Yoseph Haddad says he will be Israel's next public diplomacy minister, predicts election 'surprise'

Arab Christian IDF veteran, No. 2 on Ofer Winter's list, backs Netanyahu while calling for "all 120" MKs to go home.

Yoseph Haddad, the Arab Israeli advocate who is running second on former IDF general Ofer Winter's new party list, said he intends to serve as Israel's next minister of public diplomacy and predicted his party would be "the surprise of this election."

In the last JPost Sits Down With podcast episode, Haddad said Israel had neglected what he called the "eighth front" of the propaganda war, and that anti-Israel narratives had forced the IDF to halt operations that could have saved lives. As minister, he said, he would hold weekly press conferences in Hebrew, Arabic and English to rebut "every lie" told about Israel, and he said a 100-day plan would be released next week.

Haddad, a Christian who served in the Golani Brigade, rejected the term "coexistence" to describe Jewish-Arab relations, calling it a word for peoples who merely tolerate each other. "When it comes to the Arab-Israeli, I like to use the definition of partnership," he said, citing a Muslim bus driver who rescued more than 30 people at the Nova festival on October 7.

Haddad aimed at the Arab parties, saying his "mission is to throw them out of the Knesset." He called the leaders of the Joint List "terror supporters" and accused Ra'am chairman Mansour Abbas of saying one thing in Hebrew and another in Arabic. He said Abbas had brought on a Jewish former MK as a "shield" because he "can't say that Hamas is a terrorist organization." Haddad said he aims to win at least two Knesset seats' worth of Arab votes.

On crime in the Arab sector, he said responsibility is shared by the state, the police and Arab community leaders, and described a friend in Nazareth who was stabbed while breaking up a fight and whose attacker received only community service.

He also criticized National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir's handling of detained Gaza flotilla activists, saying, "I agree on the target. I don't agree on the way at all," and called the episode "a disaster." Separately, he demanded an apology from Gadi Eisenkot, whom he accused of comparing him to Abbas "just because both of us are Arabs," calling it "pure racism."

Pressed on how a party campaigning on "new faces" can back Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who led the government on October 7, Haddad said Netanyahu, Eisenkot and Naftali Bennett all share responsibility for years of failed policy toward Hamas. "If it was up to me, all 120 home," he said, but added that his party must act "based on what's going on" as a right-wing Zionist party. He said the numbers make any coalition with the Democrats, Ra'am or the Joint List impossible.

Haddad also laid out his party's proposal for a state commission of inquiry into October 7, which he said would bridge the divide over the judiciary's role. Under the plan, judges would be nominated with signatures from 10 MKs, mirroring the presidential election process, and the Knesset would choose the commission's head and deputy by secret ballot.

A representative of the communities hit hardest on October 7 would cast the deciding vote if the two judges disagree. Haddad also recounted a recent debate in Las Vegas in which he said he was physically attacked by a neo-Nazi, first at the table and later in a parking lot, where he said he punched his attacker "in the name of the entire Israeli society."

The full coverage of this interview will be further published in the Post's Friday printed edition.