Israel’s election in the shadow of Oct. 7

(Oct. 18, 2026 / JNS)

The temperature is rising ahead of Israel’s Oct. 27 election. Anything can happen. The confrontation with Iran remains dangerously hot, but so does Israel’s domestic political battle.

At its center are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party on one side and Gadi Eisenkot and his Yashar Party on the other. Yet neither bloc appears able to reach the magic number of 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. Both hover only a little above 50 seats in many polls.

The parties aligned against Netanyahu—including those led by Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid and Yair Golan, and perhaps Yoaz Hendel—are united above all by their determination to replace the longtime prime minister. Their ideological differences, however, remain substantial.

There is no traditional left-right contest of the kind Israel once knew. Instead, there is exhaustion after years of war, anger over the catastrophe of Oct. 7, 2023, and an intense struggle over who should bear responsibility for what happened.

There is also the arithmetic of coalition-building.

If the anti-Netanyahu parties cannot reach 61 seats on their own, they may need the support of Arab parties to form a government. That possibility is certain to become one of the campaign’s most contentious issues, particularly after Oct. 7 and amid continuing concerns over Israel’s security.

Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats, remains one of the prominent Jewish political leaders openly advocating a Palestinian state. His party could win about nine seats.

Another possibility, still uncertain but no longer unimaginable, is some form of national unity government. Polling suggests that the idea has support among voters from both political camps, although the identity of the prime minister would inevitably be the most difficult question.

The personal contest is equally unsettled. Some surveys have shown Eisenkot ahead of Netanyahu when Israelis are asked whom they prefer as prime minister; others produce different results.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, appears to understand the difficulty of the campaign. He has become increasingly visible in Israeli television interviews, deploying the political skills and media instincts that have helped sustain his extraordinary career.

But this is an unusual election campaign because Israelis are not talking primarily about the issues that ordinarily dominate elections.

There is comparatively little discussion of the economy, education or social policy. Even discussion of the military often returns immediately to the same questions: Oct. 7, responsibility, intelligence failures, the hostages, the war and what Israel must do to ensure that such a catastrophe can never happen again.

The past is not really the past.

Oct. 7 remains present in almost every Israeli home. Young men and women are still being called for reserve duty. Families continue to live with bereavement and trauma. And Israelis know that another war could erupt with little warning.

For them, security is not an abstraction. It is a question of life and death.

That is why this election is being fought against the background of the extraordinary events Israel has endured since Oct. 7 and what many Israelis regard as a continuing war for national survival.

Netanyahu enters the campaign emphasizing his record of leading Israel through war against Hamas and Hezbollah and confrontation with Iran, often in the face of enormous international pressure.

His opponents point instead to the failure that preceded the war: the inability of Israel’s political and security leadership to prevent the Hamas massacre.

This debate reaches far beyond Netanyahu.

The IDF and intelligence agencies, particularly the Israel Security Agency, have also faced difficult questions over their failure to detect or prevent the attack.

Former Israel Security Agency director Ronen Bar and Netanyahu have publicly clashed over responsibility, each offering sharply different accounts of the warnings, policies and assumptions that preceded Oct. 7.

The argument is unlikely to disappear before Election Day.

But perhaps the most extraordinary feature of this election is how personally the war has touched the people seeking to govern Israel.

Journalist Amit Segal has noted that roughly one in 10 members of the next Knesset could come from a family that has suffered a wartime bereavement.

Eisenkot lost his son, Master Sgt. Gal Meir Eisenkot, in Gaza in December 2023 and a nephew, Sgt. Maor Cohen Eisenkot, a day later. Shira Shapira, running with Yashar, lost her son Aner Shapira, who was killed while protecting others from Hamas terrorists at a roadside shelter near Re’im on Oct. 7.

The same reality exists on the right. Political figures and candidates have sons, relatives and friends who fought, were wounded or were killed during the war.

This is not simply another political class arguing about policies from a comfortable distance. Many of the people asking Israelis for their votes have experienced the war inside their own families.

Perhaps that explains why the campaign so often seems to shout rather than debate.

How could Oct. 7 have happened? Who was responsible? Who understood the threat and who failed to understand it? And, above all, who can be trusted to protect Israel now?

Those questions cut across party lines.

They also explain why attempts to reduce this election simply to “Bibi versus anti-Bibi” miss something fundamental. Netanyahu is inevitably at the center of the campaign, as he has been in Israeli politics for decades. But the forces shaping this election are larger than one man.

Israelis are voting after the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, years of war on multiple fronts, direct confrontation with Iran, enormous international pressure and profound internal upheaval.

At the same time, ordinary life continues. Israelis worry about housing, food prices, schools, jobs and their children’s futures. They want to travel, work, raise families and live normal lives.

But normality in Israel rests on something more fundamental: the belief that the state can defend its citizens.

Outside Israel, these elections will be watched with extraordinary intensity. The Jewish state has become the focus of a global political struggle in which criticism of Israel increasingly mixes with anti-Zionism, antisemitism and pro-Palestinian activism. Russia and China pursue their own interests in the background, while Iran and its allies remain an immediate strategic threat.

Israel’s military says it is prepared for every eventuality.

Now Israelis must decide who they believe is best prepared for the political ones.

These are the elections of one of the smallest countries in the world. But after Oct. 7, their consequences will reach far beyond its borders.