JERUSALEM — I have attended enough political events to recognize the usual performance: the polished entrance, loud promises and leaders who speak about “the people” while remaining distant from them, but when I observed Gadi Eisenkot in person, I encountered something different—a man who did not appear to be acting like a leader because he seemed too busy listening, standing among Israelis and carrying himself like a servant rather than an owner.
I did not feel that I was watching a political celebrity. I felt that I was meeting one of us.
That judgment is personal, not scientific. One encounter cannot answer every policy question. I am a religious Zionist with convictions about Jewish sovereignty, national security and Israel’s right to defend itself. I surrender those convictions to no politician. But leadership is revealed not only on platforms. It is also revealed in whom a leader notices, whom he brings into the room and whether he treats citizens as partners rather than scenery.
That is why Eisenkot’s inclusion of Yaffa Tabaja in his Yashar party matters to me.
The importance of Yaffa Tabaja
Tabaja is not a professional slogan-maker. She is a builder. She is an Ethiopian Israeli woman from a traditional family of eight children whose parents made aliyah during Operation Moses. Born in Karmiel, she grew up partly among Russian-speaking immigrants and later described herself as a human “gathering of the exiles”: Ethiopian, Russian-speaking, traditional and Israeli. Her parents did not raise her with wealth, political privilege or famous connections. They gave her discipline, dignity, and faith in education.
The first in her family to pursue higher education, she earned degrees in criminology and government, and communications. At Ashkelon Academic College, Tabaja became the first Ethiopian Israeli elected to lead a student union. She served two terms and represented public colleges nationally. Young people from the periphery asked her a question: Is higher education possible for someone like me? Tabaja did not answer with a speech. She answered by working. She later led Ashkelon’s MTech Innovation Center, building a community of thousands and connecting southern entrepreneurs with Google for Startups, Amazon Web Services, Cisco and Nvidia. She wanted technology to become an instrument of social mobility, bringing opportunity to communities too often told to wait.
“If we aren’t given a seat at the decision-making table, we build our own table,” she has said.
That sentence should disturb Israel’s establishment. Parties visit Ethiopian neighborhoods, photograph our elders, and praise our military service.
Yet Ethiopian Israelis are still invited to decorate politics more often than direct it. We provide loyalty, votes and immigration stories, but are seldom trusted with authority over diplomacy, technology, security or the economy. Tabaja represents a different demand. She is not asking to be included simply because she is Ethiopian. She is asking to serve because she has already demonstrated that she can build institutions, create partnerships and turn neglect into opportunity.
Eisenkot deserves credit for recognizing that leadership. Yashar placed Tabaja at No. 21 on its electoral list, a potentially consequential position for a party polling around that range. Representation becomes meaningful only when a candidate has a realistic path to power and is allowed to address the whole nation, not merely “community affairs.” Eisenkot’s story may explain why he recognizes quiet service. From a working-class Moroccan Israeli family, he rose through four military decades to become chief of staff. He also carries a sacrifice no parent should endure: his son and two nephews were killed in the war.
Grief does not qualify anyone automatically to govern, and military rank does not guarantee political wisdom. Israelis must examine Eisenkot’s policies and coalition choices. But his service and sacrifice give moral weight to his call for responsibility after October 7. Israel does not need another messiah. It does not need citizens to worship a leader or pretend one man can save the nation. We have paid too high a price for politics organized around personality. Israel needs servant leadership: leaders who understand that public office is borrowed authority, who can be strong without humiliating others and who place proven workers beside them including women from communities rarely entrusted with national power.
October 7 exposed failures of security, governance and political culture. Israel’s next government must restore border security, establish a credible state commission of inquiry, rebuild international diplomacy, lower living costs and ensure every community contributes to and benefits from the state.
Tabaja offers a practical model. When rockets made Ashkelon appear like a place to escape, she stayed and built. After October 7, her center assisted soldiers, women, businesses, and entrepreneurs. She understood that survival was insufficient; citizens also needed employment and hope. That is Zionism in work clothes.
I was moved by Eisenkot because he appeared simple in the best sense: approachable, disciplined and unpossessed by his importance. I am moved by Tabaja because she reflects the true colors of my community, not merely our struggle, but our competence, faith, endurance, and desire to contribute.
My admiration is not blind. I will challenge them when they are wrong. I will ask whether Eisenkot will give Tabaja and other underrepresented leaders genuine authority, not merely a place on a list. I will ask whether Yashar will bring the periphery into decisions about Israel’s economy, diplomacy, and security. But what I witnessed gave me hope.
In Eisenkot, I saw a leader who still looks like a citizen. In Tabaja, I see a citizen who has already become a leader. Israel will be renewed not by the loudest people in the room, but by those who enter ready to work. Gadi Eisenkot and Yaffa Tabaja may represent that renewal. Now they must prove that servant leadership can become national leadership—and that the table they are building has room for all Israel.