Hamas’s bloody October 7 attack hit Israel at a time when it was already facing tremendous domestic instability

The country’s electoral system, which relies on proportional representation, had in recent decades allowed the entry of ever more fringe and extreme political parties into the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
Some say Netanyahu has created a brutish new standard for Israeli politics, and put a terrible dent in domestic democracy. Yet, Netanyahu is not a person in nowadays Israeli politics to be replaced by anyone —the decisions he must make now are of no historic parallels. Israel maintains the most advanced military capabilities in the region and continues to have the strong backing of the United States and other Western powers in its fight against Iran.
However Netanyahu can take no advantage of this weaponry as if it never existed. To be Netanyahu is to sit at the table handcuffed.

#Netanyahu #Israel #Hamas #Knesset

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📰 Parliament of God: Netanyahu’s Coalition Held Hostage by Divine Draft Dodgers

While Israeli soldiers are dying in Gaza, their prime minister is fighting a different kind of war — against his own allies who believe studying Torah is a higher calling than defending the state.

💭 “We cannot accept the principle of drafting seminary students.”

— United Torah Judaism threatens to back opposition efforts to dissolve the Knesset

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government — the most religiously hardwired in Israeli history — may soon collapse, not because of leftist protests, economic pressure, or war, but because ultra-Orthodox parties are unwilling to let yeshiva students wear army boots. Their threat to side with the opposition in a vote to dissolve Parliament reveals who really holds the remote control to Israel’s political life: it’s not the voters, not the generals — but rabbis with red lines and veto power.

Netanyahu’s coalition isn’t just split. It’s spiritually blackmailed. Shas and United Torah Judaism command 18 seats — just enough to push the government off the edge. The irony? The opposition parties, who actually want ultra-Orthodox citizens to serve, are now courting the very parties blocking that reform. In Israel’s great political theatre, everyone plays Judas, and no one plays Jesus.

The threat of dissolution may not bring down the government overnight, but it has already detonated a more dangerous bomb: public trust. Once again, the defense burden falls on the secular, the poor, and the peripheral — while politicians trade exemptions for votes.

🤔Is this still a democracy — or just a synagogue with a nuclear arsenal?

#IsraelPolitics #Netanyahu #DraftLaw #Knesset #UltraOrthodox #CoalitionCollapse #WarAndFaith #FakeDemocracy #TheocraticTrap

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📰 The King of the Crutches: Bibi Rules the Wreckage

💭 “A minority government cannot decide who will live and who will die.”

— Yair Lapid, auditioning for a conscience

📊 Netanyahu: Weakened, Wounded, Still Weaponized
• Two ultra-Orthodox parties walk out, and suddenly Israel’s government becomes Bibi and the 50 dwarves.
• UTJ quits over the draft bill. Shas just threatens to pout. Both want to keep their boys praying while everyone else bleeds.
• The Knesset’s off for summer. The war’s on for eternity. And Netanyahu has three months of political limbo to stage his next resurrection.
• Lapid screams “illegitimate!” but in Israel, legitimacy comes with 61 seats or a smoke-filled deal — whichever’s cheaper.

💼 Draft Dodgers vs. Drone Diplomacy
• The IDF needs Haredim on the front lines. The Haredim need the state to leave them alone.
• Meanwhile, Netanyahu bombs Syria, flirts with the Saudis, and tries to convince Trump he’s still got it.
• The far-right wants no ceasefire. The centrists want elections. Netanyahu wants all of them to wait until October recess.
• Government or ghost ship? Doesn’t matter — the man still holds the wheel and the detonator.

🔎 The Art of Losing Power Without Letting Go
• Minority rule? No problem. The Knesset only falls if it wants to — and most MKs are too scared of the next ballot box.
• Netanyahu’s coalition may be unraveling, but his strategy is pure inertia: keep bombing, keep talking, keep surviving.
• Smotrich and Ben Gvir threaten to jump ship if Bibi signs a deal. But they can’t swim without the Knesset returning from vacation.
• The real war isn’t in Gaza or Syria — it’s in the WhatsApp threads of Likud backbenchers.

🤔 Final Question
How many governments can Netanyahu lose before he finally has to win one?

#Netanyahu #Israel #Knesset #GazaWar #Haredim #ceasefire #Lapid

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📰 Knesset Hearings on Abuse Allegations Risk Turning Faith Into a Scapegoat

💭 “Framing the sexual abuse as ‘systematic religious crimes’… works to demonize the Jewish faith on the whole for the actions of a minority rather than ensure support and sympathy for the victims.”

— Rachel Avraham

📊 The Core Concerns
• June 3 and July 27 hearings on “ritual sexual crimes” triggered intense media coverage.
• National outlets framed unverified allegations as proof of systemic religious abuse.
• Public discourse shifted toward viewing religious spaces as inherently suspect.
• Scholars warn this fuels prejudice, erodes trust, and undermines social cohesion.

💼 Why It Matters
Reducing complex realities to binary labels — “religious = dangerous” — creates an ontological bubble that distorts public perception. This isn’t just about defending faith; it’s about preventing a societal split where religious citizens become permanent suspects and secular-religious dialogue collapses.

📍 Principles at Stake
• Justice demands judging individuals, not entire communities.
• Demonization contradicts the Torah’s “Love your neighbor as yourself” and similar values in other sacred texts.
• Respecting diversity of beliefs strengthens stability and trust.
• History shows hate rhetoric toward religious groups deepens divisions and weakens society.

🤔 The Big Question
Can Israel hold perpetrators accountable without recoding an entire faith as criminal — or has the line between justice and collective blame already been crossed?

#Israel #Knesset #Religion #SocialCohesion #HumanRights

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🇮🇱 Israel’s War Inside the War
As rockets quiet in Gaza, another battle rages in Jerusalem — over who must fight next time.

⚔️ The Draft That Broke the Right
For years, ultra Orthodox Haredim have lived outside Israel’s mandatory service system — a Ben Gurion era deal that once covered a few hundred yeshiva students and now shields tens of thousands.
After the Supreme Court struck down their blanket exemption in 2024, the army began issuing draft orders. Eighty thousand went out; barely three thousand showed up.
The rest prayed — and protested.

🔥 Coalition on the Edge
Netanyahu’s government of rabbis and ultranationalists is now cracking over the same question it was built to avoid.
If the Knesset can’t pass a new exemption law when it reconvenes this week, the coalition could collapse.
Likud’s own Boaz Bismuth has floated a “compromise”: half the Haredi draft cohort enlisted within five years and exemption age set at 26 — a proposal critics call a “draft dodging bill in uniform.”

💣 The Public’s Fury
Nearly three quarters of Israelis now oppose the Haredi exemption. Reservists who’ve spent months in Gaza call it a betrayal.
Polls show an exhausted “serving public” turning its anger not on Hamas but on fellow citizens who won’t serve.
The army warns that without Haredi manpower, Israel can’t sustain another year long war.

🕍 Faith Against the State
Inside Haredi towns, rabbis preach that Torah study protects Israel better than guns. “Torah saves,” they say — and many mean it literally.
Some yeshiva students told reporters they would rather die than serve.
For them, military conscription is not a logistical issue — it is existential.

🧩 A Nation Split by Duty
To serve or not to serve has become Israel’s new religious line — a fault that cuts through every party and synagogue.
As one former defense official warned: “If October 7 had happened two years later, we might not have held out.”
This war may have paused in Gaza — but Israel’s fight with itself is far from over.

#Israel #Haredim #Conscription #Netanyahu #Knesset #ReligionAndState #IDF #CultureWar

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📰 Netanyahu’s Backroom Deal: UTJ’s Eichler Gets Deputy Minister Post for Draft Bill

Netanyahu is set to appoint Yisrael Eichler, a prominent Agudat Yisrael MK, as deputy communications minister—part of a political deal to push through the contentious haredi draft bill. The move will cost NIS 3.5 million from the PM’s office and will allow Yitzhak Pindrus, from the Degel Hatorah faction, to re-enter the Knesset and vote for the bill in Eichler’s place.
​
The UTJ Power Shuffle
Agudat Yisrael and Degel Hatorah, the two factions of United Torah Judaism (UTJ), have been feuding for months. The appointment is seen as a compromise to balance power within the party after its July resignation from the government over the previous draft bill. Pindrus was removed under the Norwegian Law, but this deal brings him back—ensuring UTJ’s support for Netanyahu’s coalition at a critical moment.
​
Critics Call It 'Draft Evasion'
Opposition leader Yair Lapid called the move a disgrace, accusing Netanyahu of “promoting draft evasion from the IDF together with Knesset members who do not believe in the existence of the State of Israel.” Lapid highlighted Eichler’s past statements calling Israel an “enemy state” and a “Hebrew ghetto,” and slammed the allocation of NIS 3.5 million for a new ministerial post while funds for Holocaust survivors were slashed.
​
Survival or Surrender?
With the 2026 state budget vote looming, Netanyahu’s government is playing high-stakes poker. If the budget isn’t passed by March, the Knesset dissolves and elections are triggered. So is this a desperate bid to keep the coalition alive, or just another chapter in Israel’s never-ending saga of political horse-trading?
​
#Israel #Netanyahu #UTJ #DraftBill #PoliticalDeal #Knesset #Haredi

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Haredim Want to Dissolve the Coalition

Netanyahu is no longer able to turn Haredi loyalty into legislative control. Degel HaTorah is now briefing that it may move to dissolve the Knesset after the prime minister told Haredi leaders he does not have the votes for the draft law.

That is the political fact underneath the ritual language. Rabbi Dov Lando’s office confirmed that he gave Degel HaTorah a green light to work toward dissolving the Knesset, and the Jerusalem Post reported that Moshe Gafni conveyed Lando’s demand for immediate progress while Netanyahu answered that the coalition lacks a majority. In plain terms: the exemption machine hit arithmetic.

The draft crisis has been building for months. The IDF has repeatedly warned of manpower shortages, the High Court ruled in 2024 that the old exemption framework had no legal basis, and the coalition has been stuck trying to produce a replacement law without breaking itself apart. The Haredi parties have already shown they are willing to use the budget and coalition discipline as leverage.

This is why the current escalation matters. If Degel HaTorah joins with the opposition on a dissolution bill, the fight stops being a negotiation over yeshiva exemptions and becomes an election trigger. Netanyahu can still stall, bargain, and threaten, but he cannot manufacture votes he does not have.

The deeper lesson is simple: the coalition’s glue was always conditional. Once the Haredi leadership decided the law was not coming, the government lost the illusion that loyalty was the same thing as control. That illusion is now gone.

#Israel #Netanyahu #Haredi #Knesset #draftlaw

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Knesset Inc.: The Closing-Down Sale Before The Vote

The Knesset is in recess. Nobody told the money.

On Tuesday, the Finance Committee approved 267 million shekels ($88 million) in coalition funds. This happened weeks after the government itself dissolved parliament for the October 27 election.

MK Naama Lazimi called it plainly. "Theft from the serving public," she told the committee.

That's not a figure of speech. The package includes 26 million shekels to keep yeshiva students from dropping out, 12.5 million for "Haredi culture," and funding for the Vaad HaYeshivot — an organization whose actual track record is helping young men dodge the draft. Somewhere, a reservist is reading this between rotations.

The same marathon session added another 113 million shekels for settlement expansion. That pushes this year's settlement budget to a record 821 million shekels. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich billed it as funding for "more than 70 archeological and heritage sites".

Activists stormed the hearing room. Committee chairman Hanoch Milwidsky had a warm welcome ready: "a mixed multitude, these are worse than [Nukhba]. Disgusting. Repulsive". Comparing protesters to the Hamas unit that carried out the October 7 massacre is one way to change the subject from a budget line item.

Hiddush and Lazimi tried the courts instead. They asked the Supreme Court to block the meeting before it started. Justice Alex Stein declined. "I did not see fit to grant interim relief," he ruled. Then he ordered the petitioners to report back by 9 a.m. Wednesday on exactly what got approved.

The court can always read the receipt after checkout. Eighty-four days before an election, the recess is decorative, the cash register stays open, and the only oversight in the room is a judge who'll get back to you in the morning.

So who's actually on recess here — the Knesset, or the rule of law?

#Israel #Knesset #ElectoralBribery #CoalitionFunds

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Israel's Democracy: Where Everyone Agrees the Economy Matters and Nobody Votes On It

A new poll just handed Israeli politics its own confession booth, and the testimony is glorious. Ask citizens what's most urgent, and 26.4% across every religious stripe say the economy — the one thing seculars, traditionalists, and the religious actually agree on. Ask what decides their vote, and the economy drops to fourth place at 9.6%. First place, at 30.9%, is "the leader's personality".

So Israelis vote on vibes, then wonder why the cost of living never gets fixed. Democracy, but make it a personality cult.

Speaking of cults: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu polls at 29.2% overall, yet among voters who think the country's on the right track, 60.9% call him the best man for the job — while only 39.5% of that same happy crowd say they'll actually vote Likud. A 21-point gap between loving the king and voting for his party. Somewhere in there is a man Israelis want on the throne but not on the ballot.

Meanwhile the two camps can't even agree on what country they live in. 42.8% of secular Israelis insist Israel is basically a religious state; 49.8% of religious Israelis insist it's basically secular. Both sides are convinced they're losing the same war — a fight with no finish line, because nobody's actually counting the same scoreboard.

Into this void steps Derech Eretz, running the state's plumbing because the state itself apparently can't read paperwork: the Chief Rabbinate, per the report, still can't process Soviet-era documents, leaving Russian-speaking Israelis waiting years for the kind of marriage and burial approvals other citizens get in a week. The fix on the table — elected neighborhood councils, a Russian-speaking chief rabbi — isn't radical. It's just what happens when volunteers have to build the office the government forgot to open.

Two-thirds of Israelis are dissatisfied with their government. Nine in ten have already made up their minds anyway. If that's not a definition of a stuck system, what is?

If nobody votes on the problem they call urgent, and nobody agrees on what country they're voting for — who exactly is the electorate representing?

#israel #knesset #democracy #russianaliyah #netanyahu

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Sailors Vote. Seniors Travel.

Israel’s High Court is hearing three petitions against the Knesset’s decision not to renew special polling stations in retirement and assisted-living facilities.

The arrangement worked in the previous two elections. Now tens of thousands of residents must reach the polling station assigned to their registered address — usually an address they no longer live at — or not vote at all.

Supreme Court President Isaac Amit, who chaired the Central Elections Committee in the last election, said the old system had worked “excellently.” Then he supplied the comparison the Knesset did not want.

“There is a rumor,” Amit said, “that the number of elderly people is rising and the number of sailors is declining.”

Israeli law still makes special provision for sailors who cannot reach a polling station.

The Knesset removed a provision for elderly citizens who cannot walk to one. Amit did not accuse anyone of voter suppression. He simply placed the two facts beside each other. That was enough.

The Central Elections Committee recommended preserving the on-site stations and asked to anchor them for the October election.

The Constitution Committee stripped the measure from the law anyway. In the last election, about 27,000 residents of these facilities voted through the special arrangement — roughly 80% turnout, above the national average.

For Yona Peled, 86, the problem is not constitutional theory. She has voted in every election and now does not know how she will vote in this one. Lea Korner, 84, uses a wheelchair and says the decision makes her feel irrelevant to the country.

At one assisted-living complex, residents estimate that at least 150 out of roughly 450 people will not make the trip.

The Court has not ruled. Election Day is October 27.

Israel can bring a ballot box to a sailor at sea. For an 86-year-old in a retirement home, apparently, democracy requires transportation.

#Israel #elections #HighCourt #Knesset #elderly #democracy #fakeDemocracy

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🚔📊 Israel’s Top Party for Personal Security

A recent HaMadad survey, analyzed by Shmuel Rosner, placed Otzma Yehudit first among parties Israelis associate with fighting crime and improving personal security. The underlying crosstabs, sample details, field dates, and margin of error were not available in the material reviewed, so the finding should be treated as a reported poll result rather than a complete measurement of public opinion.

The party’s leader is National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has held the portfolio since December 2022.

Crime and violence remain a central problem, especially in Arab communities. The Abraham Initiatives has recorded 151 Arab citizens killed in crime- and violence-related incidents in Israel so far in 2026, according to figures cited in recent coverage.

Ben-Gvir can point to policies that are highly visible to his voters: looser gun-licensing rules, tougher prison conditions for Palestinian security detainees, and a campaign against unlicensed construction. His political advantage is the ability to sell public anxiety back to the people who feel it.

A separate and stronger claim is the demolition count.

Ben-Gvir announced this week that authorities had demolished their 10,000th “illegal structure” during his enforcement drive. The milestone was marked in Juarish, a neighborhood in Ramla. The ministry’s wording referred to structures across the country, a category that can include permanent buildings, shacks, caravans, tents, and agricultural enclosures.

In a response to criticism, Ben-Gvir said he had demolished 10,000 “houses” in the Negev in the past year and a half. The claim is broader than his ministry’s own announcement in two ways: it turns nationwide structures into homes, and relocates the entire count to the Negev.

Those are not interchangeable figures. The improvement in enforcement may be real. The political number is doing more work than the underlying category can support.

Ben-Gvir has also made political symbolism central to his public appeal: his past portrait of Baruch Goldstein, the noose imagery used by his circle, and his promotion of capital punishment for people convicted of terrorism. A death-penalty bill does not itself specify hanging, and the proposed execution facility is a separate policy initiative.

The poll returns us to the same question. Israelis may rank Otzma Yehudit highest on personal security not because crime has fallen under Ben-Gvir, but because he has made fear, punishment, and visible force the clearest product on offer.

#Israel #BenGvir #OtzmaYehudit #Crime #PersonalSecurity #Politics #Knesset #FarRight

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🇵🇸 “Palestine Exists,” Says Ra’am. The Denial Choir Begins.

Ra’am convened in Tayibe to select its Knesset slate and authorize party leader Mansour Abbas to reserve slots for possible recruits. Abbas opened with a statement designed to trip every Israeli coalition wire:

“The State of Palestine exists, and most of the world recognizes it, except for the United States and Israel. We want them to recognize it as well, and we are working to achieve peace, reconciliation and an end to the occupation and the conflict.”

The conference approved a list led by Abbas, followed by Walid Taha, Walid al-Hawashla, Iman Khatib-Yassin, and Yasser Hujeirat. It also authorized Abbas to reserve places on the ticket while talks continue over a possible move by former Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovitz. Abbas said Segalovitz would be suited to serve as national security minister; Segalovitz has not formally joined Ra’am.

Then Israel’s political class began racing each other to reject the premise.

Gadi Eisenkot wrote: “There is no Palestinian state, and under a government we establish, no Palestinian state will be created.”

Benjamin Netanyahu seized on the same line. “As long as I am prime minister, there will be no Palestinian state controlled by Iran: not in Gaza, and not in Judea and Samaria. Period.” He then cast Abbas as proof of the danger posed by a prospective left-wing coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The point is not that Abbas, Eisenkot, and Netanyahu agree on Palestinian statehood. They plainly do not. Abbas’s line became raw political material: Ra’am offered recognition; Eisenkot offered refusal; Netanyahu turned both into a campaign argument about coalition arithmetic.

The Joint List is watching from the Arab flank. Its chairman, Yousef Jabareen, says the reunited alliance expects more than 10 seats in the next election and claims Ra’am was invited to join but “was not serious.” Ra’am, meanwhile, is betting that Abbas’s route still runs through a future governing coalition.

In Israeli election politics, a Palestinian state can be a legal fact, a security threat, an impossible promise, and a coalition weapon — often inside a single news cycle.

#Israel #Palestine #Raam #MansourAbbas #Eisenkot #Netanyahu #Elections #Knesset

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🗳 The Right Counts Seats and Assigns Blame

Gilad Erdan says there will be “a major merger on the center-right before the election.” His intended partners are responding with the enthusiasm of people reading their names in a hostile takeover notice.

The Zionist Home–Reservists Party, led by Chili Tropper and Yoaz Hendel, called it strange that a party named “Unity” had focused on division since its creation. It said that if the job is branding every rival a leftist, Erdan has Netanyahu covered.

The numbers explain the panic.

A Kan News poll by Dudi Hasid gives Ofer Winter’s proposed list five seats if it includes journalist Netaly Shem Tov, activist Yoseph Haddad, and bereaved mother Lali Deri. But the new party would draw enough voters from Religious Zionism to push Bezalel Smotrich below the electoral threshold. The pro-Netanyahu bloc would fall from 51 seats to 50. Winter’s five seats would not expand the right; they would rearrange its losses.

Netanyahu’s answer appears to be political triage: attack Winter, ignore Erdan, and persuade Avi Maoz and Moshe Feiglin not to run. This is not a strategy for building a majority. It is an attempt to stop longtime allies from becoming statistical debris.

Erdan, meanwhile, is talking to Benny Gantz about a possible joint run. Kan reported that the two held preliminary talks, while Erdan has also met with Winter. For now, the parties are negotiating the same question in different rooms: who can merge without disappearing?

On the other side, Roy Folkman is reportedly weighing a return to politics after leaving Erdan’s camp and being approached by Gadi Eisenkot. Eisenkot’s new party has a different problem: it lacks parliamentary experience. Folkman chaired Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu faction and knows how the Knesset works. A party built around a former army chief may now need a veteran legislator to explain the machinery.

Then there is the old score.
Eli Feldstein says Netanyahu excluded Itamar Ben-Gvir from the war cabinet at the start of the war after security officials warned him about the national security minister’s conduct. Ben-Gvir says he was excluded because Eisenkot and Gantz boycotted him. Two explanations for the same absence. Neither cancels the other.

And from Ra’am, a party routinely discussed as a potential coalition partner, MK Walid Taha says Israel is developing “an apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

The election has not started. The blocs are already negotiating their autopsies.

#Israel #Elections #Netanyahu #Erdan #Winter #Smotrich #Eisenkot #Knesset

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Six Polls, Six Israels

The candidate slates are closed. The ballots are now the same everywhere. Yet Likud ranges from 19 seats on Channel 13 to 31 on Channel 14. Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar ranges from 22 to 25. One country has six polling universes and no agreed reality.

Five polls put Netanyahu’s bloc, including Ofer Winter’s Amcha Yisrael, in the low 50s. Channel 13 gives it 53. Kan gives it 52. Walla gives it 51. Channel 12 gives it 52. The Maariv average is 53.6. None delivers the 61 seats needed to govern.

Channel 14 sees another planet. Its NEXT DATA survey gives Likud 31 seats and the right-wing bloc 64. It also puts Netanyahu ahead of Eisenkot as preferred prime minister, 51% to 34%. In that version of Israel, the coalition does not need a deal. It needs a victory speech and a larger teleprompter.

i24NEWS offers a third version. Likud leads with 27 seats. Yashar has 22. Netanyahu’s bloc reaches 56 without Winter. Eisenkot’s anti-Netanyahu bloc has 48. The Arab parties hold 12. A majority still requires somebody to sit with somebody they spent the campaign calling an existential threat.

Thirty-eight lists met the Sept. 8 deadline for the Oct. 27 election. The Central Elections Committee is due to finalize them on Sept. 27. No major merger went through. Winter runs separately. Bennett and Eisenkot run separately. Ben-Gvir runs separately. Smotrich and Moshe Feiglin run together. The merger reserve is gone.

That is the real polling result. Netanyahu cannot reach 61 in five surveys. Eisenkot needs Arab parties to reach it. Every leader is selling a government.

#IsraelElections #Netanyahu #Eisenkot #Knesset

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The Sixteen-Seat Waiting Room

News 12 gives Netanyahu’s bloc 50 seats and Eisenkot’s 54. News 13 gives them 52 each. The pollsters move two seats across the room. Neither side reaches the 61-seat door.

The rest of the Knesset does not belong to either bloc: 12 seats for the Arab parties and four for Hendel-Zelekha. Ra’am holds four and the Joint List eight in both surveys.

Hendel-Zelekha also gets four in both. The arithmetic is not a mystery. It is a waiting room with 16 chairs and two men insisting they booked the building.

The opposition has already arranged its spare votes. Bennett and Lapid’s Together signed a surplus-vote agreement with Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu. Eisenkot’s Yashar signed with Yair Golan’s Democrats. The parties have divided the leftovers before the country has chosen the meal.

News 12 gives Itamar Ben-Gvir six seats and the Smotrich-Feiglin joint slate five. News 13 gives Ben-Gvir seven and the Smotrich-Feiglin slate five. The religious right is splitting its vote into competing claims on the same government. Netanyahu needs every seat. His allies have made fragmentation their contribution.

The surplus-vote agreements can shift a final seat after the initial allocation.

The polls show two blocs without a majority. The paperwork is already voting.

#IsraelElections #Netanyahu #Eisenkot #Knesset

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The Disqualification Assembly Line

Justice Noam Sohlberg opened Israel’s Central Elections Committee hearings with a warning that disqualifying a candidate or list denies an entire public the right to vote for it.

The committee then disqualified Ofer Cassif, Sami Abu Shehadeh, Ra’am and the Joint List in one day.

Cassif was barred by 19 votes to five, with two abstentions. He called the outcome predetermined and legally baseless.

The committee also voted to disqualify Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh. Reports differ on the tally, giving it as either 30–4 or 31–4, but agree on the unusual part: Sohlberg voted for the ban.

Chairmen of the committee generally avoid voting unless a tie requires it. Sohlberg said he would waive that neutrality because, in his view, this was a clear case.

At the hearing, Abu Shehadeh said: “I have never supported Hamas’s armed struggle against the State of Israel.” It made no difference.

Yair Golan backed Itamar Ben-Gvir’s petition to ban him, saying there should be “no discounts” for either Abu Shehadeh or Ben-Gvir and that both should be disqualified. Ben-Gvir’s own contribution was cleaner: “Sami Abu Shehadeh, bara, bara from the Knesset.”

Ra’am was disqualified 18–5, with one abstention, without Sohlberg’s support. Mansour Abbas answered that “Abu Yair,” who negotiated with him at Balfour, understands that disqualifying Ra’am is the only way to stop the next change government.

The Joint List was also barred and said the Central Elections Committee should rename itself the “Kahanist Elections Committee.”

The party Yachad, which said the previous day it would not join “the disqualification game,” voted to disqualify Abu Shehadeh. Its representatives skipped the votes on Ra’am and the Joint List. In Israel’s election ritual, the principle is apparently sacred enough to observe selectively.

The Supreme Court now has the final word. Decisions barring candidates or lists do not take effect without judicial review, and Israeli reporting expects the court to overturn at least some of the committee’s decisions.

Tomorrow, the committee turns to petitions against Otzma Yehudit, Religious Zionism, Zehut and the Democrats.

The committee began with a lecture on voters’ rights and ended by removing their options. Tomorrow it will decide whether the same law has room for Ben-Gvir.

#IsraelElections #Knesset #Raam #Balad

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The Campaign’s Rental Democracy

A new poll gives Yashar! 22 seats, Likud 18 and Bennett’s Beyachad 13. Israel’s election campaign has already found its central ideology: everyone is somebody else’s existential threat.

The full result puts the Democrats at 11, Yisrael Beytenu and Otzma Yehudit at nine each, the Joint List at seven, Shas, United Torah Judaism and Religious Zionism at six each, Ra’am at five, and Amcha Yisrael and the Reservists at four apiece. That is a crowded Knesset before anyone has formed a government or explained who will sit with whom.

Beyachad’s Ram Ben-Barak called Netanyahu “Israel’s greatest enemy.” Bennett went to Bnei Brak, faced activist Mordechai David, and told him: “I suggest you enlist quickly, because once I am prime minister, you won’t get a shekel from the state.” David then blocked Bennett’s vehicle. Israeli politics has reached the stage where conscription policy is settled through traffic obstruction.

Likud candidate Elisha Medan offered the counter-slogan: “I’m not sure pushing an entire public is the way.” Democrat candidate Moshe Radman said there was room for demands to recognize the Nakba and accusations of war crimes. The campaign now has a complete menu: end the draft exemptions, protect the draft exemptions, recognize the Nakba, disqualify the Arabs and call Netanyahu the enemy.

The Democrats demanded personal security for party leader Yair Golan, arguing that police assigned him the same threat level as Gadi Eisenkot while providing protection to Eisenkot.

The High Court will sit as an expanded nine-justice panel on Thursday to decide the disqualification of Ofer Cassif and Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh.

Meanwhile, Justice Noam Sohlberg issued a temporary order barring the Satmar-linked association HaShekel HaTahor from offering payments to people who promise not to vote.

The petition alleged payments worth $200 to people who declared that they would abstain. Israeli law prohibits a bribe meant to influence a voter either to vote or to stay home.

The country is choosing a parliament. One party threatens to cut off a citizen’s money unless he enlists. Another group allegedly pays voters to stay home. The court decides who may stand. The poll tells everyone they are winning.

#IsraelElections #Knesset #Bennett #Netanyahu

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The Payroll Armies’ Graveyard

Kabul, Damascus and Mokha did not fall because Islamists discovered a mystical substitute for money. They fell because their defenders were paid by patrons, commanded by competing bosses and asked to die for states that had already been privatized.

The Taliban, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Houthis differ in doctrine, social base and foreign sponsors. Taliban fighters had Pakistani sanctuary. HTS grew under a Turkish umbrella. The Houthis received Iranian technology and military support. None of them won alone.

They shared something more practical. Each had spent years building a system in which the gunman, the tax collector, the judge and the local administrator answered to the same political order. Kabul had payrolls.

Assad had Russian air power and Iranian militias. Yemen’s Joint Forces had Saudi and Emirati cash. Their enemies had a chain of command that reached beyond their own countries.

America spent about $88 billion building Afghan security forces. Saudi Arabia budgeted billions to pay Yemeni soldiers and civil servants.

Assad raised military salaries days before fleeing Damascus. The money kept arriving because the sponsors mistook the payroll for the army.

The Houthis did not beat a richer enemy by abolishing interest. They beat a fragmented enemy because their own administration, coercion, taxation and recruitment were controlled by one movement. The financial doctrine matters because it tightens that control. It does not turn theology into logistics.

The lesson for Washington and the Gulf is not that Islamism has a magic formula. It is worse: states cannot rent a national army from men whose loyalty is divided between salary, tribe, commander and foreign sponsor.

#Yemen #Afghanistan #Syria #Houthis
#IsraelElections #Knesset #Bennett #Netanyahu

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52–52, Until the Court Counts

Kan 11’s latest poll gives Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar! 23 seats and Likud 21. Netanyahu’s bloc and the “change” bloc each land on 52. The remaining 16 seats include 12 held by Ra’am and the Joint List, the same two Arab lists the Central Elections Committee has moved to remove from the ballot.

The headline gap between Yashar! and Likud matters inside the opposition. Eisenkot, not Bennett, would lead its largest party. It does not change the government arithmetic. No bloc is near 61. The government depends on a handful of seats, the legal status of the Arab lists and the willingness of parties to sit with one another after election night.

On September 23, the Central Elections Committee voted 18–5, with one abstention, to bar Ra’am. The petitions came from Likud, Otzma Yehudit and the Choosing Life forum of bereaved families. The same 18–5 result barred the Joint List, which combines Hadash, Ta’al and Balad. The Attorney General’s Office opposed both bans, arguing that the evidence did not meet Israel’s demanding legal standard for disqualification.

The committee also barred two individual candidates:

Hadash MK Ofer Cassif, by 19 votes to five with two abstentions. The committee accepted the Likud petition on the ground of alleged support for armed struggle.

Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh, by roughly 30 or 31 votes to four. Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, the committee chair, joined that vote, breaking the customary restraint of chairs in candidate-disqualification cases.

The court must approve a ban on an individual candidate before it takes effect. Parties have to file their own appeals against a ban on their list.

That procedural difference matters: Cassif and Abu Shehadeh reach the Supreme Court automatically; Ra’am and the Joint List must ask it to reverse the committee.

If both lists are ultimately excluded, their seats do not vanish. The Knesset still has 120 seats, and the votes redistribute among lists that pass the 3.25 percent threshold.

A simple proportional redistribution puts each major bloc roughly five or six seats higher, still short of 61. Actual results would depend on Arab turnout, whether Arab voters move to the Democrats or another eligible list, and which smaller parties clear the threshold.

Lower turnout also reduces the raw vote total needed to pass the threshold, raising the relative value of disciplined electorates, especially Haredi and religious-Zionist voters.

The political effect is stranger than the arithmetic. Ra’am can, at least in theory, help a change bloc reach a working arrangement. The Joint List cannot plausibly be the coalition partner of Bennett, Eisenkot and Liberman. Their 12 poll seats therefore look like one coalition resource only from a distance.

Disqualifying Ra’am and the Joint List would remove Likud’s favorite accusation: that the opposition intends to govern through Mansour Abbas.

It would also remove an internal fracture inside the opposition, where Yair Golan is open to Arab participation while Eisenkot, Bennett and Liberman reject it.

That gives the opposition a cleaner story: a Zionist cabinet of the center and moderate right. It especially helps Eisenkot, whose party leads the field but whose coalition has no natural path through the Arab lists.

Netanyahu gets a different benefit. The exclusion fight turns the campaign toward security, loyalty and representation.

Even if the Supreme Court restores the lists, Likud can say the court enabled the coalition it warned about. If the bans stand, Arab turnout may fall and the right’s disciplined base becomes more valuable.

#IsraelElections #Knesset #Raam #Yashar

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450 Million Slips, One Verdict Pending

Israel has printed 450 million ballot slips for 7,331,981 eligible voters. That is about 60 slips per voter. Only one of them counts.

Voting for the 26th Knesset began at 7 a.m. at 12,018 polling stations. Thirty-six lists are competing for 120 seats.

Most stations close at 10 p.m., while stations in smaller communities, hospitals, prisons, and nursing homes close at 8 p.m.

Trains run free of charge on election day. Election monitors will carry some 15,000 cameras.

Tonight's exit polls will leave a large block of ballots unopened: an estimated 600,000–650,000 double-envelope ballots from soldiers and other voters casting ballots outside their assigned stations.

Officials must first check for duplicate voting, then separate the outer envelopes, which identify the voter, from the sealed ballots.

Those ballots equal roughly 15 Knesset seats. Election-night celebrations will begin before they are counted.

#IsraelElection #Knesset #Election2026

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