Dina Kraft — November 9, 2026
Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
On Tuesday morning, October 27, I waited my turn to vote in the Israeli elections in the hallway of a Tel Aviv high school in a line that stretched out of the front door and spilled onto the sidewalk. The energy was electric, with smiles and guarded but hopeful exchanges between neighbors battered by the most challenging years in Israel’s history and thirsty for change in leadership.
Seven days later, I was doing the equivalent 6,000 miles away in Maryland as I cast my ballot in the midterm Congressional elections.
As we all now know, there was no equivalent outcome in Israel to the “Bluenami” election results that swept America with the most decisive win for Democrats since the first post-Watergate election in 1974. I watched the initial Israeli results while sitting on the couch with friends who were on the infamous FlyDubai flight, a family whose lives were nearly lost in what was arguably another example of the Israeli government’s failure to keep their citizens safe. We looked at one another, not entirely sure what to make of the results: a majority voted for the “Change Block,” but still a lot of votes came in for what was called the “pro-Netanyahu” block in Israeli shorthand.
Campaigning on fear was arguably essential to both the Netanyahu camp’s strategy and Republicans reaching out to Jewish voters, but it was a message that worked better in Israel than it did in the U.S.
In Israel, the message Netanyahu broadcast was that even now, after the proverbial sky fell on October 7, 2023, he was the only leader who could keep Israel safe. It was a choice, as the most oft-repeated slogan went, between “The Right or Palestine.” Key to this were repeated efforts before and after the election to demonize Arab voters as a threat. It resonated enough for Likud to remain the largest party, although the Netanyahu bloc itself dwindled in size to 53 seats, leaving it without a clear path to form a government.
In the U.S., Republicans like Mike Rogers, running for Senate in Michigan, said in the closing debate against his opponent Abdul El-Sayed, “Jewish Democrats who are afraid for their children … you’ll have a home with us.” Republicans repeated that rhetoric throughout the country, especially in states and districts where Democrats could determine the outcome. They argued that the Democratic Party had abandoned Jewish interests, both when it came to Israel and the rising tide of antisemitism.
A J Street Poll following the election found that about 72 percent of Jewish voters backed Democratic congressional candidates, in line with longstanding American Jewish support of the party. Concerns about the anti-Israel stance of some progressive candidates like El-Sayed persisted in the Jewish community, but there is also a sense of relief that such a massive Democratic show of force, and the election of many moderates, may help ensure the party is not beholden to any one faction.
Halie Soifer, CEO of the liberal Jewish Democratic Council of America, said President Donald Trump asked voters to “pretend he was on the ballot in the midterms, and Jewish Americans did just that.”
“Jewish voters are not a monolith, but they widely disapprove of Donald Trump,” she said, describing the current White House ethos as “antithetical to core Jewish values.”
In Israel, the historic turnout of Arab voters (contributing to a record 19 seats for the two Arab parties) was key to an inescapable outcome: most Israeli citizens voted for “change.” This week, Gadi Eisenkot, the leader of the change bloc, begins a tough climb to form a coalition after 67 lawmakers out of 120 endorsed him, compared to 46 who support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Those numbers led President Isaac Herzog to tap Eisenkot to lead a government; he has up to six weeks to do so. In accepting the complex mission, the former chief-of-staff and October 7 bereaved father who visited his son Gal’s grave the morning of the election, said establishing a government “will require creative and unconventional political moves.”
Although Eisenkot appears to favor including Ra’am, the Arab party led by Mansour Abbas in the government (the same party that made history when it joined the short-lived government led by Naftali Bennett in 2021), with support from the outside by the Joint List, the other Arab party, public pushback against including Arab parties is significant. It’s an indication, at least in part, of how powerful “Netanyahu-ism” remains, even as his own grip on power appears to be diminishing. The decades of rhetoric against Arab citizens that he has espoused (that is, when he was not courting them to support him) have fallen on even more receptive ears in the wake of the fear and trauma following October 7. He has said this election was “stolen by the Arab parties” even though allegations of corrupt election activity appear to be false.
Racist language feels omnipresent – including on Israeli mainstream TV channels. A Likud spokesman described Arab citizens as “Nukba supporters,” a reference to Hamas’ elite terror squad with no rebuke from any of the journalists on air with him on Channel 12. Barak Ravid, one of the station’s top reporters, later excoriated his own colleagues: “I really think it’s time that we simply do not allow this kind of racism and this kind of lies in our studio.”
The racism seeps down to the street as I found when I was verbally assaulted by a driver I encountered at a Tel Aviv intersection. I had told him his car was creeping forward even though he had a red light. I was on my way back from reporting on a post-election march calling for joint Arab-Jewish partnership in the government and had tucked two posters under my arm to join my election political souvenir collection. He saw the posters and instantly released a torrent of slurs. “Arab lover, whore, leftist.” When his view of me became obscured by other pedestrians joining me on the same traffic island waiting to cross the street, he continued shouting even more loudly, but this time adding, “Where is she? Where is the whore?”
None of my fellow pedestrians intervened to say anything to the driver. Out of fear, out of apathy? I don’t know. Warnings of civil war have become commonplace in Israel.
In recent days, a video has gone viral on Israeli social media – not unusual, except this clip is from 1995. It is a clip of a TV interview with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin just weeks before he was assassinated. He was responding to a question about his government being dependent on Arab Knesset members' support from outside of the coalition – the same formulation Eisenkot is now contemplating, and that has met with such vigorous resistance, even from within the change bloc.
"The question of whether you have a Jewish majority is one of the questions that outrages me the most, because in my eyes, Judaism and racism fundamentally contradict each other,” he answered.
Dina Kraft is a journalist, podcaster and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, My Friend Anne Frank, together with Hannah Pick-Goslar. She is a creator of the podcast Groundwork, about activists working in Israel and Palestine, and was formerly the opinion editor of Haaretz English.
