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The Politics Behind the Polls · Israel Policy Pod

0:05
Neri: Shalom and welcome to the Israel Policy Pod.
0:07
Neri: I'm Neri Zilber, a journalist based in Tel Aviv and a policy advisor to Israel Policy Forum.
0:13
Neri: We're back from our August hiatus and back in business this week with a big episode on the current state of play in the Israeli election campaign, now less than two months away.
0:24
Neri: Also back by popular demand.
0:26
Neri: To help us break it all down is my good friend Dahlia Scheindlin, a Tel Aviv-based political analyst and public opinion researcher with nearly three decades of experience surveying Israeli politics, including working directly on nine different campaigns here in Israel.
0:42
Neri: These days, among many other things, Dahlia is also a senior analyst for Haarts, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, and the author of a recent book titled The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled.
1:00
Neri: I really want to Dahlia back on to explain what the polls are telling us right now, what to look for before next week's deadline to register party lists, which is a major milestone in any Israeli election campaign, and especially this one, and where the various opposition and pro-Netanyahoo parties are situated at the moment.
1:21
Neri: It's all very fluid, but it was, as always, a great conversation with Dahlia.
1:27
Neri: But first, uh a few thoughts for me with a new segment we're going to do, if not every week, then hopefully most weeks, which we're going to call Reporter's Notebook.
1:38
Neri: Basically taking you behind the scenes and on the ground into the stories that are shaping current events and the big policy moves here in Israel and beyond.
1:48
Neri: So if I could, let's go back into a time machine, back to those heady days of June 2023.
1:54
Neri: Northern Israel, outside the city of Nazareth, in an adjacent Arab village called Jaffa of Nazareth, not to be confused with the Jaffa of Jaffa, which is next to Tel Aviv, which is where I'm coming from right now.
2:08
Neri: But in Jaffa of Nazareth in early June 2023, five young Arab men were gunned down at a car wash inside the village in broad daylight on a Thursday afternoon.
2:19
Neri: It was all part of the awful and ongoing, very much ongoing spate of violent murders that have really plagued Arab towns and cities here in Israel in recent years.
2:30
Neri: And especially since this current Netanyahu government came into office in late 2022 and Itamar Ben Gvir uh was handed command of the Israel police.
2:41
Neri: Under Ben Gvir back in 2023, the murder rate in Arab Israeli communities reached record levels, record levels that they're now breaking those record levels again this year, sadly.
2:54
Neri: So why am I telling you all this?
2:57
Neri: Because when I went up to Jaffa of Nazareth to report the story on this massacre, and it was really called the massacre at the car wash uh in the media and by all those affected, I met with the Margia family who lost two relatives in the killings.
3:12
Neri: So the Margia family home was literally next door to the car wash, overlooking the car wash and this murder scene, which was uh just really hard to fathom for me as a visitor.
3:22
Neri: Uh, I can't imagine what it was like for the family uh to keep living there and looking out of the car wash.
3:28
Neri: Uh, but really, when when we asked them, the family didn't know why uh the car wash uh or their loved ones were targeted on that Thursday afternoon.
3:38
Neri: Uh, as always, with these types of murders in the Arab community, uh, disputes having to do likely and obliquely with organized crime were suspected.
3:47
Neri: Uh, but the family disputed these these allegations.
3:50
Neri: But more to the point, uh, and almost, you know, seemingly in every case like this, uh, nobody was ever arrested uh or prosecuted by the Israeli police uh and authorities for these five homicides.
4:01
Neri: So we don't really know what the motivation was for the killings.
4:05
Neri: Uh we just know that it was a a pretty, pretty horrific event, uh, in a string of horrific events in the Arab community in recent years.
4:13
Neri: But uh, as I was sitting there drinking tea with this Arab-Israeli family uh in the north, they said one thing uh that has really struck with me uh and stuck with me ever since.
4:23
Neri: Um in this entire mourning period that they were sitting there uh after the killings, only one Israeli politician had come to visit with them, to hear from them, to comfort them.
4:34
Neri: Only one.
4:35
Neri: And his name was Yoav Segalovich.
4:38
Neri: He was a member of Yaglapid's Centrist Yeshit Party, he was a former senior police commander, uh, he was also a former deputy minister for internal security, um, and really focused on uh violent crime and murders in the Arab community, which he actually brought down as a deputy internal security minister back then.
4:57
Neri: And really, when I say only one politician came, I don't just mean uh one Jewish Israeli politician, I mean any politician, including any Arab politician, just Joav Segalovich.
5:08
Neri: So last night, Monday night, Joav Segalovich made the bold and somewhat say historic move to join forces with the Arab-Israeli Islamist Rom party and run with them uh in the upcoming election for Knesset.
5:24
Neri: So you have a Jewish Zionist, former police officer, a centrist, running on an Islamist party's slate for a parliament in this election.
5:34
Neri: Uh remarkable uh and important.
5:37
Neri: And if anyone can pull this out, uh it's someone like Segolovich, who uh I know from my own conversations with him and others actually and truly believe in Arab Jewish partnership and really Arab Jewish empathy, as we know from Jaffa of Nazareth uh a few years ago.
5:55
Neri: He showed up when many others didn't.
5:58
Neri: So uh I get into this political union, this new political union, uh in more detail with Dahlia in our conversation.
6:06
Neri: But I'll just leave you with what Segalobich said last night uh in the press conference, uh, alongside Rahm's leader, Mansur Abbas, also a courageous and historic figure uh here in Israel.
6:17
Neri: This is what Segalovich said as part of the press conference, and I quote, There is baggage from the past, there is a bloody history in relations within this land.
6:27
Neri: We will not change the past because the past is a set fact.
6:31
Neri: The role of leadership is to change reality and create a better future.
6:37
Neri: So, with that, let's get to Dahlia Schein.
6:44
Neri: Hi, Dahlia.
6:45
Neri: Welcome back to Digital Policy Pod.
6:47
Dahlia: Thank you for having me.
6:47
Dahlia: It's always great to be here, Neri.
6:49
Neri: It's always my pleasure to speak with you, Dahlia, both on and off the record and on and off recordings.
6:55
Neri: Um, and if you remember, last time you were on was back in June at the start of the summer.
7:01
Neri: Now we're in September.
7:02
Neri: Literally, it's the first of September.
7:04
Neri: Kids are back at school.
7:05
Neri: Uh, we're now less than two months away from the fateful Israeli election on October 27th.
7:11
Neri: Uh, and so I thought it would be the perfect time, this bookend to the summer, to bring you back on uh as we get into the fall.
7:18
Neri: The Jewish high holidays are looming starting end of next week, uh, and then we're really going to be in the home stretch of this uh of this election campaign.
7:27
Neri: So uh, Dahlia, a lot to get into on today's episode, but the first and most obvious question for you, the current polling.
7:35
Neri: When you look out at all the various polls out there, and there are there are many here in Israel, almost on a daily basis.
7:40
Neri: What do you think are the main takeaways?
7:42
Neri: What do you think we can actually learn about the current state of play of this election?
7:47
Dahlia: And the main takeaways are disappointingly similar to what they were last time we had a podcast, and in fact, pretty much every time I write about polls, which is that we know very little about who will win and who will form the next government, but we know a great deal about what has been stable for the last two years.
8:02
Dahlia: And that is the strength of the current coalition and the strength of the all the parties in the opposition.
8:09
Dahlia: So when I say opposition, let me be clear.
8:11
Dahlia: I'm including anybody who's not part of the current governing coalition.
8:15
Dahlia: There's confusion about this because much of the reporting uh counts the opposition parties, including only Zionist parties.
8:22
Dahlia: But I'm just talking right now about supporters for the coalition parties of today's government and everybody else.
8:27
Dahlia: And so the current government has been polling at between, you know, 48 and 53 or four seats as a range for pretty much the last two years.
8:38
Dahlia: And in any given month, the if you take an average of all the polls, or at least we should say all of the professional polling companies that are working for mainstream television outlets that have a long track record, that also do commercial polling, you know, basic mainstream polls, leaving aside polls that are heavily associated only with right-wing, you know, news outlets.
8:59
Dahlia: Okay, but leaving those aside, the average right now is a bit on the lower side of that range at about 50 parliamentary seats out of 120 for the governing coalition for Netanyahu's government.
9:10
Dahlia: And that means that the current coalition as it stands today would probably not be able to win and probably not be able to form the next government.
9:18
Dahlia: All of the opposition parties together, of course, are getting about 65 to 70 parliamentary seats, occasionally 71 if the coalition falls to 49.
9:27
Dahlia: And that means that they have a majority.
9:30
Dahlia: It means that the majority of Israelis, when they talk to pollsters, are not voting for parties of the coalition.
9:36
Dahlia: However, we all know that, you know, really the next government of Israel is formed in the coalition bargaining stage.
9:43
Dahlia: Just to remind listeners that no party has ever won a majority in Israeli politics, and every government is a coalition.
9:50
Dahlia: And so usually those coalitions involve four, five, six, even eight parties.
9:54
Dahlia: So you have a lot of bargaining to do.
9:56
Dahlia: And among the opposition parties, there is a basic division.
10:00
Dahlia: It's a self-imposed division between Zionist parties who have been talking a big game about not wanting to form coalitions with any of the parties representing Arab citizens of Israel, or mostly Arab citizens of Israel, Palestinian citizens.
10:14
Dahlia: And that has been a long-standing taboo that was broken only once in 2021, the first time an independent Arab party joined a governing coalition.
10:23
Dahlia: And it was a big deal.
10:24
Dahlia: I think it was a big uh step in the direction of democratic progress, representing 21% minority in Israel, Israel's biggest minority.
10:33
Dahlia: But, you know, a number of the party leaders, uh, certainly among the opposition parties, have been saying they won't do it.
10:38
Dahlia: Not everybody, and we can be clear about those who've left the door open, but they are being heavily attacked.
10:44
Dahlia: That is the opposition by the very far ultra-nationalist right-wing government of Israel, especially the prime minister, uh, by accusing the opposition of saying they can't form a government without the Arab parties, as if this is some great evil that will befall Israel if there should be a party representing its Arab citizens and the governing coalition.
11:07
Dahlia: And therefore, you have something like a self-imposed uh arbitrary constraint on coalition building within the current opposition parties.
11:15
Dahlia: And that's why a lot of the reporting says, well, the opposition counts for 57 or 58 parliamentary seats.
11:23
Dahlia: In other words, not quite a 61-seat majority yet, um, because they are not counting the Arab parties who are generally polling at around 10 seats.
11:32
Dahlia: Um, but I think that we have to look at it in terms of how the Israeli public breaks down and then look at the coalition building prospects.
11:39
Neri: So we're definitely going to get into the Arab-Israeli political parties and the big news from from last night uh and what that may mean for the election and then also after the election, uh, as well as what the major players in the opposition may or may not do on this topic and other topics.
11:54
Neri: But yes, there was a big, not outcry.
11:56
Neri: I think that's too strong of a word, but there was a lot of criticism a few weeks back where the polling that you see, say, on television, showed this graph, and there was the kind of Netanyahu bloc, the coalition parties uh led by B Netanyahu, and then there was the opposition.
12:12
Neri: And then you had this, the Arab political parties in the middle.
12:15
Neri: It's like, wait, they are part of the opposition.
12:17
Neri: Why are they counted separately?
12:19
Neri: And like you said, they obviously, if they joined forces or if the opposition was willing to join forces with the Arab-Israeli political parties, this really wouldn't be probably a conversation, right?
12:28
Dahlia: The election It shouldn't be a conversation, and it's certainly not only a week ago, it's every single week for the four years since this government was established.
12:37
Dahlia: Every time there is polling, the graphics are displayed in almost all uh mainstream media, right?
12:43
Dahlia: Even the ones who are not right-wing media, supposedly in Israeli terms, um, with the opposition parties representing only the Zionist parties and the Arab parties uh displayed separately, usually in a separate color.
12:54
Dahlia: Now, the argument is there's no guarantee that they would join a coalition also for their own purposes, right?
13:00
Dahlia: For their own reasons and calculations.
13:01
Dahlia: That's fine.
13:02
Dahlia: But in terms of representing to the Israeli public how the public breaks down between supporting the government and not supporting the government, it should be clear that the entire opposition is a majority of Israelis.
13:13
Dahlia: And that's something that is, you know, I think an inaccurate, it's an inaccurate portrayal in most mainstream Israeli media that portrays, including newspapers that print graphics in the same way.
13:24
Neri: 100%.
13:25
Neri: And um, if not the first question, the second question that every Israeli opposition leader gets is well, how are you guys uh going to actually form a coalition government, Bibi Netanyahu, and the other side?
13:35
Neri: Never get asked that question, even though they're trailing in the polls and are nowhere near a 61-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset.
13:43
Neri: So there is a double standard uh on that end as well.
13:46
Neri: I know you always give this caveat, Dahlia, that uh polls can't predict the future.
13:52
Neri: Uh they're just a snapshot of the current moment and we need to look at trends and compare polls to each other.
13:59
Neri: But let me ask you this: are you more inclined to believe that the current, let's say, Zionist opposition, leaving aside the Arab Israeli parties right now, are closer to perhaps attaining 60, 61 seats?
14:12
Neri: Or are they maybe closer to what you sometimes see in certain polls, uh that they're maybe mid-50s, um, that there it's a lot closer between the opposition and the coalition parties?
14:23
Dahlia: You know, I think the preponderance of evidence is what I'm trying to look at.
14:27
Dahlia: And like I said, for the last two years, all of the mainstream polls, and we have had probably hundreds of them at this point, have been showing that the uh Zionist opposition parties are empirically closer to 61.
14:37
Dahlia: There's almost, it's not a matter of interpretation.
14:39
Dahlia: Poll after poll after poll since mid-2023, but well before October 7th, has shown them between at that time around 55, 56 seats, but now we have them at 57, 58, you know, and sometimes even 59.
14:52
Dahlia: There have been individual polls where the Zionist opposition parties have reached 60 or even 61, but they're rare.
14:59
Dahlia: They're not, it's not a stable trend, and it's not an upward trend.
15:02
Dahlia: They are pretty much stuck in that upper 50-something range for parliamentary seats, but it is an objective, you know, outcome, time after time after time, that they are closer to 61 than you know, the governing coalition parties.
15:16
Dahlia: So I think you're absolutely right.
15:18
Dahlia: There's a double layer of hypocrisy when it comes to the question of coalition building.
15:22
Dahlia: The current government is never asked, how are you planning on forming a coalition when they are pulling at, you know, 50, 51, 52 seats.
15:30
unknown: Yeah.
15:30
Dahlia: Or 50, or even in certain individual surveys, 48, 49 as well.
15:36
Dahlia: But they're also never asked when they attack the opposition parties for potentially being prepared to go into a coalition with an Arab party.
15:45
Dahlia: Um, you know, I think that it's kind of like throwing a stone in a big glass house, because, you know, the only coalition that Netanyahu has even for the basis of that 50 or 51 seats is with the ultra-orthodox parties who are going to forever shield their populations from being drafted into the IDF, with ultra-nationalist Jewish supremacists who have, you know, the Minister of National Security who's completely failed as the chief of internal security.
16:11
Dahlia: We've seen skyrocketing murder rates and, you know, crime and um traffic, lethal traffic accidents.
16:17
Dahlia: Everything has gotten worse under his leadership.
16:19
Dahlia: And Bitsaros Motoric who is basically, you know, trying to suppress Palestinians so violently that there is a very serious threat of a new escalation of violence in the West Bank.
16:30
Dahlia: And both of them are the ones who, you know, essentially prevented this government from reaching a hostage release ceasefire deal over the course of, you know, most of two years, which made the Israeli public not only furious, but really experienced an absolute breach of the social contract between citizens and the state.
16:46
Dahlia: I think it runs deeper than we're giving it credit for.
16:48
Dahlia: And so those are his coalition partners.
16:51
Dahlia: And so when he accuses the opposition of saying, how dare you be prepared to go in with a party uh that is essentially a completely upstanding city, mostly we're talking about Ram.
17:00
Dahlia: Um, and nobody accuses them back of being prepared to go into a coalition.
17:05
Dahlia: The only option they have for a coalition are these parties.
17:07
Dahlia: It's just a big blind spot, or frankly, racism, because an Arab party is always going to be scarier, or at least they think that that will always be scarier, even than the idea of the very far, you know, far-right wing and religious theocratic parties that I mentioned.
17:21
Neri: Aaron Powell Yes.
17:22
Neri: Uh there's a lot of hypocrisy, especially on the Israeli right.
17:24
Neri: It can literally drive you crazy to try to unpick it.
17:28
Neri: And this didn't start yesterday.
17:29
Neri: Uh, it goes back many years.
17:31
Neri: Uh, for instance, Bibi Netanyahu was the first Israeli leader to negotiate with the Rom Party.
17:37
Neri: This is the Arab Israeli Islamist Party led by uh Mansoor Abbas.
17:41
Dahlia: Right.
17:41
Dahlia: I mean, we haven't even opened that up yet.
17:43
Neri: Yeah, he was negotiating with first back in 2021 to have Mansoor Abbas and and Rahm uh join his coalition.
17:51
Neri: Uh Ben Vir and Smotric didn't allow it.
17:54
Neri: They vetoed it.
17:55
Neri: And then ultimately, as we all know, Rahm went and joined the government of change back in 2021, led by Nafdali Bennett and Yar Lapid.
18:04
Neri: Um it lasted about a year, year and a half.
18:07
Neri: But again, maybe if uh the current opposition leaders find the uh the courage of their convictions, maybe Mansur Abbas and Rah will once again be coalition partners of a Israeli government.
18:18
Neri: Um, which brings me to my second question, Dahlia, on this very topic.
18:23
Neri: Uh late last night, so this was Monday night uh here in Israel, recording this uh Tuesday morning Tel Aviv time, where we both are.
18:31
Neri: Uh, but the big news last night was that uh Rahm has a new uh candidate for the upcoming election in the Knesset, Yoav Segalovich.
18:40
Neri: Now, Yoav Segalovich, really interesting character.
18:43
Neri: He's uh a Jewish Israeli and a Zionist.
18:47
Neri: He's also a former senior police commander.
18:50
Neri: He was also a former deputy internal security minister in that government of change back in 2021 on behalf of Lapid's Yeshet party.
18:59
Neri: So Segalovich left Yeshet uh a few weeks ago.
19:02
Neri: And this is uh a big move uh both for Segalovich and also for Mansoor Abbas and Rahm.
19:08
Neri: They announced it last night in Nazareth.
19:11
Neri: Segalovich, fair to say, from the people I've spoken to, really believes in Arab Jewish partnership.
19:17
Neri: He really wants to both make a difference kind of in the tangible day-to-day life of Arab citizens here in Israel, especially vis-a-vis, like you said, skyrocketing violent crime and murder rates.
19:29
Neri: Uh, and he's well placed to tackle that as he did uh a number of years ago as deputy internal security minister.
19:34
Neri: And also for Mansoor Abbas, this is yet another step uh where he's reaching out to Israeli Jews and showing that he he is willing to um to be a partner um in building a common future.
19:46
Neri: So uh this was long mooted as a possibility, Segalovich joining Rom.
19:51
Neri: Uh, what did you make of it when you heard last night?
19:54
Dahlia: Well, I think that um if you listen to or read uh Joav Segalovich's speech in announcing this, there can be no doubt that he is personally, passionately, and deeply committed to what he's doing.
20:05
Dahlia: He is saying things that Ya'ir Golan, the head of the Democrats Party, who was viewed by Israelis as the most left-wing Jewish politician, could never have said, would never have said.
20:15
Dahlia: He could have said it, but he wouldn't.
20:16
Dahlia: Um Segalovich basically said, I believe completely in Jewish Arab partnership.
20:21
Dahlia: It is a lie that October 7th is in any way connected to our uh, you know, potential to form a government and a coalition with an Arab party that has nothing to do with it.
20:31
Dahlia: And, you know, the model that I see for Israel is the kind of situation in the health system where, you know, Arabs are part of, you know, the doctors and nurses and administration.
20:40
Dahlia: And, you know, that's become a bit of a symbolic metaphor for an ideal world of Jewish Arab equality.
20:45
Dahlia: Never mind that, of course, there are issues within the healthcare system as well, but still it's become a bit of a beacon, like a like a bit of a lighthouse for those who promote, you know, Jewish Arab equality and partnership.
20:55
Dahlia: And he, I think, gave it really, it was a very eloquent speech.
20:59
Dahlia: And I thought, you know, if Israeli society had been telling itself any version of this speech for the last, you know, 10 years, I think we would be in a different place politically now.
21:09
Dahlia: It's really such a stark contrast to not just the political situation today, not just what the government coalition, the governing coalition is saying and all the hate that they're really um, you know, unleashing daily on Mansoor Abbas and all the other parties.
21:26
Dahlia: But in general, the is, you know, the Israeli discourse over the last number of years, uh really at least 10 years, I think, particularly under Netanyahu, has been so full of internal incitement, literally incitement against Arab citizens, against left-wingers, against the media, against civil society groups.
21:42
Dahlia: It has been such a vicious kind of set of norms that you think this is really, I it just feels almost unfamiliar and remarkably optimistic.
21:51
Dahlia: Now, what will it actually mean?
21:53
Dahlia: I think that, you know, some people are going to be so set in the populist polarization within Israeli society.
22:00
Dahlia: Now that they're not even going to listen to it.
22:01
Dahlia: And I think other people will be attentive because they've never seen anything like this before.
22:06
Dahlia: There have been parties that have most many parties have Arabs and Jews have at least one Arab member, for example.
22:11
Dahlia: Even certain right-wing parties, for example, can have a Druze, you know, a lawmaker on their list or candidates.
22:16
Dahlia: And of course, Sadash has long been a Jewish Arab party, really much, really ever since its founding.
22:21
Dahlia: But that comes from the heartland of the left.
22:23
Dahlia: And Joav Segalovich is totally different.
22:25
Dahlia: He comes from the heartland of the Jewish Zionist center.
22:27
Dahlia: And of course, Ram is doesn't really even count as a left-wing party, right?
22:31
Dahlia: It's basically a religious conservative movement that became a political party.
22:34
Dahlia: It's a very moderate religious movement.
22:36
Dahlia: I don't think there's anything particularly frightening about it, but it is still grounded in a religious movement, with the conservative social values that come along with that.
22:44
Dahlia: They are not very tolerant of LGBT, for example.
22:46
Dahlia: And so they're not coming from the far left.
22:48
Dahlia: And Joav Segalovich is not coming from the left or the, you know, not even from the left, let alone the far left.
22:54
Dahlia: But I think that what's interesting about it is that as you pointed out, he comes at this from a perspective of I have an expertise, a professional expertise in Israel that Israeli society needs.
23:05
Dahlia: He has not only performed in that role as deputy for a deputy internal minister minister of, well, then at that time it was called Minister of Internal Security, but he was successful in the sense that, of course, you know, it's a very, very long process trying to ameliorate the problem, very severe problem of gang warfare, essentially, in the Arab community.
23:24
Dahlia: But if you look at the numbers, there was a reduction in the homicide rate under his term when he was deputy minister of internal security, and we should say under Omar Barlev, who was from the Labor Party.
23:34
Dahlia: And so they really addressed the issue.
23:35
Dahlia: They took it seriously, they had results, they gained some credibility among local Arab leadership for that reason.
23:41
Dahlia: But it also says something further, which is that the problem of crime and organized crime and homicides in the Arab community is an Israeli problem, which is something the Arab community has been trying to say for a long time.
23:51
Dahlia: This isn't, we shouldn't be treated as you know, having a problem of the Arab society in Israel.
23:56
Dahlia: This is an Israeli problem of Israeli citizens, not just because it might eventually affect Jews, but because Arabs or Israeli citizens know less than every other Israeli citizen, whether they consider themselves Arab, Palestinian, whatever else, they are citizens.
24:09
Dahlia: And so I think just the symbolism of him with that, you know, particular expertise and involvement and record of success joining that party really, I think could help people in the long term kind of reconceptualize what political act, you know, partnership really is, political activism.
24:28
Dahlia: You know, the idea that political parties should stand for a program rather than an identity or a specific sector is fundamentally, you know, old but new in Israeli society, because really, over the decades and for most of Israel's history, parties have been very much grounded in sectorial identity.
24:46
Dahlia: And this, you know, could really cut through that in some ways.
24:49
Dahlia: We'll have to see if it's um something like a pop-up phenomenon that comes and goes, and maybe we never really remember it again if it if they're not successful, if they don't join the government, or if they break up, you know, after the elections, who knows?
25:02
Dahlia: But if they stick around or inspire others, now we should also remember that on the left, the actual left, there's another Jewish Arab party right now, a new one that is much more kind of fresh and young and forward-thinking in a way than Kadash, which has been a little bit atrophied.
25:15
Dahlia: And so maybe I'd like to, in you know, in a bit in my better moments, I think maybe there's something really new happening where Dafka, as we say, from the Jewish Arab uh cleavage in Israeli society, which has been one of the deepest over the years, there is emerging some sort of new kind of political constellation in Israel where people really just take on shared interests and shared needs of Israeli society beyond the sectorial uh divisions.
25:39
Dahlia: It would be nice if that happened elsewhere too.
25:41
Dahlia: There's a Kharedi party trying to do that, but I doubt they're going to make it into Knesset.
25:45
Dahlia: Uh, but it would be it would be really uh a valuable thing for the Israeli political culture to move beyond sectoral politics.
25:52
Neri: 100%.
25:53
Neri: And uh just for our audience, Kadash is basically the predominantly Arab-Israeli, but not only, as you mentioned, is this like the communist party of amongst the Arab Israeli parties here in Israel.
26:04
Dahlia: It includes the old communist party.
26:05
Dahlia: It's as like many things in a small uh amalgam of movements, but it's essentially a left-wing version that includes the old communist party.
26:13
Dahlia: And it is a Jewish Arab party to all intents and purposes, but true that most of its voters are Arab rather than Jewish.
26:18
Dahlia: Although if Jews vote for any Arab party or Jewish Arab party, it tends to be Hadash rather than the other parties that represent primarily Arab citizens of Israel.
26:27
Neri: Right.
26:27
Neri: And so Segalovich's move to join with Mansur Abbas, it may actually draw some, let's say, left-wing Israeli voters to that uh pop-up, to that uh endeavor.
26:38
Neri: Or even centrists.
26:39
Neri: Or even centrists.
26:39
Dahlia: And maybe it won't be pop-up, right?
26:41
Dahlia: It might not be a pop-up.
26:42
Dahlia: We I don't know yet.
26:42
Dahlia: I'm just saying we have lots of things that happen before every election cycle that seem like a big deal until you never hear about them again in the next cycle.
26:50
Dahlia: So it could take that path, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a pop-up phenomenon.
26:54
Neri: No, and hopefully it has it has legs and has an impact, especially after election day when Rahm and Mansur Abbas should hopefully be utilized in any coalition formation process by the opposition, right?
27:08
Neri: So Segalovich being the number two on the Rom list, uh the idea is that it it'll make Rom more palatable to Jewish Zionist uh, well, voters and also leaders in the opposition.
27:20
Neri: And predictably, this has already been uh blasted by Likud, they call Ram the Muslim Brotherhood, they call Mansur Abbas a terrorist sympathizer, uh, and then Joav Segolovich are very kind of, like you said, middle of the road centrist, you know, served in the IDF, senior officer in the police, uh goes and uh joins Islamist party.
27:39
Neri: Uh really interesting, really interesting development.
27:41
Neri: And one wrinkle that someone uh mentioned to me last night, right?
27:45
Neri: So let's say Rahm makes it into the next knesset, it has four seats.
27:49
Neri: One of the seats is going to be Joav Segalovich.
27:52
Neri: So could he be uh maybe a free agent where, okay, the opposition may not have 61 seats to get a like a full uh majority, but Segalovich will be kind of the the additional vote, the kosher vote, if you will.
28:06
Dahlia: Well, I mean, there is uh uh there are all sorts of interesting kind of um esoteric ways of getting a majority in Israel.
28:12
Dahlia: Remember that a government does not actually have to have a majority.
28:14
Dahlia: Why don't we put it like this?
28:15
Dahlia: Because if we start to get into the whole blocking majority, it becomes very esoteric.
28:19
Dahlia: But I think that in general, like, you know, the expectation is that you need 61 in order to have a government, but you don't need to have the government itself, it doesn't have to be 61.
28:28
Dahlia: You can have minority coalitions in Israel.
28:29
Dahlia: We've had them before.
28:30
Dahlia: They are not usually stable and they don't usually last very long.
28:34
Dahlia: However, if that situation should happen, there is this concept, again, it's kind of an esoteric thing, that you can have people who de facto support the government from the outside that are not part of the coalition, but there's sort of an uh informal pledge that they will vote with the government if there are votes that require a majority.
28:53
Dahlia: Not every vote in Knesset, most of the laws do not require an absolute majority of the Knesset members.
28:58
Dahlia: Most of the laws require only a majority of those present, for example.
29:02
Dahlia: But when there are let when there is legislation that requires a majority, that you have a kind of informal arrangement where parties outside or individuals from outside the coalition, from the opposition, of course, can vote with them.
29:13
Dahlia: And so that could be an arrangement.
29:15
Dahlia: But again, the fact is that minority governments don't usually last very long.
29:19
Dahlia: And in fact, even governments with 61 seats don't usually last very long.
29:23
Dahlia: That's what happened to the change government as well.
29:25
Neri: Right.
29:26
Neri: All important.
29:26
Neri: And um, when you talk to kind of figures in the opposition right now, less than two months out from the election, they say, well, uh, we're optimistic we're gonna get a solid majority uh without the need for the Arab Israeli parties.
29:39
Neri: This is kind of their their outward uh position and remains to be tested.
29:43
Dahlia: But which is pretty much the position of the government too.
29:45
Dahlia: When you ask, just going back to what you said earlier, when you said that the government uh, you know, nobody ever challenges them on how they're gonna form a coalition, which is certainly a more legitimate question considering that in most surveys they're much further.
29:56
Dahlia: However, uh they have two ready answers.
29:59
Dahlia: One is that the polls today are wrong, or that there is, you know, one company that does basically polling that is that leans very significantly to the right, and they pretty much only poll for right-wing media outlets, that shows them still getting a majority.
30:13
Dahlia: In the past, there were two such pollsters showing the current governing coalition with a majority over 61.
30:20
Dahlia: However, in one of those, the one that does polling for I-24 News, a right-leaning television channel, and that polls, that polling company is called Direct Pulls, the government, even in those surveys, are down to about 58 or 59 seats.
30:33
Dahlia: And the only one who regularly shows them still getting about 63 seats right now is the polling company run by Shlomo Philberg, who used to be a you know, former close associate of Netanyahu.
30:44
Neri: And a former states witness against him.
30:46
Dahlia: And former states witness, of course.
30:47
Neri: No longer a states witness against him.
30:49
Neri: Yeah.
30:49
Dahlia: Right.
30:50
Dahlia: But he has had his own polling company for a little while, but he pretty much always works for right-wing outlets.
30:55
Dahlia: There's a lot of criticism of his polling and methodology.
30:58
Dahlia: He claims, you know, by contrast, that all the other polls are missing out on a hidden basis of support for the coalition.
31:05
Dahlia: But we'll have to see who's closer, a little bit closer to the elections.
31:09
Dahlia: In in general, what happens in Israeli elections is the polling tends to converge the closer you get to the actual elections, because none of the pollsters, even if they all have a little bit of bias in one direction or the other, and the other polls have some leanings as well.
31:21
Dahlia: There are certain polls that always show the coalition at the lower end of its range, and certain polls that are reliably on the higher end of the lower range.
31:29
Dahlia: So when I said the range was 48, 49, 50 seats to 53 or 54, there are certain pollsters who are always on one side or the other as well.
31:37
Dahlia: And all of them tend to converge more and more within, you know, the two weeks before elections, because they all have an interest in trying to be as accurate as possible.
31:46
Dahlia: It boosts their credibility after the elections.
31:48
Dahlia: Right.
31:48
Neri: And we should mention that this uh Channel 14 poll consistently has the government coalition um well ahead, you know, a very strong majority.
31:58
Neri: Right.
31:58
Dahlia: So if that were true, not a very strong majority, actually, less than they have today, right?
32:02
Dahlia: Today they have 64 seats, and the Channel 14 surveys by Filber regularly have them now at about 63 seats.
32:09
Dahlia: In other words, even Filber rarely has them over what they current currently, what they what they last won in 2022, and just over, you know, 61.
32:19
Neri: Right.
32:20
Neri: Maybe the better choice of words is a clear majority, and Likud is polling, you know, above 30 seats in in his polls all the time.
32:27
Neri: Um, if this all were true, the Israeli right would be acting very differently.
32:31
Neri: So by their behavior and by their rhetoric, they don't even seem to actually believe Momo Filber's polling.
32:37
Neri: Uh, but that's um maybe a bit too inside baseball.
32:40
Neri: Uh Dahlia, last issue with regard to the opposition.
32:43
Neri: Okay.
32:43
Neri: Got the Isencot.
32:45
Neri: So this was a big change since last time you were on the rise of Eisencott as not just the main opposition challenger to to Bibi Netanyahu, but also his um Yeshar, uh which means straight in Hebrew.
32:58
Neri: Uh so his Yeshar party regularly polling as the largest party uh in the upcoming Knesset, even more than Net Yahu Slikood.
33:06
Neri: So, I mean, you called this last time, you know, that Eisencott was on the rise.
33:11
Neri: Uh so what do you make of his candidacy so far?
33:14
Neri: And I'm not going to ask you, will Gady Eisenkot be the next Prime Minister of Israel?
33:19
Neri: But can Gady Eisenkot be the next Prime Minister of Israel?
33:22
Dahlia: Well, can he be?
33:23
Dahlia: That's absolutely for sure.
33:24
Dahlia: He can be, but so can many others.
33:26
Dahlia: So I'm not sure how much that tells us.
33:28
Dahlia: Um really, I mean, he has been running as the biggest party in the opposition block really since uh, you know, earlier this year.
33:35
Dahlia: And he was on the rise.
33:36
Dahlia: It wasn't hard to see that in June because he had risen, you know, to at least double where he started when he first entered politics late in 2025.
33:43
Dahlia: And, you know, he's run what for Israelis tends to be a successful campaign, which means he has said very little about what he actually stands for.
33:50
Dahlia: And he's gone, you know, primarily for an anti-Netanyahu, I will win, um, I will be a responsible leader, good leader, etc.
33:57
Dahlia: Netanyahu's governments have, you know, used themselves up.
34:00
Dahlia: And there's no real content or vision for what the country should be that is clearly distinguished from where it is now, what he's committed to, other than some very specific issues.
34:11
Dahlia: So he has made a big promise, like many of the opposition parties, to establish uh an independent state commission of inquiry uh for what happened on October 7th and the failures of the Israeli authorities to detect and prevent it.
34:23
Dahlia: And he, of course, has promised that he will end the widespread or near universal exemption for the draft for the ultra-orthodox.
34:31
Dahlia: And so those are the main issues that he's, and you know, he occasionally gives kind of, you know, I would call it critique around the edges of the current government's policies in terms of, you know, the various um war fronts where Israel has continued, you know, continued sort of dragging out forever wars without translating them into clear political gain, alienating Israel's allies, isolation abroad.
34:52
Dahlia: But these are marginal themes.
34:53
Dahlia: You have to really look for them.
34:54
Dahlia: Um Gadi Eisencott has talked much more about his personal journey.
34:58
Dahlia: You know, he was chief of staff, and Israelis love that.
35:00
Dahlia: Israelis uh, you know, flocked to Benny Gance when he was in the very same slot in 2019.
35:06
Dahlia: It didn't really help Benny Gance.
35:07
Dahlia: He didn't win decisively enough to be able to form governments.
35:11
Dahlia: He had to join Netanyahu's governments at points, and now he's, you know, completely below the threshold and almost irrelevant.
35:16
Dahlia: Well, sort of, he's not entirely irrelevant, but almost irrelevant in Israeli uh political life right now.
35:21
Dahlia: And so it seems to be that this image of the former chief of staff, person who's devoted his life to the IDF, and in his case, also a bereaved father and also lost two nephews in the wars, which do, you know, contribute to an important um part of his personal story that has become a story of Israel right now.
35:41
Dahlia: But that seems to have been enough for him to, you know, take over all of Benny Gantz's former votes, which at a certain point had moved towards Neftali Bennett, and now Neftali Bennett is kind of back down close to where Yesha Tid was polling after they joined together.
35:56
Dahlia: And he seems to have plateaued a little bit.
35:59
Dahlia: So Isaac, you know, right now has reached a limit, it's seen, at least for the last month or so, where he's been polling at about 23, 24 seats.
36:09
Dahlia: Um, and that's his range for now.
36:11
Dahlia: Now, could he continue to rise?
36:13
Dahlia: He could, but so far he hasn't.
36:15
Dahlia: And as a result, could he be prime minister?
36:18
Dahlia: He could be.
36:19
Dahlia: He would be well placed to be, he would seem to be the top choice of all opposition voters.
36:25
Dahlia: But we have seen in the past, in that change government, for example, that Naftali Bennett was able to use his leverage as kingmaker with a small party to become prime minister first in a rotation, even though he only had actually won seven seats, but then really only had six seats going into that government because of a defector.
36:44
Dahlia: And so all of those kind of, you know, we call them trikim vishtikim, which basically is just, you know, tricks, tricks and sticks.
36:50
Dahlia: Yeah, have been legitimized in Israeli politics.
36:53
Dahlia: And so I would say it's still too soon to say, simply because we don't know how many of the smaller parties, as we might talk about, are going to cross the electoral threshold, you know, once we know how many of them cross the electoral threshold and which bloc they are loyal to.
37:08
Dahlia: For example, Ofir Vinter, the newest right-wing party, says he's going to be loyal to recommending Netanyahu.
37:12
Dahlia: So, okay, Vinter's party will go into Netanyahu.
37:15
Dahlia: What about if the reservist slash Zionist home party crosses the threshold?
37:21
Dahlia: Which side will they help form to form a coalition?
37:24
Dahlia: So some of these are a bit wildcard.
37:26
Dahlia: And until we know more about that, it's very hard to say whether we can expect the biggest party to form the next government or one of the small parties to basically, you know, use their bargaining leverage and demand to form the next government.
37:40
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38:37
Neri: So we're definitely going to get into the smaller parties in just a minute.
38:40
Neri: Um I want to ask you, not as Dahlia like the person, but Dahlia as the political strategist and consultant.
38:48
Neri: Do you like the kind of campaign Eisencott is running?
38:52
Neri: Where, like you said, he's focusing more on consensual issues amongst the Israeli kind of center, even kind of obviously appealing to the to the center right, not really wanting to wade into more controversial issues like the Palestinian question, like the issue of settlements, even kind of wartime policy, the big picture, right?
39:10
Neri: He and other opposition leaders aren't going out there and committing to I don't know, withdrawing from the security zones in Gaza or Lebanon or Syria in return for X, Y, or Z diplomatic agreement.
39:21
Neri: So do you do you like, as a professional, do you do you like slash agree with the kind of campaign he's running, or would you like it to be more forward-leaning, more visionary?
39:31
Dahlia: Yeah.
39:31
Dahlia: So I mean, remember, I guess the downside of having been a political uh strategist and a consultant for almost three decades is that I've seen phases of what is considered to be good strategy come and go.
39:43
Dahlia: And so let's say for the first, you know, decade or 15 years, uh, when I started working in political advising, it was considered ideal to really segment the population and you know, categorize every bit of the population into the people who are already on our side, don't need to worry about them, people who are never going to be on our side, don't need to worry about them, and those who were within reach.
40:04
Dahlia: And even those who are within reach, we had all sorts of categorizations and we would hand tailor the messages about how to reach out to them.
40:10
Dahlia: And if the if what you know, we would pull them and listen to them in focus groups aggressively.
40:14
Dahlia: And if they said, we want consensus issues, we don't want controversial issues, that's what you did.
40:19
Dahlia: And so it would have been considered good strategy.
40:21
Dahlia: But right now, I think it's archaic.
40:23
Dahlia: I think we're in a different era.
40:25
Dahlia: And I think we're in an era when people, not only in Israel, but in other parts of the Western world, especially in the US, we've seen it, that people come along with what were once considered to be too decisive, too categorical, too visionary, too, you know, breaking taboos or breaking boundaries and establishing visions based on ideas that were not popular in the past, but reflect something very authentic going on among the voters or among the voters when they haven't even articulated yet.
40:53
Dahlia: You know, but someone like Segalovich, for example, I think is articulating what a lot of people felt without really saying it.
40:58
Dahlia: We know that because of the responses that we're seeing.
41:00
Dahlia: If you talk to people saying he's brave and it's bold, and you know, it's time we heard something like this.
41:05
Dahlia: And so I think by the same logic, I personally think it's a strategic mistake that Gadi Eisencott has not presented Israeli society with anything inspirational.
41:14
Dahlia: Now, some people may be inspired by his personal story.
41:16
Dahlia: It's true, because Israeli Jews especially do love the former military person who becomes politician.
41:22
Dahlia: Never mind, once they're politicians, they tend to do pretty poorly.
41:25
Dahlia: Uh, it's a bit of a myth that, you know, generals make great politicians here.
41:28
Neri: But usually terrible politicians.
41:31
Dahlia: They're usually terrible politicians, you know.
41:32
Dahlia: And Ariel Sharon was an example.
41:34
Dahlia: He was a good politician in some ways, but he also was out of the army for a very long time before he became a politician.
41:40
Dahlia: We forget that.
41:41
Dahlia: So I think that people project their expectations on Isencock for now.
41:45
Dahlia: But I do think that he would be a much stronger candidate if he was actually saying, here is the Israel I long for.
41:50
Dahlia: Here is how it looks different.
41:52
Dahlia: I have, you know, X, Y, Z steps to get there.
41:55
Dahlia: Maybe not all of them will work out.
41:57
Dahlia: Let's be realistic.
41:58
Dahlia: But I know what kind of country I want this place to be.
42:01
Dahlia: I want it to be more democratic.
42:02
Dahlia: I want it to be, you know, part of the family of democratic nations.
42:05
Dahlia: I want to once and for all end the conflict and occupation with the Palestinians.
42:10
Dahlia: Of course, he'll never say that.
42:11
Dahlia: Not and the opposite.
42:12
Dahlia: When you said he hasn't wanted to wade into the Palestinian issue, that was true up until a week ago.
42:17
Dahlia: A week ago, he did weigh in and said, I absolutely reject the idea that there is or will be a Palestinian state.
42:23
Dahlia: I mean, he didn't say it in exactly those terms, but close enough that that's how it was reported and understood.
42:29
Dahlia: And he was saying that to disavow something that Mansur Abbas said in a party convention, which was the most, you know, really the most basic and cautious and the kind of, I mean, what Mansoor Abbas said had been the language that Israeli Jews have been saying they wanted to hear from Palestinians for decades.
42:47
Dahlia: Where's the Palestinian peace lover?
42:49
Dahlia: You know, and Mansur Abbas said, we want peace and reconciliation and two-state solution and a Palestinian state next to Israel.
42:56
Dahlia: That's the way for our societies to get along.
42:58
Dahlia: It was like basically everything Israel has been telling itself it wanted to hear.
43:02
Dahlia: And when it happened, of course, uh, well, Isencott actually rushed to disavow it even before he was attacked, which I think is wrong strategy.
43:10
Dahlia: You're playing on Netanyahu's terms.
43:12
Neri: I think no, Massur Abbas said whatever he said in the context of a much larger and more detailed speech.
43:19
Dahlia: It was his party convention.
43:20
Neri: Yeah, it was quickly seized on by the Israeli right and the kind of BB media machine.
43:26
Neri: And then Isencot kind of felt the need to go out and disavow it.
43:32
Neri: I think.
43:33
Neri: I mean, obviously, like he didn't he didn't wait.
43:35
Neri: It came into the bloodstream, right?
43:37
Neri: It was like it was like reported, it was a big thing.
43:40
Neri: And then yeah, Netanyahu obviously uh used it, you know, in his own words, act it on afterwards.
43:45
Neri: But yeah, it was a response.
43:47
Neri: But obviously Isencott's appealing to this kind of mythical soft right, disenchanted former BB voters, right?
43:54
Neri: That's what they're going for.
43:55
Dahlia: Yeah, they're trying to.
43:56
Dahlia: Uh the thing is, I'm not sure, you know, the the concept of a soft right can be little misleading.
44:01
Dahlia: Especially, you know, because the what counts as the right right now is so extreme that I would say people who have uh who voted for the current for the current coalition in 2022 but are no longer voting for them, many of them already had left within the first few months of 2023, right?
44:16
Dahlia: Because even within, you know, by February or March of that year in 2023, the coalition, which had just a few months ago won, you know, 64 parliamentary seats, had already lost its majority and was down to, you know, 57, 56, 55.
44:30
Dahlia: And so, you know, a certain percentage had already left.
44:33
Dahlia: After October 7th, even more, they went to a real low point.
44:36
Dahlia: And then for six months, they were, you know, even in the mid-40 or low 40 seat range for about six months and then started to climb back up, but never back up, even to where they were, I mean, close to where they were through much of 2023, but even not quite that high.
44:49
Dahlia: So in 2023, you know, there were still you know polls showing them between 54 and 55 seats ahead of October 7th, a little bit lower, 52, 53, but now they're kind of struggling to stay at the 50 seat range.
45:03
Dahlia: So all of those people who had voted for the current government in the past and were no longer voting for them, I'm not sure if I would call them moderate right, you know, in the sense that they were voting for Likud under Netanyahu when Likud had already long since become pretty extremist, basically a far-right party without very much to distinguish it from, you know, at the very least, uh Ben Gvir, and distinguished only minimally from Batsado Smotric by, you know, not being formally a religious party, but many of its key candidates and ministers, you know, again, themselves being indistinguishable both religiously and in terms of their vision.
45:39
Dahlia: And we know this also after October 7th because many of the Likud ministers had been at the forefront of calling for annexation of Gaza itself and rebuilding settlements there, etc.
45:49
Neri: And so, you know, there's no difference between their ministers and Bengir and Tmuchich's ministers.
45:55
Dahlia: It's getting very hard to see a difference in terms of their you know policy and ideology.
45:59
Dahlia: But having said that, there was, you know, you could argue that some of those most extreme statements came out after October 7th.
46:05
Dahlia: Nevertheless, even if you voted for them in 2022, I would say you were taking a pretty hard right position in terms of, for one thing, just the ultimate loyalty to Netanyahu, who had already been on trial for three counts of corruption from 2020 and sticking with him and the increasing, you know, sort of tendency to attack the judiciary, for example.
46:24
Dahlia: We, you know, some of us think about that as something that started in early 2023, but it had been going on for years before then.
46:31
Dahlia: And people were aware of it at a lower level and being constant partnership with the ultra-orthodox parties, et cetera.
46:37
Dahlia: So I feel like yes, those people those people have left supporting the coalition and they are right wing.
46:43
Dahlia: Whether you can consider them moderate, it's you know maybe something we can debate.
46:48
Dahlia: But of course those are the people that Eisencott and everybody in the opposition, Lieberman, for example, hope to retain because they're currently voting for an opposition party or they're not sure what to do.
46:59
Dahlia: And some of them may just stay home and not vote.
47:01
Dahlia: We don't know.
47:02
Dahlia: But those are the people of course that the opposition parties hope to I I would say at this point it's a matter of retaining them.
47:09
Dahlia: They have already left in 2023 and then certainly after October 7th.
47:13
Dahlia: And you know the the coalition parties are having a very hard time getting them back.
47:17
Neri: Yeah and you want to keep them on your side and not have Netanyahu at the last minute bring them back into the fold.
47:24
Neri: I mean look Netanyahu and we're getting now into kind of his side of the ledger he's been running you know a very aggressive campaign uh as as he always does he's now everywhere giving interviews obviously to friendly kind of right wing outlets but giving interviews he's at malls shaking hands kissing babies uh he popped up at a pop concert here in Tel Aviv uh the other week so again he's campaigning hard but he does have a major headache uh coming uh next week so next Tuesday night is a deadline to register party lists basically this is the last moment you have to actually solidify whether you're running who you're running with what the various constellations uh of the upcoming election will really look like and he has a headache he has a headache because you as we talked about earlier there are a lot of these smaller right wing uh splinter parties and not even splinter parties hovering right around the 3.25% threshold uh for entry into the next Knesset so basically you have to get 3.25% of the total vote to actually make it in to the next Knesset.
48:29
Neri: And you have parties like Batalas Motrich's religious Zionism hovering dangerously around the electoral threshold.
48:36
Neri: You have a new party led by uh the guy you mentioned earlier, Ophir Ofir Winter, former IDF Brigadier General, uh also quite quite hardline, quite right wing.
48:46
Neri: He's trying to present himself as something new on the political map and on and on.
48:52
Neri: You know, Moshe Faglin he's like a far-right likud reject for lack of a better word.
48:58
Neri: Avi Maoz, he's like a racist, hardline kind of religious fundamentalist also running, I'll spare our audience all the names, but it is a headache for Netanyahu because if he doesn't organize his side of the ledger, his bloc, then a lot of these parties may just continue running alone uh and actually not make it into the next Knesset and waste all these right wing votes.
49:22
Neri: So ahead of next week, Dahlia, do you think BB will will be able to uh to pull a rabbit out of his hat and kind of organize these various parties appropriately or um will they kind of put up a fight and damage the right wing's prospects?
49:36
Dahlia: I'd like to say that not all of it depends on Netanyahu because those parties all have some sort of an interest in forming a government as well.
49:45
Dahlia: They want a government either one that's led by Netanyahu or one that's led by the opposition.
49:49
Dahlia: And so I think that they all know just like parties on the left that you risk wasting votes.
49:54
Dahlia: And I think the lesson of what happened to Meritz and labor in the last election whereby merits became very close and wasted you know hundreds of thousands of votes by not crossing the threshold seems like something that everybody is aware of.
50:05
Dahlia: I mean everybody should have been aware of it from 2015 onwards when we established a 3.25% electoral threshold.
50:11
Dahlia: So they all know that.
50:13
Dahlia: And I think that it's really quite remarkable that so many different individuals feel like they have to start brand new parties when in fact talk about Gaudi Isencot not having a clear political platform most of these parties have said nothing about what they actually stand for other than that they are on the right and they're Zionist and they believe maybe in the draft, you know, for conscription for ultra Orthodox, but that's about it.
50:33
Dahlia: We know nothing else.
50:34
Dahlia: Well I suppose I shouldn't I should give Of Winter some credit because he did um un unveil his proposal to encourage what he would euphemistically call voluntary emigration from Gaza, by which he really means expulsion, you know, however you want to slice it, that's really what it comes down to.
50:50
Dahlia: So we know what he thinks about that.
50:51
Dahlia: But other than labeling themselves, really they have it's like they never really thought about policy vision ideology well ideology yes but in an empty sort of way.
50:59
Dahlia: So you have these different groups and all I can say is that they must be driven you know by the feeling of a few individual party leaders that we, me personally, I deserve to have you know 3.25% at least of the vote.
51:14
Dahlia: It's quite the ego trip.
51:15
Dahlia: Now I think that they would they're ultimately going to be asking themselves close to September 8th, if I waste votes, one of my blocks will lose you know so if I'm on the Netanyahu side and I'm close to the threshold but I waste votes, everybody's going to be angry at me and I will be annoyed because my side didn't win.
51:31
Dahlia: So I better join with somebody.
51:33
Dahlia: And same is going to be for any of those right-leaning parties that are more on the opposition side.
51:38
Dahlia: So I think that we will see some of those parties, some of those lists getting together or some of those parties trying to get together into a joint list or a technical agreement about running together.
51:50
Dahlia: It's just too unpredictable as to which ones go with which the rumor mill is constant every day you hear about this individual possibly you know joining with that particular party or some people who were in politics but who are not currently like Ayelek Shaked, former justice minister who was also political partner with Naftali Bennett who's now thinking of going into one of the smaller right wing I mean there are so many different names being bandied about and possible constellations that it's hard to know.
52:14
Dahlia: And of course Netanyahu does have an influence he was very influential in helping to re-engineer those constellations ahead of the last elections in 2022 and it worked out perfectly for him.
52:25
Dahlia: He's trying to do the same thing now at points he has talked about you know three of these tiny right wing parties getting together Naam, Feiglen and Vintel and, you know, I mean but again all these possible constellations are changing all the time.
52:39
Dahlia: So I think we will see some of them unify.
52:41
Dahlia: I imagine at least one or two of them will remain independent.
52:45
Dahlia: And all I can say is that the Netanyahu bloc and Netanyahu himself their primary aim is to maximize every possible coalition supporting vote, right?
52:55
Dahlia: Every possible right wing voter who wants a Netanyahu led government, they want all of those votes to count.
53:00
Dahlia: They don't want any of them to be wasted.
53:02
Dahlia: And so he'll do whatever he can but I would like to think that even if I'm not on their side I would like to think that some of these pop-up party leaders would say to themselves I don't want to waste votes for my side so I better join somebody else even if it means I don't get the top spot.
53:17
Dahlia: But I guess I can't I say I can't I can't really trust that that'll be the case.
53:21
Dahlia: And the same thing on the left right we we didn't talk that much about the left but there is this additional party called Place for us all.
53:27
Dahlia: It's a Jewish Arab party established that grew out of a civil society a very you know active civil society Jewish Arab network called Standing Together and I think they're facing very similar dilemma right now.
53:37
Neri: Yes uh they are and I mean they to their credit have said we're you know if we don't they have said the polls showing us getting over the threshold we're going to um pull our nomination or candidacy for the for the Knesset.
53:49
Neri: I think they are hoping that somebody takes them in, right?
53:52
Neri: That the new kind of merged uh Arab joint list may may add them to to their slate.
53:58
Neri: Doesn't seem to be the case just just yet.
54:00
Neri: Yeah.
54:00
Dahlia: And to their credit I would like to say I don't want to put them in the same basket as what I'm considering these kind of ego driven individuals establishing right wing parties.
54:08
Dahlia: This screw out of a much more organic civil society network that's been around for I think about a decade if I'm not mistaken.
54:14
Dahlia: I've been following their activities for a very long time.
54:17
Dahlia: And so they do have you know much more grassroots long-term basis of support at least for their mission.
54:23
Dahlia: And in fact they are all mission.
54:25
Dahlia: They are by the by you know by contrast to the right wing they are all about their you know very quite clearly articulated vision for Jewish our partnership, for ending occupation, for reaching a two-state solution for human rights, for shared solidarity over economic and social struggles.
54:40
Dahlia: So I would say they're quite they're quite a different kind of party but they face the same political dilemma.
54:45
Neri: Yes uh they were leading a lot of the anti-war demonstrations um at the height of the Gaza war spent some time with them as well reporting.
54:52
Neri: And then talking about ego trips and vanity projects Dahlia uh we also have the non-left non-right this kind of so-called third block of parties all below the electoral threshold so people like Benigant, uh Khili Toper and Joaz Hendel who are kind of helming this um reservist party or pro-reservist party you also have the Likud B party uh led by Giladirdan and uh Yuli Edelstein these are former senior Likud ministers uh considered more moderate than the present day Likud all of them polling below the threshold all of them I guess more prominent in the Israeli media political ecosystem than obviously on the Israeli streets because they don't have a lot of support.
55:39
Neri: So what do you think these guys um and I think they're all guys right all of them are guys.
55:44
Dahlia: They're all guys the only party I know of right now that's being led by a woman is a Nattavirus party which is called Oz um and I really don't know anything about that party other than I get pop-up ads occasionally you know so I and it's usually not tested in the made mainstream surveys so no all of these are run by men and these are the ones that I had in mind.
56:01
Dahlia: See when you when you called them kind of third block parties I'm not sure uh how we you know categorize them.
56:06
Dahlia: They would all consider themselves to be right wing ideologically.
56:09
Dahlia: So that's those are some of the parties those are the parties I had in mind when we were talking about these right wing, you know, personality driven parties.
56:16
Dahlia: However, the distinction I think you're making is that only among those, only Oferwinter has openly committed himself to going into or recommending that Netanyahu form the next government.
56:27
Dahlia: The other ones are playing a little bit of a cagey game.
56:29
Dahlia: It's not totally clear.
56:30
Neri: I mean unless I missed a a headline from 15 minutes ago because they do change constantly they're all playing uh you call it cagey I call it uh an idiotic game where they're trying to appeal we're we're going we're going to force the bigger parties above us to form a uh to form a broad unity government after the election we're going to force them in into it and a it doesn't seem like there are a lot of buyers for what they're selling and B, if the bigger parties want to form a a broad kind of unity government, why do they need you?
57:02
Neri: You know what I'm saying?
57:03
Dahlia: Yeah well I think no I mean I but I do think there's a logic listen I have long thought that things are going to happen before the elections themselves or after the elections that none of us are predicting.
57:13
Dahlia: And so it's very easy to fall into the habit of saying well it's either going to be another Netanyahu coalition that looks like the one today or it's going to be an opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisencock with all the other you know left uh center, well, right, non-Netanya right center left and maybe an Arab party.
57:28
Dahlia: But there are other options and we have to you know imagine that there's things that we can't imagine.
57:33
Dahlia: And so yes Netanyahu has been also in addition in kind of like a background noise to a lot of what else he's been doing he has also been saying we should form a broad unity coalition right he's trying to and his latest message over the last 48 hours yeah broad wing yeah but I mean when he says national what he means is all those other parties if they pass, but also parties like Lieberman and you know Guy the Eisencott, probably even Bennett, he wouldn't care, you know, if he he wouldn't mind going back in with any of those.
58:03
Dahlia: And when he puts that language out there, I think he's trying to appeal to the more put it this way, he's trying to appeal to those who left his coalition who who stopped supporting him in surveys in 2023 because they thought it was too right wing, too much of an attack on the judiciary, too much you know, giving in to the far, you know, right wing religious fundamentalists and messianics.
58:22
Dahlia: And so he is advancing that language and if those party and I think those I think you're right that those small parties they are right wing ideologically but they're trying to portray themselves as representing an authentic national patriotic camp primarily because they believe in the draft issue, in the conscription issue.
58:38
Dahlia: And that's the only real difference between them and the in fact most of them broke with the coalition only over that issue and nothing else.
58:45
Dahlia: And so I can't tell you if any of them are going to cross the threshold if they remain independent parties.
58:50
Dahlia: And if they do, well I mean you again you what you said is also very important.
58:55
Dahlia: And I've been thinking this as well.
58:56
Dahlia: They don't have a lot of purchase in the sense that I think the Israeli public is very much focused on the question of whether Netanyahu leads the next government.
59:04
Dahlia: And so unless you actually make it very clear which side of that divide you're on, I think you're gonna be, I I personally think you're gonna have a ceiling of voters and I'm not sure if that ceiling is beyond 3.25%.
59:16
Dahlia: So you know Benny Gans, for example, has been running on the idea that he's going to break down the divide between the pro-BB and anti-BB block.
59:24
Dahlia: He published this ad maybe two months ago now that was widely ridiculed, not least by yours truly, because I thought it was a stupid ad strategically but the point is it didn't do anything for him.
59:33
Dahlia: Like his whole ticket right now is I will heal the divisions between us by breaking through between the Netanyahu and non-natanyahu blocks but these are not arbitrary designations.
59:42
Dahlia: People aren't for or against Netanyahu just because they hate him or love him.
59:45
Dahlia: They don't like what he stands for or they do like what they what he stands for.
59:49
Dahlia: And that's a whole package an ideology policies you know a tone partners fellow travelers.
59:56
Dahlia: Exactly and so I don't think these are things you can just break through with you know a frankly really stupid you know two-minute ad that says stop behaving like children with your pro or anti-Natanyahu blocks.
1:00:07
Dahlia: The public doesn't like being treated like children.
1:00:09
Dahlia: They don't like Netanyahu or they do like him for very very substantive reasons.
1:00:13
Dahlia: And so I think all of those small parties if they're trying to say we're gonna be coy or what did you call it idiotic about which side we would support for the next government, I think the Israeli public really wants to know which direction the candidate is proposing to take the country.
1:00:29
Dahlia: And they don't want to support somebody who's going to be a rabbit in the hat, I think that is what it looks like right now because none of those parties are getting more than a couple of barely 1%.
1:00:38
Neri: Yeah if something like the Likud B had real purchase amongst let's say disaffected Likud voters or even moderate right wing voters, they would be polling much higher much, much higher.
1:00:48
Dahlia: I think so I think so but I think those kinds of disaffected people have already found themselves well enough you know with Gaudi Eisencott they see him as somebody who is with as his own party uh just over a year he has been in government before and they trust him as you know former chief of staff.
1:01:04
Dahlia: And so we'll see.
1:01:05
Dahlia: Listen we could all be wrong if like three weeks from now, you know, in one week the lists have to close within two weeks or three weeks after that we might see you know some sort of upward trajectory for a dark horse.
1:01:15
Dahlia: That has happened more than once in Israeli politics and sometimes at the very last stage, right?
1:01:19
Dahlia: I just, you know, a lot of times people think that there's this underreporting or under polling of right wing parties.
1:01:25
Dahlia: But you know actually it's oftentimes the centrist parties who have made uh kind of a stunning surprise on election day because a lot of the undecided the hard undecided in the last minute decided to vote for Yuri Lapide.
1:01:38
Dahlia: Yerlapide was polling at 12 or 13 seats in 2023 and he emerged with 19.
1:01:43
Neri: 2013.
1:01:44
Dahlia: Sorry in 2013 2013 yeah 2013 his first campaign his first campaign he entered politics with nothing he was polling at 12 or 13 seats and he won 19 and it was because you had hard undecided.
1:01:55
Dahlia: We had the Penjuners party who got a surprise vote.
1:01:57
Dahlia: Shinui before that of course in 1999 Shass got the surprise you know with 17 seats.
1:02:03
Dahlia: So there sometimes there are right wing surprises sometimes there are what Israelis consider to be centrist surprises.
1:02:09
Neri: Yes uh all important caveats um we'll be a lot smarter after next week and we'll see kind of um well moving day mergers and acquisitions and then the electoral map uh kind of straightening out as we really get into the last what six weeks or so of the of the campaign.
1:02:26
Neri: Um and then we'll also look at the polling right you could have one of those smaller parties either alone because the other kind of competitors at the bottom of the list dropped out or they merged with someone else actually start start gaining ground and gaining seats remains to be seen.
1:02:40
Neri: Dahlia thank you so much for coming on as always.
1:02:44
Dahlia: Thank you for having me.
1:02:45
Neri: I'd wish you uh happy new year Chaxamech well I will wish you happy new year at Haxamech but I know it's gonna be a very busy period for you uh coming up through the holidays and especially after the holidays so uh be well thank you it will be thank you for having me okay thanks again to Dalia Shanlin for a generous time and insights also a special thanks to our producer Jacob Gilman and our editor Tracy Levy as always and to all of you who support Israel Policy Forum's work.
1:03:13
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1:03:24
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