Eisenkot’s silence is no longer enough to win over Israeli voters - opinion

The Israeli campaign conversation has shifted abruptly – and will probably keep shifting. As the anti-Bibi forces sag, fears of deadlock grow. Strategists in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar should be more nimble. Weary of Bibi and his vipers, but wary of voting for a Will-o’-the-Wisp, Israelis want a strong, effective unifying leader.

The empty posturing around the movie NAZA, using 24 anonymous malcontents – from over 300,000 soldiers – to libel a nation 10 million strong – revealed why both major parties barely attract 20% of Israel’s dangerously balkanized electorate. Netanyahu and his Rottweilers enjoyed snarling, posturing, and sacrificing Israeli democracy while pretending to defend it.

Responding to an insignificant, sloppy, one-sided film by canceling the filmmakers’ citizenship is fighting a cold with chemotherapy. This counterproductive defense threatens the body politic.

The hysteria publicizes the film unnecessarily. Overreacting encourages the liars claiming Israel has turned authoritarian. And the empty threat violates a core democratic value, treating free speech as a one-way street, not a robust, noisy, occasionally hazardous superhighway. If our haters worldwide mimicked that “freedom for me but not for thee” principle, people like me would be silenced when celebrating Israel, Zionism, Jewish pride, and Western values. (Admittedly, these useful idiot critics are also self-sabotaging, emboldening Netanyahu and his followers while claiming to oppose them, but blind hatred usually backfires).

Polling estimates the Likud at 18 to 24 seats – a stunning fall from its 32 seats in November 2022. That repudiation speaks well for the Israeli people. They’re not friers – pushovers. Trash-talking two turncoat filmmakers and the Stalinist fools who applauded them for 25 virtue signaling minutes – no matter how well-deserved – doesn’t compensate for this polarizing, incompetent, endlessly appalling government.

True, I have repeatedly acknowledged this government’s (and the army’s) effectiveness in smiting so many enemies after October 7 and performing the improbable feat of accounting for every hostage and bringing 168 home alive. But it’s as juvenile to say the government could do no right as to say the government – or Netanyahu – can do no wrong.

Nevertheless, for four-of-five Israelis, those achievements cannot obscure the October 7 debacle, the refusal to learn from that catastrophe with a proper commission, the mishandled judicial reform’s divisiveness, the haredim (ultra-Orthodox) making reservists feel exploited, the cost of living spiking, the Arab murder rate tripling, vigilantism by an easily controlled minority going unchecked in the territories, and the relentless assaults on internal rivals, democratic norms, and Israel’s reputation worldwide.

Naturally, in their take-no-prisoners approach to rivals, Bibi’s lapdogs and their right-wing echo chambers claimed Gad Eisenkot didn’t condemn the NAZA film. Not true!

@gadi_eisenkot tweeted a defense of Israel’s fighters and officers against these “one-sided, amoral” lies. Describing the war as “just and hard,” while condemning Israel’s “cruel enemies,” Eisenkot noted the “yawning gap between legitimate criticism in a democratic society and maligning our soldiers to harvest accolades at festivals abroad.”

Oops.

If Eisenkot and his supporters simply mock Israel’s right-wing attack machine for using the anti-Zionist propaganda mill to score cheap electoral points, they deserve to lose. They must learn from the traction this devastating lie gained so easily – and Eisenkot’s slowing momentum.

Too many bought the falsehood about Eisenkot’s silence because it resonated with two broader truths. For months, Eisenkot’s silence reinforced his image as the anti-Bibi: honest, reasonable, quiet, preferring effective action and good values to bombast and barbs. But, ultimately, a Sphinx strategy is an hourglass maneuver, hoping that voter patience doesn’t run out before Election Day and the political cachet your candidate’s ambiguity generates outlasts the opposition’s campaign to muddy this blank slate.

Sphinxes are for Egyptians, not Israelis – or most responsible democratic citizens. Israel faces serious military, economic, social, and political challenges. At a certain point in a campaign, simply not being the guy in charge, while not being bold enough to rock the boat, leads candidates to start sinking in public esteem. Perhaps in a more placid 1950s America, Dwight Eisenhower could be elected twice based on his military record and his reserve; that’s a much tougher sell in Israel 2026.

Eisenkot must figure out how to rouse votes, inspire them to vote, to believe in him, to feel optimistic, without undermining his reassuring image. It’s easy to demand in this column – hard to pull off. And it’s especially hard when the Eisenkot-was-silent lie also resonated with many because Netanyahu keeps running against Yair Golan and other Eisenkot allies.

Ben-Gvir's impact on Israel, Netanyahu abroad

It’s paradoxical. Indulging flame-throwers like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has stained Netanyahu’s status abroad and Israel’s standing worldwide too. But it hasn’t hurt Bibi much in Israel. Bibi-bashers didn’t need Ben-Gvir to hate Bibi.

By contrast, the many foreign reporters profiling Eisenkot adoringly and the many American Jews jonesing for him to win overlook Eisenkot’s problematic allies – while their extreme attacks on Israel’s army and the war have hurt Eisenkot with Israeli voters.

Eisenkot’s vote-sharing agreement with Yair Golan has been a gift to the Right, making it even easier to define Eisenkot by the far Left’s harshest rants. Even more devastating, the arrangement is stirring just a few too many doubts among Israel’s muscular moderates about whether Eisenkot will be too beholden to the loony Left.

Silence, we’re told, is golden, and certainly helped propel Eisenkot past other rivals. But Eisenkot must remember the eternal Jewish charge to leaders: be strong and of good courage, especially because, in modern politics, strong silent types often end up delivering concession speeches.

The writer is a Distinguished Scholar of North American History at McGill University and a Senior Research Fellow at the JPPI, the Jewish People Policy Institute. He is the author of nine books on presidential history and, nine books on modern Zionism, including To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream as well as his latest e-book, The Essential Guide to the U.S.-Israel Partnership: the 250th Anniversary Edition.