# Is Israel’s Global Standing on The (Israeli) Ballot? - with Amit Segal and Nadav Eyal

An episode of [Call Me Back - with Dan Senor](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1539292794), 24 Sep 2026, 46 min.

Audio: https://podcasts.beehiiv.com/d9ee47aa-cc91-4ad0-b1e2-000191888049/01a0599f-c7dc-725e-a326-2afd78c94e7e/01a0d119-9561-75bc-9094-e8cb9d864500/01a0d119-964b-7dea-bc0f-331f9473ff15.mp3

Is Israel’s growing isolation abroad becoming a political problem at home? As Benjamin Netanyahu heads to New York for a brief UN visit just weeks before Israel’s election, Israel’s standing in the United States is deteriorating, even as Netanyahu’s political position at home has improved. Dan is joined by Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal to ask whether Israeli voters see the country’s growing international isolation with the same urgency as diaspora Jews, and how that divide is shaping an increasingly complicated election. Read Rep. Brad Sherman’s warning about declining American support for Israel here. Read Mark Dubowitz’s FDD analysis on how the financial warfare model used against Iran could one day be turned against Israel here. RSVP to our October 5th Virtual Announcement Event: https://arkmedia.org/rsvp/ Get your tickets to a live taping of Call me Back at the Streicker Center in NYC on October 22. —- This episode is sponsored by American Friends of Magen David Adom. You can support their important work at afmda.org. Call Me Back is made possible by our subscribers. If these conversations are where you turn to understand Israel and the Jewish world, consider joining them. It's what keeps this show going. Become a Subscriber - Inside Call me Back ___ In this episode: 05:48 Netanyahu’s UN speech is really aimed at Israeli voters 10:00 Why American support for Israel is eroding 17:00 Is Israel’s problem bigger than Netanyahu? 20:00 Do Israelis see a threat to Israel’s global standing? 24:00 Could a different government change Israel’s trajectory? 27:00 Why Israel’s electoral map may be shifting toward Netanyahu 34:00 Can Eisenkot win by simply being “not Netanyahu”? 38:00 What happens if neither side in Israel can form a government? ___ More Ark Media: • Want to join Ark Media? Check out our careers page for new openings. • Explore Israel Votes • Listen to Ark News Daily • Listen to For Heaven's Sake • Listen to What’s Your Number? • Newsletters | Ark Media | Amit Segal | Nadav Eyal • Instagram | Ark Media | Dan • X | Dan • Dan Senor & Saul Singer’s book, The Genius of Israel • Get in touch Credits: Ilan Benatar, Beth Pearlman, Devan Schwartz, Brittany Cohen, Mindy Schaper, Ava Weiner, Martin Huergo, Mariangeles Burgos, and Yuval Semo

## Transcript

[0:00] Quick note before we start, big things are coming to Arc Media.
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[0:24] \[Instrumental music\] You are listening to an Arc Media podcast.
[0:33] Every appearance or every speech of Prime Minister Netanyahu at the United Nations is first and foremost a musical which is played on Broadway, but the audience is Israeli. He grew up in America. He studied in America.
[0:47] He speaks with an American accent. But the America that he understands, to a large extent, is not the current America. If you compare it to back to 2018, Israel had a negative swing of over 70% against it.
[1:02] And of course, it's very much related to your question to Netanyahu.
[1:06] \[Instrumental music\] It's 7 AM on Wednesday, September 23rd here in New York City.
[1:22] It's 2 PM on Wednesday, September 23rd in Israel.
[1:26] By the time most of you will be listening to this episode, when it drops on Thursday, Benjamin Netanyahu will be in New York to address the United Nations General Assembly, and his visit is, in some ways, a perfect snapshot of the question we want to explore today.
[1:43] This will be one of Netanyahu's shortest trips to the United States as prime minister.
[1:47] He is expected to arrive in the morning, address the UN in the afternoon, and leave shortly afterward, without spending a single night in the United States. There's no meeting scheduled with President Trump.
[1:58] No major meetings with Gulf leaders have been announced. The visit is essentially the speech, and the atmosphere surrounding that speech is quite extraordinary.
[2:07] New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on a pledge, part of his agenda, to arrest Netanyahu when he arrives in New York City based on the International Criminal Court warrant against him.
[2:18] Mamdani has since acknowledged that the mayor of New York City does not have the legal authority to enforce that warrant, but he continues to say that Netanyahu is not welcome in New York.
[2:28] Netanyahu, for his part, has said that he intends to respond to Mamdani from the UN podium.
[2:34] All this is happening against a much bigger backdrop, a significant deterioration in attitudes toward Israel in the United States, particularly among younger Americans.
[2:43] According to recent surveys, eighty-five percent of young Democrats and sixty-four percent of young Republicans hold an unfavorable view of Israel.
[2:52] And there are increasingly serious arguments that this could eventually move beyond public opinion and diplomatic isolation into economic consequences.
[3:01] A case study published last month by FDD, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, some of whose experts we often have on Call Me Back, lays out a scenario in which sanctions mechanisms used against Iran could eventually be used to target Israeli officials, Israeli companies, and Israeli banks.
[3:20] For Jews in the diaspora, particularly here in America, Israel's standing in the world feels very immediate.
[3:26] It intersects with our politics, our institutions, our educational institutions, schools, colleges, with antisemitism, and sometimes our own sense of security. But here is the tension.
[3:38] Is this how Israelis see it, and will it be on the ballot in the upcoming elections in 34 days?
[3:44] As Israel's global standing is becoming a more urgent subject of discussion, Netanyahu's political position at home has improved.
[3:51] He is still short of a governing majority in the polling, but the movement in the polls over the past two weeks has brought Netanyahu considerably closer to at least denying his opponents the ability to form a government.
[4:04] The opposition remains divided, and new parties on the right have complicated the electoral map. What would another Netanyahu government mean for Israel's standing in the world?
[4:14] Are Israelis and diaspora Jews now looking at the same problem through fundamentally different lenses?
[4:21] To discuss all of this, we are joined by Arc Media contributors, Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal, two of Israel's leading political analysts, who also have a real sense for attitudes towards Israel over here in the West.
[4:33] My conversation with Nadav and Amit right after this short message. In the United States, if there's an emergency, you're dealing with several different systems.
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[5:39] Amit, Nadav, thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Okay, Amit, I want to start with you.
[5:45] We're taping this on Wednesday, but this episode drops on the day that Prime Minister Netanyahu will be addressing the UN. So I guess my first question is, what do you expect to hear from him?
[5:54] And then I want to talk about who, who you think he's speaking to.
[5:56] First and foremost, every, uh, appearance or every speech of Prime Minister Netanyahu at the United Nations is first and foremost a musical which is played on Broadway, but the audience is Israeli.
[6:09] Which means, and especially when it's only 33 days prior to the election, let's say the audience is Israeli, and it does, it, it less matters for Netanyahu how the reception will be in the UN assembly, General Assembly, but more in Israel.
[6:24] That has always been the case. That has always been the case with Prime Minister Netanyahu.
[6:29] Actually, I think the only country on earth in which the leader's speech at the UN General Assembly is important, becomes a national event, is Israel, and it has begun, as I understand, around 2009 when Netanyahu is back in the Prime Minister's office.
[6:47] And I don't have to remind to the audience how important, crucial the level of English speaking is for the Israeli electorate.
[6:55] Many political careers of Israeli politicians had been brought to a violent end when the level of their English was exposed to the public. So Netanyahu, one of Netanyahu's raison d'être is his English level.
[7:09] It's way better than Eisenkot's or Lapid's, and he is going to play it. However, I'm not sure it's as important as it used to be. Why? For many reasons.
[7:20] One, the Israelis are no longer very affected by speeches, especially after October 7th. Second, the timing. It's Thursday, 9 PM in Israel between one holiday and the other.
[7:34] Between one holiday and the other, just so our listeners understand what you're referring to. So Yom Kippur just ended, and this is the next holiday to come in is Sukkot.
[7:41] And there are 150,000 Israelis abroad and hundreds of thousands more in, on vacations.
[7:48] This fall period, we have this crush of Israeli holidays is equivalent to, like, the United States during Thanksgiving or the United States around the Christmas holidays, where I- Israel, most Israelis are kind of checked out.
[7:59] Absolutely. And the, the ratings are quite low in Israel.
[8:03] And because we're on the election trail, I mean, people are more immune to the impacts of speeches because they see not only the Prime Minister Netanyahu, but the candidate Netanyahu as well.
[8:15] That's why I wouldn't overestimate the impact of the speech. Having said that, Netanyahu is promising, uh, some surprises in this speech. Usually, it comes with props.
[8:28] In the past, it was the cartoon of the bomb, and before that, the plans of the Auschwitz concentration camps. So I guess it's going to be somewhere around this area. In terms of themes, any big themes?
[8:41] I mean, you're alluding to them right now, but a- any big themes that you think he will articulate? Specifically, he's previewed that he's going to talk about Mamdani from the podium. Mamdani, Iran.
[8:50] He's going to say, "We are still fighting. Israel is winning. We rose up on October 7th." And he's going to connect Israel and himself, of course.
[9:01] So anyone who is Netanyahu's enemy is Israel's enemy as well, and vice versa.
[9:06] So it's going to be a speech focused on the, uh, swing voters in Israel, those who see Netanyahu as accountable for the October 7th massacre, and responsible and accountable, too, for the successes post October 7th.
[9:21] Now, those are the voters that have hard times to decide between this fact and the other.
[9:27] And more important than this, I have to say that every framing of the election around security, diplomacy, terrorism, et cetera, et cetera, is way better for Netanyahu than the Achilles' heel of his entire election campaign, which is the ultra-Orthodox alliance within his coalition.
[9:48] So for Netanyahu, every day focused on the UN, Gaza, Hamas, even October 7th is better than the alternative. Okay.
[9:56] Nadav, Netanyahu is arriving at the UN at a moment when both his standing and Israel's standing in the United States have shifted dramatically.
[10:05] Now, the shift has been going on for a while, but it's definitely gotten a lot of attention recently.
[10:11] There's been a whole bunch of polling out that has ignited a bunch of headlines on this topic here and obviously inside Israel.
[10:17] So how do you explain that shift in attitude towards Israel and the Prime Minister, and what are the implications for his visit? First of all, as to the implications, Dan, you said it yourself.
[10:30] This is an extremely short visit. This is not the type of visit that Prime Minister Netanyahu would have wanted to see.
[10:36] Now, I'm not sure if there's not going to be an ad hoc meeting between the Prime Minister and between President Trump somewhere around the UNGA, the United, uh, Nations General Assembly.
[10:46] This might sort of assemble itself, uh, spontaneously speaking, and I'm sure that the Prime Minister people are trying to get this done, but I'm not sure that the President is gonna basically go for it at, at this moment.
[10:58] And if you look at the polls, something amazing and very troubling, I'm using amazing, although this is a positive word in English, but it's, it's extremely not positive for me as an Israeli, has been happening with public opinion in, in the US, and you just need to look at the numbers.
[11:13] So since spring, even though most of the war in Gaza has stopped, we're not fighting the same war. You don't have the same kind of images circulating in the media as you had a year ago.
[11:26] Israel's position, net favorability of Israel, has dropped according to Pew in 23%, according to Fox News 11%, Ipsos 10%.
[11:37] Today, according to The Washington Post polling that was quoted by CNN, 55% of Americans are saying that the US should reduce or end its military assistance to Israel.
[11:50] And there is practically no difference between college grads-- Okay, there is some difference between college grads which think more of that, but also non-college grads that there are 51% who say that.
[12:03] If you compare it to back to 2018, Israel had a negative swing Of over 70% against it. And of course, it's very much related to your question to Netanyahu. Look, Dan, there's no easy way to say this.
[12:18] Netanyahu has basically refused during the war to articulate any positive day after in Gaza, and by that, Israel has allowed the war's images to define Israel in American minds.
[12:30] Now, there's no doubt that he understands large chunks of the American society, that he's connected. He grew up in America. He studied in America. He speaks with an American accent.
[12:43] But the America that he understands, to a large extent, is not the current America. It's a very Republican, white, Christian America.
[12:51] And while this is a very important part of America, and historically this is America, it's not the current America.
[12:59] And what you're seeing actually is that he has placed a bet, spending two decades on Israel being part of a political side in, in the United States, and there's no surprise that this is, uh, what is happening right now.
[13:15] Israel has a- already lost Democrats to a large extent, and now it's starting to lose Republicans. And because of that, his visit is a testimony to Israel's position there. I just saw a tweet by Brad Sherman.
[13:27] It was heavily quoted-- Congressman Brad Sherman, was heavily quoted by Israeli press, basically saying, "Look at the data."
[13:35] And he says that as a friend of Israel, one of the last few friends that Israel has within the Democratic establishment in Congress, you, Israeli media, should translate this and make this message go to every Israeli.
[13:49] And his message there was, it's because of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and corporation, and the way that the Netanyahu government is, uh, conducting itself. Now, I wanna say something. It's not only about that.
[14:01] It's about parts of the American political system going to extremes.
[14:06] One part, definitely with the Democrats, uh, divorcing itself from ideas of American power in the world and in the Middle East, connecting itself to post-colonialist narratives. There's no doubt about that.
[14:18] Anyone who says it's only about Israel is gonna be extremely shallow. I presented that case, but I wanna be very clear and even-minded as to this.
[14:28] And the other side is, of course, populist nationalism, antisemitism, that is also rising in the right. So you have antisemitism on the left, parts of the progressive left.
[14:37] You have antisemitism on parts of the right, nationalist right now rising, and this also contributes in, together with conspiracy theories, to Israel's collapse in public opinion in the United States right now.
[14:51] Nadav, I just-- Before I bring Amit back in, I do want to push back on one point, which is you cited Brad Sherman, and I noted the same and observed his tweets.
[14:59] Maybe we should include them in the show notes or link to them in the show notes 'cause they were important.
[15:04] But I think what is striking, what Brad Sherman doesn't say in his tweets, which is what I think is really going on, and I, I hear this directly from friends of mine, uh, who are pro-Israel Democrats, members of Congress, mainstream Democrats, is the safest space for them to be in right now
[15:20] is pro-Israel, but anti-Netanyahu. 'Cause they're pro-Israel, but they need a space in the Democratic Party which has become so hostile to Israel.
[15:28] So how do they strike a balance between being pro-Israel and dealing with these forces within the Democratic Party? And as, as you and I are talking about right now, even beyond just the Democratic Party.
[15:36] And that place is to say, "No, no, no, we're hostile to Netanyahu. He's the problem, but we still hug Israel."
[15:43] And that is, to me, like a temporary space, the quote, unquote, "safe space" for, I think, pro-Israel Democrats right now. Mm.
[15:51] The question I have, though, is if Netanyahu is no longer in the seat, if Netanyahu is no longer prime minister-- 'Cause when I ask these pro-Israel Democrats this question, "Do you really think things are gonna change that much?"
[16:03] Some believe yes, some concede no. I mean, if you look at the case against Israel on genocide- Mm-hmm...
[16:08] the ICJ case against Israel on genocide, when South Africa filed its case against Israel on genocide, it was December of 2023, a mere month after October 7th.
[16:20] So it wasn't during this rage of, quote, unquote, "unending settler violence."
[16:26] It wasn't during this period that Ben-Gvir was running around Israel and the images over here in the United States of him wanting to put all the Palestinian terrorists in a noose.
[16:34] It was-- None of that was actually going on. All the focus of the world was on Israel's immediate response to the war, and that's when the genocide craze kicked off. And you used your point of comparison, 2018.
[16:46] I think the, the interesting polling is to look at, like, where Israel's-- was positioned in public polling in the months after October 7th relative to today, and I think the decline began once there was this endless barrage of charges of genocide.
[16:59] So I'm very briefly gonna respond to that. I think you're absolutely right to point out, Dan, that first of all, Israel's problem with its position in the US is much wider than Netanyahu.
[17:11] So blaming everything on Netanyahu in that sense would be, again, superficial on the one hand. But it's Israel's friends in Washington, and what I say everybody knows in Washington, that are saying, "It's all Netanyahu."
[17:25] It's Israel's friends, as you said, Dan, in the Democratic Party, who say, "It's the Netanyahu government." I'm listening very carefully.
[17:32] Even with Bernie Sanders, who's definitely against military aid to Israel right now, says he speaks about ending military aid to the Netanyahu government.
[17:42] So he's allowing himself maybe not to go through the full circle of saying, "I'm gonna cut off every aid to Israel in the future."
[17:54] So by confining it to the Netanyahu government, it's Israel's friends who are trying to save themselves. Now, if you look at the conversation online- On X and many other platforms. What's the conversation there?
[18:06] I'm talking the, the, the American conversation is between people who despise Israel so much, who indict Israel to the extent that they're saying it's not about Netanyahu. I get that with these comments.
[18:17] It's not about Netanyahu, it's your spin. It's the Israeli spin to say it's about Netanyahu. It's about the country. They're trying to indict the entire country in that sense.
[18:26] Now, just to your point about the American public, right now young Republicans are polling as to Israel very much or very similarly with the trends that young Democrats had a couple of years ago, and this should worry us enormously.
[18:41] One final sentence about that, which is the obvious sentence. If you ask senior people within the Israeli political sphere, defense administration, wherever, I need to be absolutely clear about that.
[18:55] The US support for Israel on many levels, not only the military aid or not mostly the military aid, is essential to its security, it's essential to its existence, and the sentence you keep on hearing is that Israel cannot survive without the support, the active support of the United States, and you hear that sentence again and again.
[19:14] Before I bring Amit back in, just very briefly, just does any of this have implications for what Netanyahu does in his address to the UN? No, not really because he's gonna have a campaign speech, as, as Amit said.
[19:24] By the way, take a look at what Netanyahu did before that campaign speech. He aired a video attacking Mamdani- Yeah... saying he's gonna expose- As he was leaving, as he was leaving Israel.
[19:32] He's gonna expose Mamdani or facts about Mamdani. Yeah. Mamdani- He said it in English... Mamdani is attacking Netanyahu. You and I spoke about this a week ago.
[19:40] I told you, uh, we're speaking on the sidewalk in New York, and I was-- I told you if Netanyahu can stage a march on City Hall \[laughs\] in the center of New York protesting Mamdani, just a one-man protest- \[laughs\]...
[19:53] would be the best thing he could do for his campaign. He's picking up this fight, but this is a classic example.
[19:58] Is this good for Israel's allies, few allies it has left, that Netanyahu will pick up a fight with Meir Mamdani? Yeah, that's a fair question.
[20:07] Amit, I wanna come back to something you've argued in the past, that in Israel's political system, this issue barely counts, this issue of how Israeli politicians perform, how they perform on the international stage, how they perform in English.
[20:21] It's-- You referenced this earlier, it's just not the same. When it's described as a security threat the way Nadav just did, it gets more attention, but otherwise it just doesn't get the same attention.
[20:30] But to diaspora Jews, how Israel presents itself is considered an area of vulnerability or an area of threat or just a, a real problem.
[20:40] I mean, this diaspora Jews, I'm just telling you, like I sit around Shabbat dinner conversation tables, I speak at events, I get these questions all the time.
[20:47] The way the Israeli government, the way certain ministers in the Israeli government present Israel to the world has big implications for us living over here. Do Israeli voters understand that?
[20:58] Yes, more than in the past, less than it should be. I don't want to insult Nadav here, but Nadav used to be the, um, foreign affairs editor on Channel 10.
[21:09] I think this is the most miserable job in the Israeli press because I, I, I want to explain what foreign news or international news are in Israel.
[21:18] If you are the correspondent in London like I was and Nadav, so reports from London are what Brits think about Israel, the Israeli singer arriving in London, uh, the Israeli, uh, football team playing in London, et cetera, et cetera, okay?
[21:33] The same applies for the United States.
[21:35] So the moment it is going to cross the door, the barrier from foreign affairs to domestic affairs is the moment when, for instance, the next administration is not going to veto a UN resolution against Israel, thus sanctioning various banks and the companies, et cetera.
[21:56] But then it's going to be too late. So I do think there is an understanding of the severity of the problem. I see more coverage than in the past.
[22:05] However, I'm not sure that Brad Sherman's words were heard by more than a bunch of Israelis, and I think they should be. We did have like push notifications- Right...
[22:15] which was ve-very interesting, by every major news group in Israel and I, I- About Brad Sherman? Yes... about Brad Sherman's warning, and, and you know what? I'm gonna say something that Amit will, I think, agree with.
[22:29] I think that these push notification had a lot to do with the fact that it was very critical of Netanyahu, and it's an election season. Absolutely.
[22:36] And yet, if you ask 100 Israelis in the streets of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv who Brad Sherman is and what has he just said, I guess that 98 out of them will say, "I have no idea."
[22:49] But the severity of the problem grows and grows. And I agree with Nadav that it's quite awkward. It, it cuts both ways when both Israelis and anti-Israelis claim that it's not only Netanyahu.
[23:02] W-for instance, as someone who supports a strong military activities in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon, and of course Iran, I don't think that had Eisenkot or Lapid or Bennett been in office, it would-- something would be, would have been different.
[23:18] However, since we know that Netanyahu is considered in, in the United States as a, the first Republican prime minister of Israel, Israel's prime minister from the Republican Party,
[23:30] so I think someone else would have eased the pain. Not more than this. I'll add something more important. I think it, it has more to do with the coalition than with Netanyahu himself, and I'll explain.
[23:44] I do think that if the next coalition is going to be a unity government, even if led by Netanyahu, it's going to be very different than a coalition in which Ben-Gvir is a senior member, uh, of the government and a senior minister, someone that speaks out loudly, the second most or the third most, uh, famous Israeli after Netanyahu and Gal Gadot.
[24:06] I do think that a unity government might change a bit the route to which Israel goes. Nadav, I mentioned in the introduction FDD recently published a case study that forecasts a Financial tidal wave against Israel.
[24:20] It argues that the sanctions mechanism originally built to strangle the Iranian government actually, ironically, could be turned against Israel.
[24:28] Do you think that a change in Israel's leadership could change that trajectory that FDD is sounding the alarm on? I think it can. I think it can, and, and let me explain why.
[24:39] I agree that Israel's problems with American public opinion run long and deep, and they are connected to changes within the American society.
[24:48] They are connected to a desire of, uh, some sort of isolationism that you see both on the left, on the far left, and not so far li- uh, right. So there's a bunch of issues, uh, there. But here's the thing, Dan.
[25:01] This government is toxic. Having Ben-Gvir as a minister responsible for the police, you go through Jewish communities, I do this sometimes, Amit does this sometimes. That's usually the second question.
[25:15] First question is usually about the war. Second question is about the violence in Judea and Samaria in the West Bank, and it's substantial.
[25:24] A leader who governs with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich shouldn't be shocked when Americans starts judging Israel by the company that he keeps in government.
[25:32] So yeah, absolutely, you can have tremendous advances as to Israel's position, or at least stop the collapse, hold the collapse, if you make some changes there. And we spoke about these changes.
[25:47] First of all, Israel needs to be out of the news cycle.
[25:51] Secondly, the decision as to the war with Iran, one of the first thing we said on this show, we said this on this show, how will this influence Israel's position in the United States if for the first time Israel basically pitched a war and participated in a war with the United States?
[26:08] Will it play well for Israel? And some of us were, were very troubled about this from day one, that this would be used by rivals of Israel, by Israel haters, and frankly, by anti-Semites.
[26:22] I talked about this blood libel as to the Iraq War, right? That Israel somehow pushed for the Iraq War. It's a blood libel.
[26:28] It's not blood libel to say that, that Israel- It is, it's, uh, just so we're clear, I mean, it is factually incorrect. It's a blood libel, and there's nothing to it. I was involved. I worked in the Bush administration.
[26:38] Sure, the Prime Minister Sharon was warning against the US getting involved with Iraq \[laughs\]. Exactly. And, and you have, you know, Walter Mir Shamir and all the rest- Right...
[26:45] which gave, like, credence, academic credence to that. Well, it's not a lie to say that Israel, you know, had a presentation in the White House explaining why we should fight a war against Iran together.
[26:56] And, and now this is being used by Israel haters all across the field. So there are steps to be made.
[27:03] You know, when the stock price is in such a low position, and management looks like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, then there are easy things that you can do in order to at least have the chance of improvement. Okay.
[27:16] I wanna shift now to developments in the election because we are, we have been getting a lot of questions, and obviously we're following quite closely the day-to-day developments in elections as it relates to the various campaigns.
[27:26] Amit, over the past week, Netanyahu's bloc, and when we say his bloc, we mean the Likud, which is his party, and then the other parties that at least have been able to populate his current government, whether or not they would all serve with him in a future government remains to be seen.
[27:41] But, but if you add up the various players that are in his current government or those that we assume would be in a future Netanyahu government, that bloc has gained some momentum, which has been surprising because as you and I have talked about, Amit, the two issues that Netanyahu did not want this election to be about was the third anniversary of October 7th, therefore anchoring a debate about who was responsible for October 7th, and two, the Haredi draft exemption at a time that so many non-Haredi, non-orthodo- ultra-Orthodox Jews have been overstretched as it relates to their service in the IDF, and then they're, they're overall feeling stretched economically.
[28:19] These are the two issues Netanyahu did not want to be central to the election campaign, and they are. And yet it seems like he's gaining momentum. So what actually is going on?
[28:27] How would you describe the current state of the race? Okay, so there are three changes that happened.
[28:32] One is that the Arab parties actually organized themselves in a better electoral structure, which actually increased their power. The three political parties that are Israeli Arab parties- Exactly...
[28:46] running in the Knesset. They organized themselves. What did they do?
[28:49] We now have only two parties rather than three in the past, which means that the more their power is increased, the electoral power of the Zionist opposition is decreased. Why?
[29:01] Because, I mean, proportionally speaking, if the Arab parties get more seats, it necessarily means that the other, the Jewish parties, get less seats, thus putting the Eisenkott farther from the 61 seats that he desperately needs.
[29:16] So just so our listeners understand, you're saying the Arab parties gaining strength comes at the expense of what we will call the Eisenkott-led bloc, which is the opposition bloc.
[29:26] It comes at his expense, which therefore the, quote-unquote, "right-wing bloc" is a beneficiary of the Arab parties growing in strength. Yes. And we have an two new parties.
[29:38] One is a right-wing party but led by Ofer Winter, the former IDF commander, and one is a center party, a weird mixture of reservists and a, uh, in my opinion, lunatic populist professor for economy, and they passed the threshold, at least meanwhile.
[29:54] Meaning they passed the threshold, meaning they're performing well enough to get into the Knesset. Yes. Thus shrinking the opposition, which is the real thing that happened.
[30:03] In each and every poll in Israel, we do not see an increase in the power of the coalition.
[30:09] We do see, however, a decrease in the electoral power of the opposition, which puts them very, very far away from 61 seats needed to have a stable government sworn in.
[30:24] If Netanyahu prevents Eisenkott from having a new government sworn in, it necessarily means that Netanyahu is still a prime minister, even though in a transition government, and it worked for him in the past.
[30:37] He exhausted, between 2019 and 2020, he exhausted Benny Gantz in three consecutive election campaigns, then talked him into his, uh, rotation government, and I think the same is going to happen here.
[30:50] If the election are going to end up Exactly as the mainstream media polls show, it necessarily means that either Israel is going again to the polls with Netanyahu as the Prime Minister in transition, or that Netanyahu is going to form a coalition with the other side.
[31:08] I think those are the two, uh, most, uh, probable options.
[31:11] And that's why when I see on Polymarket, in Polymarket that Isakov still scores something like 51% to Netanyahu's 28 or 29, I would say that they overestimate Isakov's chances and underestimate Netanyahu's chances.
[31:27] Okay, but ju- just to understand, you said there are three things going on. One, the strength of the Arab parties have come at the expense of the- Second Second is the new right-wing parties. The new parties.
[31:36] The new smaller center right, right-wing parties that give a place that's important because for those voters that can't stomach voting for Netanyahu and Likud but are still right-wing, it gives them a place to go so that Netanyahu ultimately is the beneficiary of those votes, but yet creating a space for them not to actually vote for Netanyahu, right?
[31:56] Is that what you're basically saying? Exactly. And the third thing is that Netanyahu has lost control, that the, the opposition has lost control over the agenda of the election campaign.
[32:06] I haven't heard the name Haredim or the issue, the Haredi issue over the last few weeks. It's only about security, diplomacy, and the alliance, the alleged alliance between Isakov and the Arab parties.
[32:19] Now, I think it emanates less than Netanyahu's abilities in running campaigns, which in my opinion, have decreased significantly over the last few years.
[32:30] But first and foremost, from mistakes of, in my opinion, very stupid mistakes made by the opposition.
[32:37] When Isakov says publicly under his name that he is going to form a minority government with the Arab parties abstained, I mean, it necessarily drags the entire discourse towards the question of, do we really want a coalition based on the Arab parties?
[32:56] Yeah. People are not in the details, and that's-- I think it's a grave mistake made by Isakov. We'll be right back after this short message.
[33:03] \[gentle music\] I want to tell you about the organization sponsoring this episode, Magen David Adom, Israel's National Emergency Services System, which runs Israel's entire national blood supply.
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[34:02] That decision was made possible by donors. Help fund emergency response at afmda.org/callmeback. \[gentle music\] And we're back with Nadav and Amit.
[34:17] Okay, Nadav, I have been struck by Isakov's campaign because by my lights, it's basically a campaign without a message, other than he's not Netanyahu, right?
[34:28] His message to me, and you, you're closer to this than I am, so I'm, I'm going to ask you this question, but, but from my vantage point- Mm... the message of the, of Isakov is, "I'm a better man than Netanyahu.
[34:37] I'm a better character than Netanyahu. I am not Netanyahu." And we can explore layers and layers of, of what that means. Mm-hmm.
[34:45] At least in the US context, I follow campaigns in the US much closer than, than I follow campaigns in Israel. But to me, that rarely works.
[34:52] You're basically handing whoever you're running against to kind of frame the issues and the themes and the question that the campaign or the election is answering, and that's the jam that Isakov is now in.
[35:05] Do you agree with, with me on this? And if so or if not, there's some problem. So what do you think Isakov needs to do? Well, uh, first of all, I agree. I basically asked Isakov people a month and a half ago.
[35:16] They were at the peak of their polling, and everything looked wonderful.
[35:20] But people who understand politics and, uh, yourself and Amit and me have been sort of hovering around politics for many years, understand that you don't see in the polls right now what people who know politics or understand politics see at the moment.
[35:35] Polls are typically true for today, but it takes time for crisis to be actually exposed. And this gap of what is the Isakov campaign was something that people could see early on.
[35:49] Now, there is a campaign, for instance, conscription. So if you're asking, "What's the essence of their campaign?"
[35:54] The essence of the campaign is, "I'm going to form a normal government, and we're going to have a conscription for all, but I am going to be more lenient towards the ultra-Orthodox."
[36:05] He's more lenient than the other change blocs. He's traditionalist. He has a list that is relatively conservative, Dan. I don't think that you're exposed to it.
[36:13] It's a more conservative right-wing list than the one that Naftali Bennett has. So Isakov has a more right-wing list of members of Knesset, plausible members of Knesset than Bennett has. So he conducted the list.
[36:25] He has very popular people there, important people, people like, um, the mother of Aner Shapira, who is really the hero. Aner Shapira was Hersh Goldberg-Polin's best friend.
[36:36] He was killed on October 7th in the shelter where Hersh was taken hostage from. I just- Where, where he heroically- Right... threw grenade after grenade- Right, right... out of the shelter, sacrificing his life.
[36:45] Uh, he has Elisav Peretz, whose, uh, uh, both of his brothers were killed in action. He has Hilit Ruper, who, who's considered a very popular politician.
[36:56] So there's a bunch of things happening there, but the messaging is off because as you said, Dan, there is some negative campaign. But what are you promising to these Likud voters that you want to hold to?
[37:11] That have supported Netanyahu in the past. What are you giving them? And that was my question to the Eisenkot people a while back.
[37:19] Now, Eisenkot is gonna start his campaign after the Netanyahu speech sort of evaporates from the public discourse, which will be probably Monday, and then Eisenkot is gonna make some moves, significant moves in his campaign.
[37:35] And by moves, I mean think about Ehud Barak promising to leave Lebanon in a year back in 1999 before he won the elections against Netanyahu. Think about, uh, Barak offering a conscription law back in 1999.
[37:48] So these are real moves of a campaign, and Eisenkot, as you said, Dan, has not done them, and I think he didn't offer anything substantial. I, I'll give you one example that is provocative, okay?
[37:58] I'm not sure he should do that, but he could have said, "Look, I'm gonna form a government with Netanyahu. I'm gonna be the prime minister, and Netanyahu's gonna be the alternate prime minister. It's possible.
[38:09] And I want Netanyahu in my government." Now, should he do that? I'm not sure. Can he destroy his campaign? Maybe. I have no idea. But it's an act of campaigning.
[38:19] That's what I mean, and he's not doing anything like that at the moment, and that's a big a, uh, problem. Now, I agree totally with Amit.
[38:26] This could lead Netanyahu to denying his rivals a victory but not forming government my, himself. I just wanna add something really important.
[38:34] I suspect that if there's gonna be more than 62, 63 seats against Netanyahu in the Knesset, I've said this before on this show,
[38:41] even if 10 of these 62, 63 majority are gonna be Arab members of Knesset from non-Zionist parties, there's gonna come together a plan in which Netanyahu is not gonna be the prime minister of an interim government.
[38:55] So if there is a majority against Netanyahu in the Knesset, in the next Knesset, they're gonna replace the speaker. This is for sure. Amit will agree with me.
[39:02] They replace the speaker immediately, which is significant, the Speaker of the Knesset, and I suspect that Eisenkot will say, "Let's form a government any way we can, and I'm immediately calling for an election.
[39:16] I'm the head of the interim government."
[39:18] If there is a majority against Netanyahu in parliament, okay, it's more plausible that Eisenkot would be the prime minister during that majority leading to an election while he is the prime minister. Okay.
[39:31] He, I, I, yeah. I, I, he, here is- He doesn't have the votes. Ah. Amit is gonna say he doesn't have the votes. No, no, no. I, he ha- He's going to have the votes.
[39:37] I, I agree with Nadav, and I, I would like to explain the dilemma, the, the cruel dilemma that the election results might pose to Eisenkot.
[39:45] Let's say that he achieved more seats than Netanyahu but he's short of 61, and the entire opposition from the Arab parties to Lieberman and everything in between is more than 61. He has two cruel options.
[39:59] One is to go again to the polls without forming a new, a government, without swearing in a new Knesset speaker, and then voters might say, "You failed once. We don't want to vote you again."
[40:13] The other option is to do what Nadav has just explained, which is to say, "I'm going to have a government sworn in, a minority government supported from the outside by the Arab parties." Here is the contradiction.
[40:25] On one hand, he's going to be the prime minister on the campaign trail.
[40:29] On the other hand, he is going to plead guilty in the worst accusation ever made in Israeli politics, cooperating with the non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Arab parties. So the quid pro quo is quite complicated here.
[40:44] I would say, as an advisor to Eisenkot, that it's the gravest mistake is to have a minority government based on the support of the Arab parties because then Netanyahu is really going to win an outright majority.
[40:58] Part of the support for Eisenkot today comes from right-wing voters who do not want, under any circumstances post-October 7th, to have a government supported by Ahmed Tibi or by Balad, the, the extreme pro-Palestinian party, and that's the dilemma.
[41:16] I'm not envy of Eisenkot, and I think he's going to face it in five weeks from now. Okay. And Nadav, I know you have to go. Do, do you have to drop, or do you have time for one more question? I ha-...
[41:26] No, no, I have to drop. Okay. Okay. We'll let you go. Amit, stay on for two more minutes. I'll answer for him.
[41:30] I'll give my most, uh, Davi-ish tough love, uh- I'm sure Amit will represent me well \[laughs\] He will represent you very well. Nadav, it's your nightmare. All right. Have a good morning, Nadav.
[41:39] Uh, Amit, I guess w- I'll wrap with this. If the elections were held today resulting with what the current polls predict, what would be the most likely outcome of this result?
[41:51] I would say that my assumption is that w- Israel, under these ci- circumstances, is going to face another round of election in April 2027. Why?
[41:59] Because Netanyahu will be significantly short of majority, and so does Eisenkot or Lieberman.
[42:06] Now, unity government might be the solution, the solution which I support, but, uh, we have to admit that the level of trust in Netanyahu among the opposition leaders is very low, to say the least.
[42:18] They are not members of his fan club, to say the least, and they do not trust him. On the other hand, he will not agree to be the second prime minister in the second part of the term, in the second half of the term. Why?
[42:29] Meaning, meaning if they agree to, to a rotation where- Exactly... different party leaders are serve as prime minister, he will only agree to that if he's in the first rotation.
[42:38] Eisenkot is not going to agree that Netanyahu will be first because Netanyahu failed to actually hand over the prime ministership to Gantz in 2020 under the same circumstances, so they do not trust him.
[42:49] And Netanyahu will never agree to be the second because he doesn't want to clear the air during AOC's term or, uh, JD Vance's term and let, uh, Eisenkot enjoy the fruits of, uh, the last two years of President Trump, and that's why I'm very, very pessimistic.
[43:05] But we have to give one warning sign. There is a stream of polls conducted mostly by Channel 14 and Channel i24, Israel's Newsmax and Fox News-ish.
[43:16] Channel 14 is considered very much, like, the right wing editorially channel, and i24 is the English language- Wall Street Journal. It's like the Wall Street Journal.
[43:24] It's, it's center-right leaning, and they do not share the same sentiment, I would say \[laughs\] in a very British way. But, um, those polls predict Netanyahu An outright majority of something like 61 to 64 seats.
[43:38] So if they are right and the mainstream media polls are wrong, it necessarily means that Netanyahu is going to have his seventh term as the prime minister, and we have to bear it in mind.
[43:50] Now, I do not know who is going to be the winner, but post-October 7th and all those, you know, the, what we call the conceptia, I want us not to be in a conceptia that says that the results are going to be necessarily like the mainstream media polls.
[44:06] To be honest, I really don't know.
[44:08] Okay, but net out here, Amit, just so we're clear, Amit, you are here on Call Me Back predicting, and I, I usually say we won't hold you to this prediction, but we're gonna hold you, we will hold you to this prediction, okay?
[44:19] So there's no way out. Yes. All right? You are predicting that the most likely scenario is after this election, Israelis are headed to a new round of elections. Absolutely. And that would be in April.
[44:32] I'll put it differently. If these are the results, Israel is going to have another election campaign in 2027.
[44:39] I'm not sure it's in April or it's going to last for two more months because Eisenkot is going to somehow form a short-living, uh, government. But we are not going to see a stable government.
[44:51] We're going to see, in my opinion, another round of election. Okay. Amit, we will leave it there. Thank you for this, as always.
[44:58] And, uh, you represented yourself and you represented Nadav very well, even though he may not feel that way. Absolutely. I'm sure Nadav would agree with me. \[laughs\] All right. Thank you. Good seeing you.
[45:08] Thank you so much. Bye-bye.
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