The Election That Will Define Israel’s Future

From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. Israelis head to the polls next week, and on the ballot is the future of a country that's become increasingly isolated on the world stage, both because of the war in Gaza and a growing outcry over settler violence in the West Bank. And so today, our colleague Jerusalem Bureau Chief David Halpfinger explains how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu differs from his biggest challenger on the issues that have divided the country, and why Israelis on both sides view this election as existential. It's Thursday, October 22nd. David Halpfinger. Welcome to The Daily. Good to be here. So, David, you are now in your second stint as Jerusalem Bureau Chief. How many Israeli elections have you covered at this point? This will be number four. Wow. I covered three inconclusive elections the last time, and here I am again. We'll see what this one is like. This one feels different, at least from here in the United States. The election is on Tuesday, and this will be the first election since October 7th. And I wonder, David, if you could just sort of lay out how you feel about this election. How Israelis see this moment, and how we, the rest of the world, should see this moment. Yeah, it's really striking. I've covered a lot of elections. I've never covered one in which so many people feel like this election is the most important, the most fateful, the most consequential election in their country's history. You know, really, there are two blocks here. There's the Netanyahu-led government block, and there's the opposition block. The numbers in the polls suggest each have roughly half the country. The polls vary by a few points in either direction for both of them. And it's making some people, at least many people, certainly in the opposition camp, feel like if it doesn't go the way they're hoping, they might even not see a future for themselves in this country. It's really quite something. And it's not just about Netanyahu. Netanyahu obviously is a symbol to the outside world of this Israel, the Israel of the Gaza War, the Israel that's in an ongoing conflict where its extremist settlers are marauding through much of the West Bank. These are the things that much of the world sees Netanyahu as symbolizing and leading and representing. For Israelis, it's about a lot more than the conflict with the Palestinians. In fact, that is something that is not discussed as much on the campaign trail as one might imagine. For Israelis, it's really, really about the fate of their democracy, about what's going to become of a social contract that has been really torn in the past few years. It's about fairness in the sacrifice that is demanded of people in defending the country. And it's really about what kind of Jewish state this will be. And that's really what's on the ballot. I mean, it really sounds like this election is about a lot of different issues, and none of them are the same. It feels like the rest of the world has been focused on. Namely, this election is not about whether the next government of Israel will support Palestinian statehood. It's just not on the table. I think that's right. I mean, for the vast majority of Israelis, the idea of a Palestinian state as something that could be broached anytime soon is really a non-starter. And it's true that it may be like the only thing that left and right. I mean, this is an incredibly divided country at this moment. And part of the issue here is people have felt this way for a long time, pretty much at least since the very early days of this government. If I could take you back even before October 7th, in early 2023, very soon after taking power, the Netanyahu government proposed a whole new overhaul of the judicial system, and it was more than that. It was really a democratic overhaul, an overhaul of the Israeli system. Right. That proposal, I'll remind people, drew enormous protests. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets because it was going to basically neuter the judiciary, which under Israel's system was the only real counterweight to the government and the Knesset. So the one check and balance on Netanyahu and his right-wing government, they were threatening to basically disempower it. And that sent people out into the streets. And as that year went on, there were all kinds of warnings about Israel's enemies. We're noticing how internally divided it was. And, you know, a house divided is in trouble. And lo and behold, October 7th happens, and it was devastating. Right. October 7th happens in the midst of this anger over this perceived threat to democracy, which was driven by the hard-right faction in Netanyahu's coalition, which has only gotten more and more emboldened since October 7th happened. That's right. You know, the war happens, and it's the extremists in the Netanyahu government, people like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, who are pushing basically to raise Gaza. They say the most inflammatory things about how to deal with the Palestinians. When there's debate over whether to try to strike a deal to get the hostages out or to just keep going with the military campaign, they're the voices to keep going, always to keep going. It tears apart the government to some degree, but it really tears apart the government. It tears apart the society. And heading into this election, they are looking for a mandate to really go ahead and complete what they had started in changing the way Israel's government functions. Okay, so let's turn to the campaign itself, because I want to understand how each of the leading candidates are basically distinguishing themselves. Let's start with Benjamin Netanyahu, obviously the incumbent. What does his campaign stand for, and where does he stand on some of these key issues that you've described? So the most important issue to Israelis really like the number one, two, three, four, and five on the list is always security, just because of the nature of the state and its surroundings in the Middle East and its history of warfare. I've devoted my life to protect the security of the state of Israel, and nothing will change that. Nothing, absolutely nothing. Netanyahu has always passed himself off as Mr. Security, as the guy who can keep Israelis safe. We initiate, we attack, we surprise, and we attack those enemies that seek our destruction, that seek to kill us. Obviously, it's a harder sell now, because October 7th happened on his watch. Yeah, I was going to say, it seems sort of hard for the guy who was in charge on October 7th to make a compelling claim that he's the one to keep the country safe, especially considering that we now know that there were all sorts of warnings about an impending attack to the Netanyahu government. Right. Well, you know, there's a lot of blame-casting and finger-pointing, and the sort of heart of it is Netanyahu basically says that he didn't get the phone call early enough on October 7th to actually do anything about it, and if he had, everything would have been different. He's really not taking any responsibility, basically. No, no. And that is one of the biggest issues in this entire campaign, which is Israel has this thing called the National Commission of Inquiry. When things really go wrong in a big, big way, they set up, it's like the 9-11 Commission in the United States. They do this sort of thing. Almost every prime minister has had one of these, I think. Netanyahu never has, and he's absolutely refusing to go along with such a commission. And the opposition is like, that's the first thing we're going to do, is appoint a commission to see what really went wrong. So when he says, like, I'm the security guy, I'm the one that's going to keep you safe, what does he actually point to as evidence of that? Well, he points to everything that happened since October 7th. Do you know any other country the size of New Jersey capable of fighting a seven-front, war, and for three years, seven fronts, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran, militias in Iraq, militias in Syria, Palestinian terrorists in Judea, Samaria? Israel has killed the leader of Hezbollah. They killed all those Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar. In Lebanon, they had that pager stunt, you know, exploding pagers. Remotely, right. Yeah, in the pockets of all these Hezbollah operatives. They had the wars with Iran, in which Netanyahu was able to get the United States to help out. You be the judge how successful those were, but he has certainly been able to get the United States on his side to do all of these things. Yeah, I wonder how all of that plays with Israelis who have suffered losses since the Gaza war. I'm thinking about people who have lost loved ones or families that include reservists who have been called up to serve for months at a time. And maybe even multiple times. And that is a lot of Israel. That's a really important point. And I would also note that while Israel has fought a lot of wars, they have all been short. You know, there was that six-day one back in 1967. The longest I can remember was a matter of weeks in the 20-teens. This one, it's arguably still going. And that has placed an inordinate demand on the soldiers and the of battle and combat all this time. I mean, lots of people have died died. Families have been really tested. It's difficult to hold down a job when you're going off and serving for 100 days at a time. And compounding that and really exacerbating the tensions in this society is the fact that a lot of Israelis just don't serve. Ultra-Orthodox who are growing as a percentage of the population rapidly, they have large families and they start having families young. They have an exemption for years from serving, but that was formally overturned in 2024. So it's no longer legal, but really they are resisting serving. They're now being openly called draft dodgers and some are starting to be arrested for it, but their leaders are defiant. They're refusing to do this. And their political parties are an essential part of the current Netanyahu-led government. He relies on them for support. They rely on him for protection from, among other things, the draft, as well as for really huge subsidies for those growing families. And so you have the half of the country, more or less, who serves and holds jobs and pays taxes, protecting and subsidizing people who do none of those things. Right. This issue of whether the ultra-Orthodox serve in the military, that has been a long-standing issue for years now. You said, David, that this exemption is illegal. What has Netanyahu said about this more recently, though, as this has become increasingly urgent? So it was interesting that just the other day, the military arrested a bunch of ultra-Orthodox men for draft evasion. And Netanyahu came out against these arrests. He called it an attempt to harm the process of drafting the ultra-Orthodox without coercion. And basically he's saying, we're going to get to this. You know, our coalition will, it was on the verge of passing a real meaningful draft law, reelect us, and we'll do that. But the criticism here is that it's just going to keep going because Netanyahu needs the ultra-Orthodox to preserve his hold on power. And it's just not important enough to him to risk that for the sake of getting ultra-Orthodox men into the military. This is the story of Netanyahu that I think a lot of people are familiar with, this idea that he is willing to put up with a lot in order to keep his coalition together and stay in power. You have just described the ultra-Orthodox, but there's a whole other presented by Ben-Gavir and Smotrich that gets a lot of the blame, I think, or responsibility for creating an environment that has enabled an increase in settler violence toward Palestinians in the West Bank. And I think that that, on top of the casualty numbers in Gaza that we have been hearing about since October 7th, all of this feels like it has led Israel to becoming increasingly isolated on the world stage. That is the image I think that a lot of people have. And I wonder, what, if anything, has Netanyahu said about this? So, first of all, he explains it in a way, you know, attributing it to anti-Semitism in many cases. He talks about the Muslim immigration in Europe. He talks about Qatari money in the United States funding anti-Israel and anti-Semitic professors, basically. You know, it's very conspiratorial, and it has everything to do with anything except Israel's policies. And Israel has always seen itself as kind of a country that has been a very anti-Semitic country for a long time. He's been a very anti-Semitic country on the defensive, in a defensive crouch. And now he's talking about Israel as a Sparta, as a kind of nation that's going to have to produce its own weapons if other countries place embargoes on arms dealing to Israel. Like, it's going to have to live on its own, you know, live off the land kind of thing. But I think there's, to some degree, Netanyahu's followers, his supporters, already think that the world hates Israel and the world's always going to hate Israel. And so, like, they're happy to be sort of given the permission to think that way. Well, also, though, I mean, it strikes me that it's a very, very important thing to think about. It's easier for Netanyahu to double down on this kind of a stance when he does have such huge amounts of support from the United States, a hugely powerful ally, which is still supplying Israel with tons of military aid that has allowed it to continue its campaign in Gaza. And, of course, the United States joined Israel in its attack on Iran. So, no, that's exactly right. And I think Netanyahu's actions and what he says all indicate that he has put all his eggs in the basket, and particularly in the Trump administration's basket. What his critics and opponents will say is that Donald Trump is not going to be president forever, and what comes thereafter may be the deluge. David, you just explained where Netanyahu stands on a bunch of these different issues that have made a lot of people angry at him, whether it's not taking responsibility for October 7th or not resolving the issue of the ultra-Orthodox draft, or moves that have basically made Israel more of a pariah state. And yet, he is still neck and neck in the polls, which I think highlights just how deeply divided the country is, as you said, in this moment. Yeah, that's true. And nothing better encapsulates that division than the fact that the number one candidate to replace him and the leading party in the opposition camp is a guy who could not be more unlike Benjamin Netanyahu. We'll be right back. So, David, on the other side of the race, the leading opposition candidate is Gadi Eisenkot. So tell us what his pitch is and what his appeal is to the broader Israeli public. So, Eisenkot is basically offering to heal a sorely divided country. Netanyahu has been stoking divisions, pitting one swath of the public against another. And Eisenkot is talking about trying to pull things back together. But also, to talk about his appeal, this is a guy who has been around for a long, long time, including as the chief of staff of the Israeli military for four years very recently. He, he was very well liked. He had a very kind of, I would say, firm but kindly public persona. And he has really made the transition to a politician very, very quickly. When he formed his party a year ago, he was tiny in the polls. So that's quite a meteoric rise. Can you tell us a little bit about his backstory, David? Like, where is he from? And sort of how did he get to this point? It's really interesting. And again, it couldn't be more, different from the guy he's trying to defeat. So Eisenkot was born in the north, in the city of Tiberias, to Moroccan immigrant parents. That makes him a Mizrahi Jew, Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. I should say that Mizrahi Jews are roughly half the Jews of Israel. And no Mizrahi Jew has ever been prime minister. So this is not just who he is, it's an important political advantage. And he grew up and went to high school in Eilat, in the very south of Israel. So that's a really working class town. Most Israelis get drafted and serve. He did when he got out of high school at 18 and went into a brigade called Golani. This is a very gritty infantry unit. It's not the paratroopers or the commandos. These are the grunt workers, basically. They're the grunts. And it's also kind of a point of pride that it's really a cross-section. And he had a very rapid rise. He became the commander of the Golani Brigade. And a number of years later, when there's a shakeup in the military, they need to name a new chief of staff. And Ehud Barak, then the defense secretary under Netanyahu, recommends that Eisenkot be named chief of staff, which would leapfrog him over somebody else who's kind of next in line. Amazingly, he turned down the job. He felt that the deputy, the guy who was next in line, it was Benny Gantz, it should go to him. Wow, that feels like kind of an unusual move for a politician. That's right. But then in 2015, he's offered the top job again. And this time, he says yes. Fast forward to October 7th, 2023, and it's this experienced military man who comes into the government of Netanyahu to really buck up a government that is dealing with something Israel has never faced. Then December of 2023, Eisenkot's own son, his youngest of five children, a 25-year-old reservist, is killed in a tunnel explosion. And everybody saw that funeral, like thousands came to it, including Netanyahu, because of who Eisenkot was. Many more watched on television live. Eisenkot gives this heart-rending, very personal eulogy, for his son. And now he's like the picture of bereavement, in addition to being who he is in the government. It was also an image I would imagine that many Israelis could relate to, because many Israelis have also lost somebody in the Gaza war. That's right. So many people have lost someone or had somebody injured. You know, you can't avoid knowing people in this country who have experienced the same thing. A lot of loss. And the day of the funeral, Eisenkot's nephew, killed in Gaza. He loses another nephew almost a year later. So now, add that emotional factor to what Eisenkot is experiencing as he participates in this government. Now, it seems to have gone fairly well at first, but it didn't go well for very long. Both Netanyahu and Eisenkot are basically trash-talking one another about, you know, what went on behind the scenes. Eisenkot describes the prime minister as shaking like a leaf in that period and that he had to kind of really, you know, almost like take the wheel. But really, what causes Netanyahu and Eisenkot to clash is what to do about the hostages. Netanyahu is under pressure from Smotrich and Bengvir to really just full steam ahead, keep destroying Gaza, keep killing Hamas, eliminating them. But Israelis are crying out to do a deal to get the hostages out. In January of 2024, he goes public with his frustrations. By June, he's out. He quits. He quits the government. Yeah. And, you know, a year later, he forms a political party of his own. So, Eisenkot quits the Netanyahu government in disgust, it sounds like. He forms this new party. What does he say about what his platform is and what he stands for? The biggest thing of all, I think, is accountability and responsibility. That's both something that Israelis crave, and it's an implicit rebuke and criticism of Netanyahu. As we said, Netanyahu is avoiding the national commission that could deliver accountability wherever it may lead. So, he's promising responsible leadership. And he's calling Bibi an anti-leader. You know, he's saying that the way I was trained, when there's credit, you share it. When there's failure, you step forward and own it. And he's talking about sharing the burden of service and spreading it around. Making sure that the ultra-Orthodox do their fair share of military service. Which would seem like a pretty powerful message coming from somebody who lost a son and two nephews in this war. Very much so. And that's also a contrast that he has begun drawing himself. In one interview, he talked about how Netanyahu's two sons did really minor or insignificant service when they served in the military. And one of his sons, who's basically known as a right-wing troll, in support of his father on social media, spent much of the last three years kind of hanging out in Miami with security, to some degree, on the taxpayer's dime. So, for Eisenkot, it's not beneath him to make that contrast as well. It's really interesting because it sounds like Eisenkot is very much focused on sharing the responsibility for the war, but he's not really talking a lot, from your description, of the war itself in terms of how it has isolated Israel on the world stage. So, I just sort of wonder what we know about how much he cares about that, and what he has said about that, if anything. Let me just deal with Gaza really quickly, because he doesn't talk about Gaza much. On Gaza, he basically says that he wants to work with the Trump administration on its plan to bring a solution in Gaza to get to reconstruction and so on, to really end the war, to have a settlement that gets Hamas out of government there. This is not a guy whose heart is bleeding for a long time. All the Palestinians killed in Gaza. This is a guy who wants to finish a job against Hamas one way or the other, whether it's politically or, if need be, militarily. And in the West Bank, he's much more valuable. I mean, he basically treats what's going on in the West Bank with extremist violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians as Israel in a whole of its own making and just continuing to dig. And he says the first thing you got to do is stop digging. So, what is that? So, the first thing he would re-establish the security regime that used to basically prevent this kind of thing, or at least prevent it a lot more than it does now. That means taking the military in the West Bank and its civil administration for the West Bank out from under the control of Smotrich. And it means taking the Israeli police who have to come in and arrest those settlers out from under the control of the West Bank. And it means taking the Israeli police who have to come in and arrest those settlers out from under the control of Itamar Ben-Gvir. He would go a lot farther, though. He's talked about, you know, the first thing he would do in the West Bank is to uproot and evacuate the settlements, the illegal Israeli settlements that have been set up in areas that are really supposed to be reserved for the Palestinians under the old Oslo Accords. So, he's not talking about Palestinian sovereignty, which Netanyahu might want voters to believe he is or interested in. He's just talking about restoring a certain stability that Israelis were used to just a few years ago before the attacks on October 17th. So, he's not talking about a certain stability that Israelis were used to just a few before the war. That's right. He says that if there will be a final status, you know, permanent solution to the conflict, it is a long way off beyond the horizon and the curvature of the earth. But he does think that it's better to give the Palestinians reason for hope than to tell them there is no hope. You said, David, that the race is neck and neck, but obviously Israeli elections work differently than they do here in the United States. Can you just walk us through a little bit about what is likely to happen next? Yeah, this is incredibly difficult to understand if you come from a two-party system. But basically, it's coalition politics. You don't vote for a prime minister like you do for a president in the United States. You vote for a party. You go into the ballot box and you choose a slip of paper that has the symbol and name of the party that you prefer. And then, you know, the parties with the most votes get the most seats in the parliament, and the party that has the most seats gets offered, the chance to form a government by the president. Now, the polls are all over the place. We say that Eisencott and Netanyahu are neck and neck because Eisencott is a little bit ahead of Netanyahu in the polls. The same goes for their coalitions. There could be a clear outcome to this election, but it is perhaps even more likely that given how tight things are, we could have an inconclusive election. And that could lead to another election the way we had, several of them in 2019, 2020, 2021. Or it also could lead to something we haven't seen before. One thing that Eisencott and his allies are talking about doing is if they do come out ahead, they could start to pass some laws even if they can't form a government. So imagine a new parliament with a new speaker passing laws like maybe one that bans a candidate from running for prime minister if he's facing criminal trial. Which would include Netanyahu. Yeah. Or that imposes term limits. On somebody who's served for 19 out of the last 30 years. Also Netanyahu. Yeah. There's a lot of things they could do if they wanted to and really play political hardball in a way that nobody has in this country before. But the message I'm getting from you, David, is that this is likely to be quite messy. We don't know what's going to happen yet. And the outcome does not necessarily mean that there will be a clear prime minister in the immediate future. That's right. If you think it's confusing now, just wait until next Wednesday. Terrific. Well, we might end up calling you back on the show, David. Besides the fact that it's very messy and confusing to a lot of people, as we mentioned, we know that this election feels very existential to people. And I just want to end our conversation by talking about something that's going to feel sort of familiar to folks in the United States, which is also a deeply divided country where major events have served as sort of Rorschach tests, which is how it sort of sounds like in Israel, where people see Netanyahu as a success or failure. And the things that he's done since October 7th, depending on kind of the perspective they were coming from, are sort of the things that he's done since October 7th, to begin with. And I just sort of wonder where you think an election like this that is so existential leaves voters when the results are in, if the results are not the ones that they wanted. Yeah. People here, certainly those who are unhappy with this current government, there's a lot of talk about despair, about the idea that the country's headed over a cliff. A lot of people have left Israel. There's a huge trend to get a second pass, a passport for another country. The net migration, which has always been into Israel, it's been growing with immigration of Jews from around the world. The last couple of years, more Jews have left than have arrived. And it's really striking. Some people say they want to stay and fight. Others are really talking about getting on a plane and never looking back. And I think there's a lot of fear about what could happen given that things are so divided and so heatedly divided. Even if there is a new government, could that government really heal? Will Netanyahu and his allies go quietly from power? There's been political violence in this country before. Will it whip up? What happens next? It could be entering a dark time. Now, having said that, on the other side of the aisle, within Netanyahu's supporters, there's a feeling of triumphalism, the chance to really, this is a right-wing country, and this is the chance to submit. And to really complete the takeover of the institutions of power that were for so long still held by, you know, holdouts from the left or from, you know, the liberal world or from the old Ashkenazi elite. It's really interesting because Israel is such a small country. I mean, that does actually feel existential. Like, when we have said existential in this conversation, we are talking about a reshaping of the demographics of the country and potentially creating a country that is maybe smaller, but much more hardline. Yeah, we are. And there's just one other thing to bear in mind about, you know, all these people in Israel who are contemplating or talking about leaving, depending on how the election goes. It's not clear where they would go, that things would necessarily be better. As they are reading in their newspapers every day, anti-Semitism is on the rise around the world. It's not easy to be an Israeli, even if you're not living in Israel anymore. And, you know, I'm just reminded of this great skit on Israel's version of Saturday Night Live a while back where, you know, it's at the airport. And two people, old friends, run into each other and they compare notes about how things have just gotten terrible. It's dangerous. I had to get out of there. I couldn't take it anymore. It's no longer safe for us to live here. You mean there? Where? New York. Wait a second. You're telling me you're coming to Israel now? Are you crazy? Wait, you're moving to New York now? Are you crazy? Turns out one is heading back to Israel and one is leaving Israel. So, you know, pick them, which is worse. Okay. Enjoy Israel. It's hell. Enjoy New York. It's a nightmare. Good luck. That's the dilemma, basically. Yeah. For a lot of Israelis, it's if not here, where? David Halpfinger, thank you so much. Thank you, Rachel. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being an humanitarian. You are a humanitarian also, sir. And I salute that. I commend you and I thank you again. Lavishing praise on President Vladimir Putin, President Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, thanked the Russian leader in St. Petersburg for releasing an American hostage held for more than four years on what the State Department called fabricated charges. The release came after Trump's release on the United States. The release came after Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, thanked the Russian leader in St. The release came after Trump made a direct appeal last week to Putin to let the 74-year-old teacher, Stephen James Hubbard, return to the United States. Russia had accused Hubbard of being a Ukrainian mercenary and sentenced him to more than six years in a penal colony. And the U.S. and Israel have developed plans to strike Iran again after the midterm elections, according to U.S. officials and other people briefed on the deliberations. The targets would likely include Iran's energy infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and missile and drone arsenal. Today's episode was produced by Ricky Novetsky and Stella Tan with help from Rochelle Bonja. It was edited by M.G. Davis-Lynn and Paige Cowett. It contains music by Dan Powell, Rowan Nemisto, and Diane Wong. It was engineered by Chris Wood, and our theme music is by Wonderly. Special thanks to Yar, the U.S. and Israel. That's it for The Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow. The Daily.