Despite the left-wing clamor, Israel is a right-wing nation 

The dozens of yarmulkes in the Knesset point to the clout of the religious and traditional parties (Photo: Flash90)

I

t’s no exaggeration to say that President Trump has a unique way of expressing himself, especially when he deviates from his teleprompter script.

During his recent Knesset speech, his best ad lib came when he turned to President Yitzhak Herzog and asked: “Mr. President, why don’t you give him [Bibi] a pardon?” Trump waited for the “Bibi, Bibi” chants from Likud Knesset members to subside before adding: “Cigars and champagne. Who cares about this?” Trump then turned to Bibi: “You are a very popular man because you know how to win.”

Trump’s timing was impeccable.

Israel’s next election is one year away, scheduled for October 26, 2026. Many pundits predict an earlier election in the late winter or early spring.

Cynics and conspiracy theorists contend that Trump publicly threw down the gauntlet to Herzog as a quid pro quo for Netanyahu embracing Trump’s 20-point plan to end the Gaza war. Like most conspiracy theories, they are hard to prove or disprove; however, Trump’s endorsement carries weight, even among center-left Israelis who respect him as a force to be reckoned with.

Most polls show neither the right-wing bloc nor the left-wing bloc with enough votes to secure a parliamentary majority. One outlier is Direct Polls, whose surveys consistently show the right maintaining and increasing its majority. Direct Polls founder Shlomo Filber was the only pollster to correctly predict the right’s victory in the November 2022 election. Filber contends the other polls include in their samples unregistered voters, more non-Jewish voters, and those less likely to vote, which results in overstating the left’s strength.

Time will tell if Filber is right again, but it takes a lot of discipline and self-confidence to filter out the left’s clamor. Mainstream media in Israel and abroad — and left-leaning politicians — belittle, marginalize, demonize, and sometimes boycott Netanyahu and his right-wing and religious coalition partners. In their worldview, Israel is hurtling at warp speed toward an illiberal theocracy, and that only the left can ensure Israel remains a secular democratic state.

Many of these folks need to count straight, because if they looked at Israel’s demographics, they would understand that the right, specifically the center right, is a solid majority in Israel.

Bear with me for two paragraphs of numbers that tell the whole story.

Religious Zionists Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir ran together in the last election, winning 516,470 votes (about 11%). The chareidi parties Shas and UTJ received 673,000 votes (over 14%). Collectively, religious parties accounted for 25%.

The Likud won more than 1.1 million votes (23.4%), and Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu won 213,867 votes (4.8%). Liberman has a vendetta against Bibi and the chareidim, so he won’t join a Netanyahu-led coalition, but the religious right and center-right parties secured roughly 53% of the popular vote.

Breaking a Glass Ceiling

Critics who malign the chareidi MKs for “religious coercion” and tag Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir as ultranationalist zealots need to crunch some other Knesset numbers.

Some 81 Jewish men are serving in the Knesset. Forty of them — almost half — wear kippahs, including nine from Likud and three from center-left parties. A few more have their hearts in the right place, even if they don’t always cover their heads. Voters choose men who dress, act, and observe like they do to represent them in the Knesset.

When David Zini took office in early October as head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, it marked the first time that a man with a knitted kippah (and 11 children) took the lead at one of Israel’s top security agencies. Many observers view Zini’s appointment as breaking the glass ceiling, opening the door one day for a Torah-observant Jew to become IDF chief of staff, direct IDF Intelligence, and even head the Mossad.

This is the trend, but there’s no room for overconfidence.

The next election will not be a cakewalk. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich might split, and UTJ could also break up into its two constituent parts — Degel HaTorah and Agudas Yisrael. When parties realign, there is no way of predicting whether it will be a boom or a bust.

Naftali Bennett is making a comeback. He could sway some pliable Likud voters who deceive themselves into thinking that Bennett, who invited an Arab party into his coalition and voted to cede some of Israel’s drilling rights in the Mediterranean to Lebanon and Hezbollah, is still right-wing.

The Likud will hold primaries in November to set its slate. As of now, Netanyahu is running unopposed for party leader. He will run on his record of leading Israel to victories during two years of warfare and extricating most of the hostages alive, but many voters blame him for the misconceptions that led to Israel being asleep at the wheel on October 7, 2023.

A government-appointed commission investigating the failures that led to October 7 could point accusing fingers at Netanyahu and other top Likud cabinet ministers.

Look Ahead, Not Back

Despite President Trump’s open challenge to President Herzog to pardon Bibi, it’s not that simple. It’s a cumbersome legal process that could take us past election day.

However, Trump sensed the mood of an electorate weary of Bibi’s five-and-a-half-year-old trial on charges of fraud, breach of trust, and bribery, when he quipped: “Who cares about the cigars and champagne?”

They’re all either up in smoke or down the hatch by now.

Time has rendered the other charges against Netanyahu irrelevant. He is accused of using his political clout to facilitate a corporate merger between Bezeq and Yes, a cable TV and Internet provider. That deal went through in 2015, ten years ago. Since then, Israel’s entire telecommunications industry has undergone major regulatory reforms, and new competitors have entered the Internet and satellite TV market. To paraphrase Trump, who cares about a merger that occurred a decade ago? Israel doesn’t have bigger problems to worry about?

Netanyahu is also accused of doing political favors for friends and bargaining for better media coverage. Finding a politician who doesn’t play favorites or seek better press would be the chiddush.

It’s time to look ahead, not back.

Voters should be asking if Netanyahu is still the best leader to safeguard Israel against emerging security and political challenges. Can he simultaneously maintain strong ties with and reduce Israel’s reliance on Trump’s America, whose prevailing attitude is: “Ask not what we can do for you, but ask what you are going to do for us”?

With increasing interest in aliyah among Jews in countries where anti-Semitism has spilled onto the streets, can a new Netanyahu government develop a more diverse economy that offers high-paying jobs, fair taxes, and affordable housing and cars?

The true test of Bibi and the right wing’s fitness isn’t their recent actions or a decade-old past, but whether they have a clear vision of the foreseeable future.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1083)