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The old warhorses uniting to fight Netanyahu · The Front

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  Speaker 1: From The Australian, here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Monday, October 19, 2026.
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  Speaker 2: $ 2 billion, $ 12.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Billion, now $ 40 billion plus. That's what the trouble-plagued Snowy
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Hydro 2.0 is likely to cost taxpayers. All will be
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  Speaker 1: revealed this week after contractor WeBuild handed a cost review
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  Speaker 1: to Ministers Chris Bowen and Katie Gallagher. You can hear
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  Speaker 1: our full episode on how the scheme got literally wedged
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  Speaker 1: in the mountains by scrolling back in your feed. And
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  Speaker 1: check out our latest exclusive by Perry Williams and Nick
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  Speaker 1: Evans right now at theaustralian.com.au. Nobody thought Benjamin Netanyahu could
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  Speaker 1: survive the Hamas onslaught, a scandal over unheeded intelligence warnings
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  Speaker 1: and the sprawling Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, Houthi conflicts that have resulted.
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  Speaker 1: As Israel's October 27 elections draw near, rivals Gadi Eisenkot,
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  Speaker 1: Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid say it's time to end
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  Speaker 1: the Bibi era. But there is a wild possibility Netanyahu
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  Speaker 1: could survive yet again Journalist Julie Zago is here in
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  Speaker 1: just a moment.
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  Speaker 2: My mother was actually lucky, in quotation marks. She saw
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  Speaker 2: out the Holocaust with most of her family in a
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  Speaker 2: labour camp and not in a death camp. My father
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  Speaker 2: was transported to Auschwitz and Germany My grandmother perished there.
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  Speaker 1: This is journalist Julie Zago.
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  Speaker 2: They were Hungarian. They left Hungary after the 1956 revolution,
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  Speaker 2: both Holocaust survivors, and they went to Israel for two years.
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  Speaker 2: And they were actually very happy there. In Israel then,
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  Speaker 2: it was a country where there were a lot of
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  Speaker 2: new migrants. They lived in a street full of European
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  Speaker 2: migrants like themselves. My father had a job as a
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  Speaker 2: doctor in a hospital in Tel Aviv. All the senior
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  Speaker 2: clinicians back then spoke German. But he could tell that
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  Speaker 2: the next war was coming. It was a tense security situation,
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  Speaker 2: and he decided that he could not handle it. that
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  Speaker 2: kind of turmoil anymore, and they came to Australia. But
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  Speaker 2: he never lost his love for Israel, and in fact,
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  Speaker 2: he was right about the wars. In 1967, Israel had
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  Speaker 2: to fight for its existence and had a stunning victory.
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  Speaker 3: Across the deserts of Sinai, a biblical prophecy comes to
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  Speaker 3: pass as the forces of Israel sweep on in an
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  Speaker 3: astonishing triumph of strategy.
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  Speaker 2: As one looked, one could only feel that as before,
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  Speaker 2: surrender would deepen Arab hatred for the Jews, that nothing
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  Speaker 2: had been solved for long. It became rather too secure
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  Speaker 2: or felt too secure in itself after that. And six
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  Speaker 2: years later, it suffered a terrible attack on Yom Kippur
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  Speaker 2: in 1973.
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  Speaker 3: It is an all-out war. That's how Israeli Defense Minister
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  Speaker 3: Moshe Dayan describes an invasion of the Golan Heights and
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  Speaker 3: the east bank of the Suez by Syria and Egypt.
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  Speaker 2: And my dad had developed this habit of listening to
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  Speaker 2: the news every hour on the hour just to make
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  Speaker 2: sure that Israel was still a thing, that it still existed.
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  Speaker 1: Division is the essence of a democracy, really, isn't it?
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  Speaker 1: And Israel is really the only successful democracy in the
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  Speaker 1: Middle East. It's a place where men and women are equal,
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  Speaker 1: where there's a vibrant mix of political parties thrashing things out.
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  Speaker 1: You make the point in the piece that the government
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  Speaker 1: of Benjamin Netanyahu has had a rare four years to
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  Speaker 1: actually serve out its full term because Israeli politics is
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  Speaker 1: so very lively. Do you see it as something... healthy
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  Speaker 1: and vibrant, or do you see it as dysfunctional and disorderly?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I think I really take your point that it's
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  Speaker 2: an extraordinary achievement of Israel to be able to hold
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  Speaker 2: these disparate, they're actually still referred to as tribes. Some
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  Speaker 2: people say that there are still 12 tribes of Israel together.
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  Speaker 2: When you think about it, the Israeli Knesset, its parliament,
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  Speaker 2: is sort of like our Senate, but on steroids. It's
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  Speaker 2: a system of proportional representation and everything is represented from
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  Speaker 2: the hard left Arab parties who are non-Zionist, who aren't
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  Speaker 2: really all that accepting of Israel as a Jewish state,
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  Speaker 2: all the way through to extreme right-wing messianic Jewish Zionists. And,
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  Speaker 2: you know, 20% of Israel's population is Arab or self-defined
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  Speaker 2: as Palestinian and And there are tensions there. There are
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  Speaker 2: some very real tensions. And at various times throughout the years,
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  Speaker 2: there's even been violence from Arab communities towards the state.
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  Speaker 2: So the fact that this is held together for as
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  Speaker 2: long as it has is an extraordinary achievement. And that's
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  Speaker 2: not even to talk about the divisions within even Jewish Israel,
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  Speaker 2: the divisions between secular and religious, between Zionist religious, so
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  Speaker 2: those religious Jews who serve in the army and defend
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  Speaker 2: the state and pay taxes, and the sort of ultra-Orthodox
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  Speaker 2: religious who sit it out, essentially, who under a sweetheart
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  Speaker 2: deal spend all their days studying Torah. And that is
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  Speaker 2: one of the acute tensions that has exposed itself in
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  Speaker 2: the I'm conscious of how Israel has changed over time.
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  Speaker 2: And I'm in awe of the fact that it's held together.
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  Speaker 2: And I am incredibly anxious about whether it can do
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  Speaker 2: that in the future. So there is this kind of
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  Speaker 2: curse of history that hangs over the place, which is
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  Speaker 2: that the two previous experiments in Jewish sovereignty, one back
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  Speaker 2: in the Babylonian times, the other back in the Roman times,
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  Speaker 2: they both failed. And they failed because of infighting. And
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  Speaker 2: this is talked about very much lately of the kind
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  Speaker 2: of existential threat to the state that comes not from
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  Speaker 2: its enemies, but from whether it can hang together internally.
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  Speaker 1: On October 27, Israelis will go to the polls in
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  Speaker 1: the first legislative elections since the October 7, 2023 attack
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  Speaker 1: on Israel by Hamas. During the attack, about 1,200 people
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  Speaker 1: were killed and 251 others were taken hostage. Prime Minister
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  Speaker 1: Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud party are polling somewhere
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  Speaker 1: between 22 and 27 seats in the Knesset. They'd need
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  Speaker 1: 61 seats to govern in majority. That means whoever wins
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  Speaker 1: will likely need to form a coalition. Netanyahu's main opponent
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  Speaker 1: is Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the centre-right Yashar Party, a
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  Speaker 1: former chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces and
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  Speaker 1: the son of Moroccan Jews. And in terms of what
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  Speaker 1: the polls appear to be saying at the moment is that.
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  Speaker 2: It's deadlocked between, let's call it the pro-Netanyahu bloc and
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  Speaker 2: the change or anti-Netanyahu bloc. And I mean, that in
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  Speaker 2: itself is quite extraordinary. I mean, I remember in the
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  Speaker 2: weeks and months after October 7, we were all convinced
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  Speaker 2: that Netanyahu, Bibi, as he's known, is over. There is
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  Speaker 2: no way he can come back from a failure like that.
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  Speaker 3: A week and a half before October 7, 2023, Israeli
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  Speaker 3: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was warned by the president of
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  Speaker 3: the United Arab Emirates that the terrorist group Hamas was
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  Speaker 3: preparing a major attack against Israel.
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  Speaker 2: It's extraordinary that he has managed to claw his way back,
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  Speaker 2: to sort of hang on to power and claw back
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  Speaker 2: enough support to be more than in serious contention. This
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  Speaker 2: is a time for war. This is entirely a right-wing election.
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  Speaker 2: So if there are people who think that this is
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  Speaker 2: an election of Bibi versus the left, that is just wrong.
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  Speaker 2: The left in Israel... is really reduced to a rump.
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  Speaker 2: So the kind of Labor Party that was the establishment
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  Speaker 2: when my parents were in Israel, that is now reduced
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  Speaker 2: in a party called the Democrats, that's a kind of
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  Speaker 2: merged leftist party. They won't get any more than 10
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  Speaker 2: or 11 seats. So the competition is almost entirely on
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  Speaker 2: the right or centre-right competition. and it is fought on
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  Speaker 2: right-wing issues between right-wing leaders. Gadi Eizenkot is a really
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  Speaker 2: interesting challenger in that respect and then his biggest claim
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  Speaker 2: to moral authority in Israel and what wins him the
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  Speaker 2: most respect, and this tells you everything about the state
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  Speaker 2: of the country at the moment, is that his son
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  Speaker 2: Gal was killed in the Gaza war And so he
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  Speaker 2: very much has that status as the grieving, the bereaved
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  Speaker 2: parent who has sacrificed everything for the state.
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  Speaker 1: Two former prime ministers, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, have
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  Speaker 1: kind of joined forces and probably would have been the
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  Speaker 1: force that we were talking about, the alternative government, if
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  Speaker 1: we weren't talking about Gadi Eisenkot, maybe. What are their chances?
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  Speaker 1: And Whoever wins, do you think it'll make a difference
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  Speaker 1: to the continued pursuit of the war in Gaza?
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  Speaker 2: My impression of the second question you ask is probably no.
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  Speaker 2: All of the main challenges rule out a Palestinian state,
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  Speaker 2: for example. It's just not on the table. And if
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  Speaker 2: any of them might secretly think that there might be
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  Speaker 2: a diplomatic upside to restarting negotiations, they're keeping Shturm for
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  Speaker 2: the moment. As far as Bennett and Yair Lapid, who
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  Speaker 2: could be described as sort of left of centre, and Bennett,
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  Speaker 2: who's right of centre, they seem to have joined forces
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  Speaker 2: in the hope of merging their support. But once they merged,
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  Speaker 2: their support seemed to fall away somewhat. So Lapid and
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  Speaker 2: Bennett would conceivably be part of whatever coalition Gaudi-Eisenkot might
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  Speaker 2: be in a position to form, should he be so lucky.
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  Speaker 1: And will we get a result on October 27 or
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  Speaker 1: is this going to be weeks and weeks of haggling
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  Speaker 1: and negotiation before we know who's actually going to be
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  Speaker 1: Prime Minister?
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  Speaker 2: I assume the latter. Then there is this option of
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  Speaker 2: a national unity government where Likud is so Benjamin Netanyahu's party,
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  Speaker 2: and the opposition parties form a coalition that keeps out
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  Speaker 2: the extremes, or at least dilutes their power to a
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  Speaker 2: great degree. That would be the ultra-Orthodox bloc, and the extremists,
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  Speaker 2: the Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bitzalah Smotrich bloc that has caused
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  Speaker 2: Israel a lot of grief. But the problem then is
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  Speaker 2: Bibi Netanyahu, The political class in Israel has been around
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  Speaker 2: the block with him so many times that there is
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  Speaker 2: so much distrust and so much bad blood for good
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  Speaker 2: reasons that it's a big ask for these opposition leaders
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  Speaker 2: to contemplate trusting him again in some kind of rotating
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  Speaker 2: prime ministership arrangement. But that is the interesting question of
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  Speaker 2: whether anyone would go around the block with Bibi again.
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  Speaker 1: Julie Zergo, thank you very much for joining us.
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  Speaker 2: Pleasure.
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  Speaker 1: You can read Julie Zergo's piece from The Australian's Weekend
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  Speaker 1: magazine and follow our coverage of the elections and their
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  Speaker 1: aftermath at theaustralian.com.au.