By Jay H. Ell
Within the space of a week, from 27 October to 3 November, two momentous elections are scheduled, one in Israel and the other in America. The outcomes of these events are regarded as inflection points for the political systems in both those countries. In more ways than one, the results in one country will also impact on the other. Both Trump and Netanyahu would like to continue their authoritarian agendas, while their opponents would like to change course.
In America some Republican influencers are attacking Trump for his never-ending war with Iran, having allegedly being persuaded Netanyahu and ‘Jewish money’ that this was necessary. (See my previous blog, ‘It’a always The Jews”).
In Israel, there are stark divisions between the centre and the right. The small extreme right wing as well as Arab parties add some variables to the election outcome. The central debate in Israel is about responsibility for the breakdown in intelligence that allowed the Hamas incursion on 7 October 2023, and the management of the subsequent conflicts.
Both incumbent governments – in Israel and the United States — face dissatisfaction about the consequences of the war. Netanyahu faces added issues, including his management of the hostage crisis, — 100 deaths and thousands injured — while certain parts of Israel are still uninhabitable.
The good news, for what the polls are worth, is that Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israeli Chief of Staff, has an excellent shot at ousting the governing coalition, and that Trump faces a gigantic loss in the November mid-terms. Both the American and Israeli leaders are charismatic populists who have dominated politics in their respective countries, the latter for three decades, and Trump for one. Both are desperate to retain power, fearing the investigative aftermath of their regimes.
Every move Netanyahu makes now – especially in respect of his involvement in various conflicts — will be calibrated against its potential results at the polls. On the other hand, Trump is using every possible means to influence the electoral process itself.
Should Netanyahu be ousted, the US Democratic Party would heave a sigh of relief, as some of its supporters oppose America’s support for Israel. They also include some anti-semites, led by the influencer Hasan Piker. In fact, the Democratic Party is currently opposed to providing Israel with offensive weaponry, and advocates abolishing its annual subsidy. (See my blog: The Democratic tea party).
The Republicans too have a huge problem as their biggest influencer, the antisemitic Tucker Carlson, is a key supporter of Vice-President Vance, the odds on-favourite for nomination as they Republican candidate for the 2028 presidential election.
Then there is Elon Musk, the Republicans’ largest donor. When asked recently on X, his social media platform, whether Jews were white, he went into a bizarre discussion about genetics, which basically boiled down to ‘… I know a Jew when I see one’ (regardless of what he may say about this).
Should Trump endorse Netanyahu, as bizarre as this might be, this would help to solidify the current governing coalition. It is accepted wisdom that Trump has had enough of his Israeli counterpart — even to the point of screaming at him, ‘All the Jews hate you!’[
Should Bibi win, he way well wade in take the credit. Trump answers to nobody, and does not care about the impact of his narcissistic behaviour on his Party.
It is all very complicated, and there is a disconnect between the views of Israelis and 70 percent of American Jews who publicly disapprove of the Israeli regime, let alone defend them. There is far greater consensus on the right of Israel to exist as a state.
The Western democratic community currently favour a two-state solution. But this is off the radar for Israelis, following a succession of failed peace talks interspersed by Hamas and Hezbollah attacks on Israel at the behest of Iran.
The final nail in the coffin of serious talks between the two parties about a two-state solution came when Mahmoud Abbas rejected Ehud Olmert’s generous offer in 2008. More significantly, Hamas’s barbaric attack from Gaza on 7 October 2023 buried the two-=state solution for the foreseeable future.
In 2005, Prime Minister Sharon unilaterally handed over Gaza – then an economically viable state – to the Palestinians, with settlers being dragged out by the Israeli Defence Force. Ever since Hamas rose to power in 2007, there have been no further elections. There has been internal strife, and a highly repressive regime. Current peace talks between Israel and Hamas have reached a stalemate.
There is also the incongruity of those who want to give the Palestinians territory ‘from the river to the sea’. Where would eight million Jews go? In 1938, at the Evian Conference convened cynically by Franklin Roosevelt, 32 countries offered no help with what what was obviously due to follow in Europe.
Other than the Dominican Republic taking in about 1000 Jews, the remainder were left to the tender mercies of Hitler, and then of Stalin. Added to this, in the 1948 war on Israel initiated by the Arab nations following the partition imposed by the United Nations, 800 000 Palestinians were either displaced, left voluntarily, or were forced out. Exactly the same number of Jews were expelled from Arab countries.
Where were Jews supposed to go after World War Two? There was never a time when there weren’t Jews in Israel. Following the European pogroms, Nazism and Stalinism, they went to Israel in their thousands. Where were more than a million Russian ‘refuseniks’ supposed to go? The Balfour Declaration and the subsequent UN partition provided an answer.
By now, it is patently obvious that the overwhelming number of attacks on Zionism – essentially, the belief that the Jewish people have a right to life in a sovereign Jewish state in their ancestral homeland — are either coupled directly or indirectly with antisemitism. It is also patently clear that the Israeli government under the  Netanyahu cabal is a disgrace – much like the American federal government under Trump, and, for that matter, Russia under Putin, and Iran under the Ayatollah.
*They are all an affront to humanity. However, there are no routine protests and violent demonstrations around places of worship of Christian Evangelicals, the Russian Orthodox, or Shia Muslims. While, if Netanyahu is not unseated, 7 October 2023 and the conduct of the subsequent war will be the subject of impartial commissions, the issue of settler terrorism towards Palestinians on the West Bank and the attempts to drive them out will remain a festering sore on the Jewish psyche, both in Israel and in the Diaspora.
In quantitative terms, the settler violence is far less than the murders of tens of thousand of protestors in various countries, the deportation of hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants to dangerous countries, deaths in detention camps, and deaths in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Neverless, Israel – and, by association, Jews in the diaspora — are the central focus of world attention. It is what it is, and qualitatively the attempt to displace and victimise the West Bank Palestinians fits the rubric. It is absolutely indefensible.Â
So far, Netanyahu has not paid much more than lip service in stopping criminal settlers even in the face of strong protests by representatives of Trump’s government The American Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee recently visited Palestinian victims in demonstration od American support. But back to the Israeli elections.
The Israeli parliament is called the Knesset. It has 120 members, elected in terms of a PR system based on the original Zionist Council. At the moment the polls show that Eisenkot’s Yashari Party is ahead of Netanyahu’s Likud by one or two seats. They both have coalitions adding up to 53 seats each. This is eight short of the 61 needed to form a majority government.
In a breakthrough event, the Arab Party Ra’am has placed a Jewish Israeli, Yoav Sagolovich, second on its list. It is polling at five seats. Sagolovich is a former police chief who brought down the murder rate in the Arab residential areas, and is highly respected in the Arab community. The Joint Arab List now musters nine seats, bolstering its opposition to the Likud government.
As matters stand, the 14 Arab members would not join the coalition, and all of Eisenkot’s partners tolerate would not tolerate this either, but if Eisenkot has the most elected members, he would be called upon to form the government. The Arab parties would not oppose his government, and/or would certainly not vote for a Netanyahu government. So it seems highly unlikely that Netanyahu will be prime minister again. The best he can hope for is that circumstances will change before another election.
Of course, all of this is subject to change, and the current prime minister is desperate. Besides his legal problems,his legacy is at grave risk if an independent commission into October 7 and the subsequent conduct of the war holds him responsible. His wife, Sara, recently went onto a supportive TV Channel and implied that Yair Golan, the then Deputy Chief of Staff, knew about the Hamas raid beforehand, and did not inform the prime minister.
Golan, who currently head the Democratic Party, and supports Eisenkot, it regarded as a hero of that day, rushing to the invasion and rescuing a number of young Israelis from the marauding Hamas.
Absurdly, Netanyahu’s sycophantic staff maintain that if the prime minister would have been woken up earlier, he would have saved the day. Meanwhile, it took him two hours to leave his residence while he waited for another hour before contacting the Chief of Staff. In fact, he had been warned twice – first, a general warning by his own intelligence that his attempt to subvert the judicial system had weakened the country. And more recently, it has come to light that, days before 7 October, he had been ‘urgently’ tipped off by the head of the UAE that the Hamas leader Yawar Sinwar was preparing a ‘massive attack’.
Sara Netanyahu isn’t the only other member of the family who presents an election issue. Their son Yair, an army reservist, was in a $5,000 a month apartment in Miami with security for the duration of the war. By contrast, Eisenkot lost a son and two nephews in the fighting against Hamas and Hezbollah.
There is one other wrinkle. Netanyahu’s 53-member coalition is dependent on two small right-wing parties getting the required 3.25 percent of votes to get representation at all. The Religious Zionist Party led by Minister Smotrich, which was on its deathbed,  has been joined by a right-wing fanatic, Moshe Feiglin, who was so off the charts that Netanyahu had him thrown out of Likud. Another fringe right-wing group led by Brigadier General Winter is also to the far right of Netanyahu. Like some others on the right-wing slate, including Feiglin, his solution for the Gaza Palestinians is ‘migration’. Even if Netanyahu had a shot, he would have his work cut out to weld this crowd together.
Eisenkot is playing his cards close to his chest. He wisely claims Israel’s greatest threat is its own internal divisions, rather than Iran and its proxies. His positive assets include trust, authenticity, his record of service in the Defence Force, and his ability to form relationships. Unlike Netanyahu, who comes from old Israeli ‘aristocracy,  Eisenkot is a first-generation Israeli of a poor family who emigrated from Morocco.
The former Chief of Staff has only been in politics for a few years. He joined Netanyahu’s cabinet in a Government of Unity following the slaughter of October 7. His credibility is only enhanced by the fact that he left in June 2024. As the leader of a newly formed party, Yashari, he has surprised the pundits by rapidly becoming the obvious choice to replace Netanyahu.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
For the record, there is to a third set of elections this year — on the West Bank. This is for the Legislative Assembly. The p0residential elections are also scheduled for next year. These are the first plebiscites since 2005, when Mahmoud Abbas was elected president. The outcome will also play a role in what follows in the region.
There is plenty of blame to go around for the current Israeli/Palestinian crisis. Palestinians have been manipulated by their own terrorists, and used as pawns by other Arab nations and Iran with about as much help as the Jews received in Europe and Russia in the past century.
I(n the meantime, Israel is experiencing a brain drain. During the past three years, nearly 1400 doctors have ‘been away’ for longer than a year.
The worldwide surge in antisemitism centres on what happens in Israel. Netanyahu has offered naught for comfort. Ironically, Arab citizens of Israel may play a significant role in the slow process of healing a beleaguered nation that has succeeded beyond expectation, in military, economic, scientific and technological fields. It now needs to face reality and take a lesson from i’s own Torah: ‘You shall not abhor an Egyptian as you were a stranger in his land.’ Meanwhile the Diaspora Jews wait in Angst.
Featured image: Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump in the White House in 2020 … both are in the firing line in looming elections. (White House Photo / Shealah Craighead).
This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on the website titled ‘I Write What I like’. Jay H. Ell is the psuedonym of a South African-born professional living in the United States. ‘I Write What I Like’ is the name of a column he wrote in a student newspaper at the University of Cape Town, many years ago.