October 7th, Israelis do not want to discuss a Palestinian state. It's not something that the Israeli public can swallow at this time. More and more people suspect that the Arabs, the Palestinians are out to kill us and the world is out to get us. And there's less support for any kind of concessions because people keep bringing up October 7th. And this is important to understand. This is not a race of conservatives versus liberals, right versus left. Eisenkut is leading a group of politicians who are largely right-wing. Not the far right of Netanyahu's camp, but right-wing, focused on boosting Israel's military for whatever dangers are to come, and recruiting religious ultra-orthodox Jews to the military. Trying to tell Israelis it's okay not to vote for Netanyahu. I'll make sure Israel stays strong. I'm trusting him on the military level. But is it enough? High school theater teacher Anat Benari came to hear Eisenkut speak and she's almost nervous voicing an unpopular opinion out loud. She thinks he shouldn't shy away from peace agreements. The only way to end war, all the history says that, is by agreements, is by people talking to people even enemies, mostly enemies. And I think we should also pay the price for peace. In order for less people to die here and not always live on our swords. But this idea should Israel continue to live on the sword. It gets to the heart of things. As much as this theater teacher would like to let go of the sword, so fewer will die. The soldier, Leor, wants to hold on to it. I think the enemy will always become like, there will always be an enemy, so I think we will always be in a war, we always live on our sword. Live on our sword, live on our sword and it will always be. The problem is that you have two reputations you need to protect, but you can't. This is Israeli author Mika Goodman. He's written about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and in the past he's been an unofficial advisor to top Israeli politicians. Now in the Middle East you want to have a certain kind of reputation, you want to be seen as unpredictable, a little bit crazy, like don't mess with us, okay? We have, there's this term in Hebrew, "Balabayti Shtagea." The boss went crazy. Yeah, and then in the west we want to be seen as a Norwegian, nice, sweet country playing by the rules, predictable, Israelis want to be feared and to be loved. After October 7th, the Middle East and fear us. As you have to restore fear, but everything we did to restore fear eroded the love. Ultimately, Goodman says there's a zero-sum game between love and fear. And so this is what Israeli voters now face, the precarious balance between the world's love and their neighbor's fear, between holding tight to the sword or loosening one's grip, whoever wins the elections will be leading in Israeli people who are both wary and weary from war, a people who have drawn drastically different lessons from what's happened here these last few years, and pose radically different visions of what saving their country means, whether that's in Israel that can start repairing its relations with the world or in Israel that still hasn't finished the fight. That was MPR's International Correspondent Daniel Estren reporting from Israel. This episode was produced by Rinne's Vernafsky. It was edited by Ginni Schmidt, engineering by Jimmy Keely, and fact-checking by Will Chase, additional reporting by Michael Levitt and E. Ty Stern, producing by Andrew Mambo and editing by Carrie Conn, James Heider and Misha Dahia. D.D. Skanky is MPR's chief international editor, Lyanna Simstrom is the Sunday story senior supervising producer, our executive producer is Irene Neguchi, up first we'll be back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week, until then have a great rest of your weekend. [BLANK_AUDIO]