Institutions bend before October voting begins

A month before the election, a committee made up of the Knesset's own parties has voted to keep two Arab slates off the ballot. The Supreme Court gets the final word.

I'm Maya.

And I'm Amos. This is another episode of Sixty One, a Daily Lion production, where we ask what kind of country Israel is supposed to be, one week at a time.

We're starting with the opposition. It's trying to build a coalition to replace the current government, and Gadi Eisenkot is struggling against the campaign framing from Likud. But neither side is actually capturing the public. Both major Israeli political parties each poll at barely twenty percent of voters.

Those in the anti-Netanyahu camp see a bloc that is actively sabotaging its own chances. They note that when Bennett led the campaign, the opposition held sixty to sixty-one projected seats. But with Eisenkot standing as its primary leader, that advantage has evaporated. The factions can't agree on a unified ticket. Benny Gantz insists he needs to lead the path. And Bennett suggests the party heads can simply sit in a room and reach an agreement after the votes are counted. Polling estimates show Likud falling to between eighteen and twenty-four seats from the thirty-two it won in November twenty twenty-two. And they argue that instead of capitalizing on this, the opposition's campaigners are trying to win swing voters with policy points. They note a quarter of an entire draft cohort isn't enlisted into military service because of political alliances with the ultra-Orthodox. They point to Bill Clinton's nineteen ninety-two victory, driven by the slogan about the economy, arguing elections are won by offering an emotionally inspiring vision grounded in shared identity, not by reciting statistics. For the anti-Netanyahu camp, this failure to forge a genuine alliance leaves the electorate trapped in a polarized stalemate. An N twelve poll measured a potential joint ticket of Gilad Erdan's Unity party and Blue and White at under three percent, short of the threshold to get into the Knesset. Erdan ultimately withdrew, noting voters remain fundamentally focused on who will be prime minister rather than backing a generic unity alternative.

The right reads that polling very differently. To Likud's campaigners, it shows an opposition led by out-of-touch establishment figures who'd endanger the country. They argue since every poll shows the opposition falling short of a sixty-one-seat majority even with a yes vote from Mansour Abbas, Eisenkot would have to depend entirely on anti-Zionist Arab factions. Challenged on this in internal meetings, Eisenkot asked his colleagues what alternative they have. Beyond coalition math, the right attacks his personal fitness to represent Israel. Campaigners contrast his speaking style with the prime minister's polished delivery, circulating clips of Donald Trump remarking he can't understand a word Eisenkot says. Right-wing media figures dismiss the former chief of staff as someone who doesn't read books, lacks education, and understands nothing of military literature, joking he perhaps read Harry Potter. The conservative magazine Mida argues these opposition figures have proven records of weakening the military and undermining democratic norms when they hold power. They point out the Gideon multi-year plan eliminated about two thousand five hundred permanent military positions and dismissed approximately one hundred thousand reserve soldiers. By July twenty twenty-four, defense leadership warned of an acute manpower deficit requiring ten thousand additional troops. The argument extends to their democratic credentials. They note Yair Golan declared Channel fourteen a propaganda organ and promised when his camp comes to power, they'll shut it down.

With a month to go before the vote, the opposition still hasn't agreed on who leads it.

Into that campaign comes a pardon. President Isaac Herzog has expunged the manslaughter record of Elor Azaria. A decade ago, the former soldier was convicted for shooting an incapacitated Palestinian attacker in Hebron. And the clemency was granted at the formal request of the defense minister, overriding reported objections from the military's senior command.

The pardon arrives just as the country heads toward an election. It revives one of the defining political fractures of the last ten years. The original trial split the Israeli public between those demanding strict adherence to military rules of engagement and those insisting a soldier in uniform must be backed by the state. Now, the president's signature has brought that collision straight back to the surface.

For the political right and the ministers who backed the clemency, this is about letting a loyal soldier finally rebuild his civilian life. The argument is that he fulfilled his legal debt to the state years ago. He served nine months of an eighteen-month sentence before his release in two thousand and eighteen. Without the president's intervention, it would've remained on his record until two thousand and thirty-two, permanently complicating the now thirty-year-old's future. The defense minister called the decision to wipe the slate clean right, humane and fitting, in his words. And the broader case here is that the defense establishment must stand behind the people it sends to the front lines. Defense Minister Yisrael Katz submitted the formal request for clemency in July.

But that kind of backing is exactly what worries the military establishment and those who defend it. To them, the pardon is a catastrophic blow to the army's ethical code. They point back to March twenty-fourth, two thousand and sixteen, when the soldier aimed his rifle at Abdel Fattah al-Sharif and pulled the trigger. The captive was lying on the ground when he fired from a few meters away. The military's chief of staff at the time stated clearly that the action wasn't the army, not its values, and not its culture. In their view, clearing the record of an offender who never expressed remorse undermines military justice entirely. Because the army had already shown leniency when the chief of staff reduced the initial prison sentence to fourteen months. Now, the president's action is described, in their words, as a poisoned pardon that damages the country's moral standing during a period of intense violence. And the ultimate fear is that surrendering to this kind of populist pressure teaches commanders that enforcing the rules will only bring personal ruin. As they tell it, for a decade the political system has steadily eroded the military's ability to investigate itself. Back then, crowds chanted at the army chief, Gadi Eisenkot, that Rabin was looking for a friend. For them, that's still a warning of what happens to officers who demand accountability.

For Palestinian and human rights advocates, the problem goes deeper than one pardon. They see a state that has abandoned any pretense of accountability. They argue the pardon merely formalizes a system that shields security forces from legal consequences when they kill Palestinians. Between two thousand and sixteen and two thousand and twenty-four, over two thousand four hundred complaints were filed against soldiers. Indictments were opened in fewer than a quarter of those cases. In their view, the pardon reflects a society that's entirely normalized vigilantism and state-sanctioned violence. They say the president deliberately waited until twenty minutes before the start of Yom Kippur to announce the decision, calculating that the timing would suppress media debate. And the pardon is seen as part of a much wider embrace of lethal force. Since October two thousand and twenty-three, human rights monitors have recorded one thousand and eighty-seven Palestinians killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. At the same time, the national security minister has overseen the issuance of more than a quarter of a million private firearm licenses, explicitly encouraging civilians to carry their weapons even, in his words, to the synagogues.

Azaria's record is clean now, ten years after the shooting in Hebron. The fight his case started, over who sets the rules for how soldiers use force, is back in the middle of an election.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the campaign abroad, traveling to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly. He spent roughly six hours on the ground. And the Israeli delegation he brought with him cheered and applauded loudly throughout the event. With Israelis heading to the polls on October twenty-seventh, the prime minister's facing another tough reelection fight.

He used the appearance to tout Israel's military successes. Delivering his fifteenth address to the General Assembly, he framed the visit as a necessary mission. He said he was there to tell the truth about our heroic soldiers. But he also took the trip to directly challenge foreign detractors. He told the mayor of New York City that he came, in his words, to tell the truth about you. He's still the preferred candidate for more than a third of the electorate. He dominates among voters who identify with the center-right. And the speech was carefully built to provide viral clips for the Likud party's next month of campaigning. The messaging frames the election as a stark binary choice. He held up a traffic sign at a rally to declare that voters can only turn left or right. In twenty twenty-four, he held up placards labeled the blessing and the curse. And he closed with the command from Deuteronomy to be strong and of good courage.

To the opposition, those clips are an empty spectacle. One masking severe political vulnerability. Those in the center note that the assembly has seen this speech seventeen or eighteen times before. And that it'll be delivered to an almost empty auditorium. They point to the foreign press, which saw a leader who's, as it put it, isolated, confrontational and fighting for his political future. Former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren argues that the prime minister isn't really speaking to the United Nations. He's speaking to the Israeli public. In their telling, the delegation relied on entourage theatrics to hide the deep diplomatic distancing. The prime minister's military secretary, a major general in uniform, acted as a prop who stood and applauded for half an hour. Israel has faced deepening diplomatic isolation. The prime minister's unable to travel to many countries because of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued against him in twenty twenty-four. And for them, not meeting Donald Trump a month before an Israeli election signals that Trump is keeping his distance. That hurts the prime minister at the polls.

The speech is campaign material now, and the voters have their say on October twenty-seventh.

Back home, the Central Elections Committee has just voted to bar Arab political parties and several key candidates from running in the upcoming national election. The committee is made up of representatives from the parties in the Knesset. And it moved to disqualify the Joint List, Ra'am, and individual politicians including Sami Abu Shehadeh.

These disqualifications come up before almost every election. In the previous cycle in two thousand and twenty-two, the Supreme Court overturned the committee's decision to disqualify Balad. This time, the focus is heavily on Abu Shehadeh. Because in February two thousand and twenty-two he posted photos praising three members of a Nablus cell who were killed following shooting attacks on Israeli troops.

The conservative magazine Mida argues that the case for the bans starts with the immediate aftermath of the Hamas assault. On October eighth, two thousand and twenty-three, exactly twenty-four hours after the massacres began, he published an article analyzing the invasion. He described the breach as, in his words, an important historic event from a military, political and strategic perspective. The text warned that if a besieged territory like Gaza could execute such an operation, others could do it more effectively. For the right, this is explicit support for armed struggle. And the same standard applies to Ofer Cassif. He faced two statutory grounds for disqualification before the committee voted nineteen to five to bar him. He signed a petition accusing Israel of starving and erasing the population of the strip, supporting international proceedings. The argument is that he acts as the finishing diplomatic leg of Yahya Sinwar's strategy, providing the international pressure the group relies on to tie the army's hands. Demanding global bodies force the military to stop fighting constitutes active material support for the enemy. Proponents argue the state must also defend its foundational character by disqualifying factions that reject its sovereignty. That drove the eighteen to five vote to bar the party. They point to a history of Arab lawmakers undermining security. Balad's founder, Azmi Bishara, was investigated for severe security offenses in two thousand and seven before fleeing the country. Another former lawmaker served two years in prison after smuggling twelve mobile phones to security prisoners.

Opponents of the bans answer that the committee itself is the problem. The founders of the London Initiative call the move a partisan decision. They warn the committee, which has twenty-three members from the parties in the Knesset, is attacking the political organization and representation of Arab citizens. Both factions were barred by majorities of eighteen or nineteen to five. Arab leaders call the move an attempt to steal the election. They warn it creates conditional political citizenship where equality at the ballot box is only formal. And they point to a glaring double standard in how the committee treats political extremes. While Arab factions are routinely banned, petitions to disqualify far-right Jewish figures like Baruch Marzel were rejected in two thousand and three and two thousand and fifteen. The Supreme Court ultimately had to step in to bar three far-right Jewish candidates in two thousand and nineteen. In this cycle, the attorney general's office warned that one right-wing party was sitting very close to the prohibited zone of incitement. Yet it was cleared to run while Arab lists were purged. For them, advocating for a state of all its citizens is a legitimate political stance that doesn't violate election law. A representative for the attorney general noted that while some remarks by Arab lawmakers are outrageous, they don't amount to actual support for armed struggle. Abu Shehadeh himself has stated that he condemns the October seventh attack and would never have published his article had he known the true scale of the atrocities that morning.

For Tani Frank of the Shalom Hartman Institute, both of those cases are beside the point. The process, he argues, is simply a good show put on for the voters. Section Seven A of the Basic Law governs these disqualifications based on three specific criteria. But in his view the votes are driven by ideological posturing rather than legal judgment. It creates a win-win trap for the right. Because if the judges uphold the bans, the right wins, and if the court overturns them, politicians blame an interventionist judiciary. The likeliest outcome, on this account, is that the Supreme Court overturns the disqualifications once again. The vote to disqualify Abu Shehadeh passed by a majority of thirty-one to four, and crucially included the committee's chair, Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg. He stated he didn't find a reasonable answer to the charges against the candidate. The attorney general has also confirmed there's a solid evidentiary basis for that specific disqualification. The institute suggests that this creates an unexpected dynamic for the broader fight over Israeli democracy. If the Supreme Court strikes down the sweeping bans on the Arab parties but upholds the exclusion of one specific politician, it could actually strengthen the judiciary.

The bans now go to the Supreme Court. Its ruling decides who is on the October ballot, and it lands in the middle of the fight between the elected politicians and the judges.

From who may run to who must serve, the deadline to replace the military conscription law has triggered a political crisis over the status of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.

For the Lithuanian rabbinic leadership, protecting full-time yeshiva study is a matter of survival. It comes before any political alliance. There are currently some sixty-six thousand married scholars and yeshiva students holding active military deferrals. Without a new law, roughly ninety thousand young Haredi men are now legally classified as draft evaders. So the supreme rabbinic authority has formally declared an end to their alignment with the right-wing bloc. They state they no longer feel like partners with the prime minister. That maneuvering, as they explain it, is driven entirely by the need to shield Torah institutions, not by any ideological attachment to the state. The ninety-six-year-old leader of the Lithuanian stream views Zionism with deep revulsion, seeing the secularization of immigrants in the state's early years as an unhealed wound. Government engagement is treated as a purely pragmatic necessity. Representatives enter the Knesset solely to secure budgets and defend religious life. Any involvement with Zionist institutions beyond this strict lobbying mandate is forbidden. As they see it, the push for universal conscription is a disguised campaign to dismantle Haredi society. They point to proposals granting exemptions to only three percent of yeshiva students while drafting the rest, alongside half a billion dollars invested annually in organizations trying to integrate the community. The leadership argues the military campaigns themselves are fought merely for the state's honor rather than true salvation.

For the mainstream public, that absolute refusal to share the defense burden is an indefensible abandonment of the rest of the country. The military states it urgently needs ten thousand soldiers to sustain a prolonged, multi-front war. Families are buckling under the strain of repeated deployments, with some seeing three sons and a son-in-law fighting in Gaza for nearly five months. And they reject the premise that religious devotion requires draft evasion, arguing Jewish halakhic tradition actually demands active military participation. The historical record shows earlier generations of ultra-Orthodox political figures fought in the War of Independence and were deeply proud of their military service. For those in the center, national survival requires a synthesis of spiritual faith and physical defense.

The army still says it needs ten thousand more soldiers. The rabbis still say their students won't be among them.

That's the count this week. Sixty One is a Daily Lion production. Don't forget to tune in to the other Daily Lion shows: Crosswinds, All Fronts, and Tribe & State. See you next Monday.