Donald Trump and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement were well beaten in the US midterm elections, but the impact of another consequential election just a few days earlier is still to be decided. Israelis went to the polls on 27 October and gave neither big ‘bloc’ of parties a parliamentary majority. Negotiations are now underway over who can form a government.
While the haggling continues, Israeli President Isaac Herzog may ask former army chief Gadi Eisenkot to form a government if he can cobble together 61 or more seats in Israel’s 120-seat Knesset. Still relatively new to politics, Eisenkot formed a party called Yashar (which translates as ‘straight,’ meaning truthful or honest) which won 21 seats, second only to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party (27 seats).
One reason Israel’s election interests the world is that it may shape the country’s foreign policy. Netanyahu’s far-right coalition of allies (including extremists from the settler-led nationalist-religious camp and leaders of the strictly Orthodox community) has ordered Israel’s military to launch ground offensives in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, and to bomb Iran and Yemen from the air. According to Barack Obama’s former chief-of-staff and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Netanyahu has caused more damage to Israel than an enemy ever could.
Decades of discrimination
Eisenkot was born to Jewish parents originally from Morocco, so if he manages to build a coalition, he would be Israel’s first prime minister from a non-Ashkenazi background. That would be a landmark moment in Israel, where the Sephardi or Mizrahi (i.e. from the Middle East, North Africa, or West Asia) community has experienced prejudice and discrimination from those with Ashkenazi (i.e. from Europe and Russia) heritage for decades.
This discrimination was again directed against Eisenkot, a celebrated Israeli general, in the build-up to the 2026 election. Several prominent heads of the Israeli armed forces hail from Persian, Syrian, and Moroccan backgrounds, and some later entered politics, but Eisenkot would be the first to attain the premiership, following 15 Ashkenazi Jewish predecessors.
Earlier this year, a recording was published of a conversation between the late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. In it, Barak talks about the need to increase Russian and European immigration into Israel, even if this means converting non-Jews, to counter a growing portion of the population with Arab heritage. This showed not just a bias against Israeli Arabs but against non-European Jews.
Challenging the norm
Jewish migration to Israel from North Africa, the Levant, and West Asia has been seen as a threat to the core values of a state dominated by Jews of European descent. Barak and Epstein discuss Jews migrating to Israel from Arab and Muslim countries and how this was necessary (but not ideal) in Israel’s early years. At its founding in 1948, Israel’s population was 80% Ashkenazim. Jews of Middle Eastern heritage were useful for covert or undercover military and intelligence operations in the years that followed, but were unwelcome in the corridors of power.
A hugely popular Israeli TV series from 2020 called Valley of Tears touches upon some of these difficult themes, including the past reluctance of some Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews to fight for the state. The drama focuses on the disastrous war of 1973 when the combined Syrian and Egyptian armies almost defeated Israel. In the series, Arab-speaking Israeli soldiers were key to counterintelligence, but felt conflicted about risking their lives for a country that saw them as second-class.
