Haaretz Podcast

Gadi Eisenkot "hasn't finished his rise" in the polls after his party, Yashar, has overtaken Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party for several weeks in a row, while the potential coalition of opposition parties is soaring past that of the current government, said Haaretz columnist Dahlia Scheindlin, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast.
Scheindlin, a veteran political strategist and analyst, noted that even the right-wing pollsters, who are heavily biased in favor of Netanyahu's coalition, are showing numbers that point to "a decline ever since the ceasefire and the war with Iran," reflecting perceptions among supporters who once "saw him as a great global statesperson."
The podcast panel, including Haaretz correspondent Nagham Zbeedat and host Allison Kaplan Sommer, reviewed the noteworthy political events of the past week, most prominently the intriguing news that could shake up the coalition mathematics: the Arab Islamist Ra'am Party's plans to invite a former senior police officer and centrist Jewish politician to claim the number two position on its list.
"Having a Jewish Israeli politician join an Arab party, especially an Islamist political party," would represent a "significant milestone," Zbeedat said, predicting that the move would boost support for Ra'am and increase the chances that an anti-Netanyahu coalition would invite the party into a coalition, which could well be its key to winning power.
Zbeedat herself, however, is not lending her vote to Ra'am or any other political party. She explained on the podcast why, like many other Palestinian citizens of Israel, she chooses not to participate in elections. She does not believe, she said, in taking part in a "performance" of democracy and granting "legitimacy" to a government that "enables the daily occupation struggles" and "doesn't accept my existence."
Read more:
Game Changer? What if This Jewish Lawmaker Joins an Israeli Arab Party
Why I, a Palestinian Citizen, Don't Vote in Israeli Elections
Arab Parties Are Talking Unity. Their Voters Have Much Bigger Issues
With Confidence, Conviction and Even Talking Occupation: The Democrats Are a New Sight in Israeli Politics
How Arab Party Leader Mansour Abbas Changed Israel's Political Game
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On this week’s Haaretz Podcast, guest host Joshua Leifer talks to Pnina Pfeuffer, a liberal, feminist ultra-Orthodox social activist. The Jerusalem-based Pfeuffer, CEO of the New Haredim, recently petitioned against a Knesset bill that would permit gender-segregated study tracks for master's and doctoral degrees in Israeli academic institutions.
Pfeuffer represents a growing minority inside the Israeli ultra-Orthodox public that is interested in “full citizenship, with full obligations and rights” in the Jewish State. This is a public that wants the Israeli government to enforce the military draft on Haredim and teach math and English in Haredi schools, instead of continuing the de facto Haredi autonomy in which many Israeli rules and norms are absent.
According to Pfeuffer, the Haredi community reflects Israel as a whole, and younger Haredim - like their secular and religious Zionist counterparts - are radicalizing, and are more right wing than their parents. Some, as Leifer notes, are part of a “far-right Haredi street movement that is in the Ben-Gvir camp or even more right wing.”
Addressing the American Jewish community, Pfeuffer asks that those giving money to Israeli causes “educate themselves” about who they are supporting, “because a lot of liberal funding and good intentions” end up promoting gender segregation and far-right politics.
Read more:
Can Israel's New One-line Law Shield Haredim From IDF Service?
Israel Advances Bill Legalizing Gender Segregation in Universities
Gender Segregation in Academia Is the Government's Divide and Conquer Strategy
The Israeli Town Where Itamar Ben-Gvir Ranks Second Only to the Messiah
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on traveling to the White House three months before the Israeli election signals his desperation to boost his sinking fortunes at the polls, Haaretz senior columnist Esther Solomon told the Haaretz Election Podcast.
Despite his unpopularity with major portions of both American political parties and his turbulent relationship with President Donald Trump regarding the ongoing conflict with Iran, the Israeli leader “does still think that a photo op with Trump is going to play well for him, even though it's not entirely clear if Trump is going to provide exactly the kind of celebratory hugs” he wishes for, Solomon said.
But in his current political situation, the Israeli leader “has to pull out every single stop, and he is doing that across the board. Whether it's in terms of military operations, every kind of political manipulation or strategy that he has, in order to pull every last possible vote for the bloc of parties that would support him to be prime minister.”
Fellow Haaretz columnist Joshua Leifer added that over the past year, “when Netanyahu flies to the United States, it has been to convince President Trump to jump back into the war, and I think that that's probably what he wants to do under the pretense of going to mourn the late Senator Lindsey Graham."
On the podcast, Solomon and Leifer joined host Allison Kaplan Sommer to discuss the rising fortunes of Netanyahu’s opposition and the growing signs of concern in the ruling coalition camp, illustrated by an AI-generated video of rival Gadi Eisenkot featuring an image of his slain son, that was widely condemned as offensive.
The panelists also discussed how escalating settler violence in the West Bank is making the months until the election more volatile and dangerous.
Leifer said that Israelis must “take seriously” statements by Netanyahu’s extremist right-wing partners that “this is the last chance that the settler right is going to have for a long time to stake its claim in the ground and end the possibility of a two-state solution. We should not be naïve about the lengths to which they are willing to go to prevent that possibility from happening."
Read more:
In D.C., Netanyahu Will Bid Farewell Both to Lindsey Graham and Unconditional U.S. Support
Analysis by Joshua Leifer | Will Israel's Opposition Be Able to Undo Netanyahu's Damage?
'People Here Like Ben-Gvir's Tough-guy Approach': Will This Netanyahu Stronghold Near Gaza Go Further Right?
'Not a One-man Party': Likud Blocks Netanyahu Bid to Scrap Primaries
'The Israeli Government Has an Interest in Disrupting the Elections, Giving Free Rein to Thugs'
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Both Israeli leaders and the Israeli public – lulled by both President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden’s backing of Israel – are utterly unprepared for the generational tsunami taking place when it comes to American support for the Jewish state, Haaretz’s opinions editor Amir Tibon told the Haaretz Podcast
"Approximately 60 percent of Americans have a negative view of Israel, and the younger you go, the worse it gets – we're close to 80 percent," said Tibon, who previously served as Haaretz’s Washington and diplomatic correspondent. "Israelis are looking at the top line, which is what does Trump have to say about us? And they're ignoring the iceberg, which is hidden underneath the daily Trump noise, of negative views of the country."
"We’re going to have a lot of problems once this older generation leaves the American political scene, and most Israelis don't understand it yet," he said.
In his conversation with podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer, Tibon also addressed the topic engaging most Israelis: whether or not Israel will be pulled into the continuing military confrontation between Iran and the United States, either at the request of the U.S. president or in response to a potential strike by the Iranians.
He also addressed Gaza, both as a journalist and as a Gaza border resident. If Trump’s plan for rebuilding Gaza remains stagnant, he said, the situation is a “ticking-time bomb” with the “continuation of war” being inevitable. Tibon, who survived the October 7 attack on Kibbutz Nahal Oz, as detailed in his book, said that the ghosts of that day are ever present in daily life.
"The memory is still there, and the fear is still there, and the trauma. And I think what is most lacking is a sense of optimism that we will have a better reality a year from today."
Read more:
Americans Souring on Israel – but Not Warming to Palestinians, Pew Poll Finds
Haaretz Found Israel's U.S. Influence-op Accounts. No One Actually Follows Them
Half of Jewish Americans Don't Think Protesting Israel Is Antisemitic, Poll Finds
103 House Democrats Vote to Cut U.S. Aid to Israel in Landmark Symbolic Vote
The Constant Campaigner: Netanyahu Has Been Running for Reelection Since October 7
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be even more unpopular than the current polling demonstrates, Haaretz columnist Joshua Leifer said on this week’s edition of the Haaretz Election Podcast.
“I have begun to think the polling is not telling the whole story,” he said, in a discussion on how voters who believe Netanyahu is causing irreversible damage to Israeli democracy and want him removed are currently ping-ponging between “optimism and apocalyptic thinking.”
The “apocalyptic thinking,” Leifer said, involves speculation as to whether Netanyahu, anticipating defeat, somehow uses the precarious security situation to prevent free and fair elections on the scheduled date.
"After everything we've experienced over the last four years, can we rule out that apocalyptic scenario? We can't rule it out, sadly," he said.
Haaretz correspondent Judy Maltz, who joined Leifer and host Allison Kaplan Sommer on the weekly podcast panel, said she observed much of this disquiet with the country’s leader as she travels the country to speak with voters ahead of the October 27 election, from Arab cities to upscale suburbs to West Bank settlements where the most extreme elements of the government draw their support.
In the settlement of Alon Shvut, she met people “conflicted” over whether to support Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
“On the one hand, they're very angry at Bezalel Smotrich and his party for supporting [Netanyahu’s] draft exemption bill for the ultra-Orthodox,” she said. “It really, really bothers them and angers them that the party that is supposed to represent this community voted in favor of this bill.”
At the same time, “they tell you there has been nobody in history who has done more for us in preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state than Smotrich. He’s given them more than any other minister. So they don't know whether they should or shouldn’t vote for him.”
Read more:
Haaretz's 2026 Election Poll Tracker: The Latest Projections
Analysis by Joshua Leifer: If Netanyahu Loses the Election, Will He Go Full Trump?
Who Is Gadi Eisenkot, and What Does He Stand For?
Read Judy Maltz's election dispatches from across Israel and the West Bank:
'The Jews Turned Against Us, Even the Leftists': The Bedouin City Poised to Play Kingmaker in Israel's Election
In Haifa, the 'Putin Aliyah' and Despairing Arab Citizens Warn of A Dire Future
Many of the Voters Who Could Swing Israel's Next Election Are Naftali Bennett's Neighbors
'My Party Has Been Stolen': The West Bank Settlers Drifting Away From Israel's Far Right
Why Umm al-Fahm Is Drawing Attention From Both Ends of Israel's Political Spectrum
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