Tel Aviv: With a little over a week remaining until election day in Israel, the streets of Tel Aviv are humming with hope and fear. In this bastion of progressive Zionism, there is hope that maybe, just maybe, Israelis will reject Benjamin Netanyahu on October 27. But there is also fear that the great survivor of Israeli politics will somehow find a way to overcome the odds and cling to power yet again.
The latest polls show the pro- and anti-Netanyahu party blocs evenly matched, heightening expectations of a tight result. Australian-Israeli voters such as Nirit Eylon have spent at least $2000 on plane tickets to travel around the world to cast a ballot, reflecting their view that this is one of the most important elections of their lifetimes.
The long journey is necessary because Israel does not allow any pre-poll or absentee voting: you must be physically present in the country on election day to participate (unless you are a diplomat or member of the military stationed overseas).
Eylon, a former professional swimming coach, emigrated from Israel in 2006 after falling in love with Australia during a work visit. She has not participated in an Israeli election since she moved, but is travelling from her home in Melbourne to Tel Aviv to vote this year.
“I feel like we have reached a critical turning point,” says Eylon, president of Hatikvah Australia, a left-wing Jewish association that participates in the World Zionist Congress.
She says it is time for Netanyahu, who was first elected prime minister in 1996 and has been in power for most of the past two decades, to be sent into retirement, and for his far-right coalition partners Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich to be kicked out of government.
“We can’t let someone like Bibi stay in power because we know that when people stay in power for too long, they become corrupted,” she says, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “This government is not only affecting what’s happening in Israel. It’s affecting Israelis overseas, Jewish people overseas. If we want to go back to normality, part of it is to get Israel back on track.”
For the first time since moving to Australia, Eylon knows of many Israelis returning to the country to vote. The America-Israel Democracy Coalition estimates that around 53,000 of the 600,000 Israelis living abroad will fly in for election day — more than usual.
One of them is Sydney tech entrepreneur Ayal Steiner, 50, who is travelling to vote in his first Israel election since moving to Australia 18 years ago. “This is an election for the soul of the country,” says Steiner, who was born in the northern Israeli city of Haifa.
The expat vote could add up to almost two seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament — no small thing if the result is closely divided. Elections have led to several deadlocks in the past few years; there were five elections between 2019 and the most recent in 2022.
Like Eylon, Steiner believes this election will have ramifications not just for Israel but the world. The Australian Jewish community has suffered a surge in antisemitism since the October 7 attacks of 2023 and the devastating war in Gaza, which has seen Israel accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice.
Even as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continued without resolution, Steiner says Israel’s global brand was associated with its success at advanced technology and innovation. No longer. “Since October 7, being Israeli has become a radioactive term,” he says. “Some people hide their identity now, but I don’t. Being Israeli is part of my origin story, part of who I am.”
A Pew research poll released in June found that 79 per cent of Australians have an unfavourable view of Israel, making them among the most critical in the world.
After three years of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, Steiner hopes the next government will turn down the temperature. “I am not foolish enough to think there is any chance of peace in the near future, but I want to nudge the country to the centre rather than the right,” he says.
He is weighing up which opposition leader has the best chance of defeating Netanyahu; he is most likely to vote for either former Israeli military chief Gadi Eisenkot or former prime minister Naftali Bennett. “They don’t have delusions of expansion, but they are hardliners on security needs and that’s the sort of neighbourhood we are in.”
While some voters may travel from Australia to Israel to support Netanyahu or his coalition partners, the consensus in the Jewish community is that the vast majority want a change of government. Netanyahu certainly thinks the influx of expats will hurt him: his Likud party unsuccessfully sued to block the America-Israel Democracy Coalition’s Fly & Vote initiative, which is running charter flights to help Israelis travel from overseas to vote. The leftward tilt of the diaspora contrasts to Israeli society itself, which has become more conservative, religious and hawkish in recent decades.
The clash between these two visions of Israel was visible when activist influencers supporting Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir showed up at an anti-government rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, aiming to goad their opponents into arguments they could upload to generate social media engagement.
Esther Takac, a psychologist and filmmaker from Melbourne, has travelled to Israel with husband Robert to vote in her first election since 1992, when Labor’s Yitzhak Rabin was pursuing peace with the Palestinians. She plans to vote for the left-wing Democrats – the only mainstream Jewish party advocating a two-state solution.
“We want to get this extremist government out, we want to get Netanyahu out,” she says.
“We feel this government is taking Israel into a totally wrong direction, making it more nationalistic, militaristic, religious. This government is betraying the values that Israel was founded on.”
Takac laments that, since October 7, Australians’ views of Israel have been shaped largely by footage of the Israeli military pummelling Gaza, settler violence in the West Bank and Ben-Gvir taunting detained pro-Palestinian activists.
“There’s a whole other nuanced, more humane, more complex side of Israeli society that I think is important for people to see,” she says. Her most recent documentaries have explored Israel’s anti-government protest movement and the personal toll of the conflict on Israelis and Palestinians.
The past few years, she says, have been a “pretty awful” time to be Jewish in Australia. She was doxxed and “called a baby-killing Zionist with my tentacles all over the ABC” when religious program Compass screened a shortened version of her documentary The Narrow Bridge, which profiles Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates. “The doxxers put up screenshots and encouraged people to ring my private practice number and leave abusive messages,” she says.
Even though she is travelling from Australia to vote, Nirit Eylon says she is worried the elections won’t take place at all. Like many Netanyahu critics, she fears he will use a pretext, like renewed military strikes on Iran, to postpone a vote and remain in power. “To be honest, I’m very concerned by what will come the day after,” she adds. “The chances of civil war are very high.”
Takac too feels a strange mix of foreboding and optimism. “I’m concerned about violence and intimidation because Netanyahu is absolutely terrified of losing power,” she says. “I’m feeling hopeful that there’ll be a change, but I’m worried about it. It’s not in the bag at all.”
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.