Gadi Eisenkot, the Man Who Could Unseat Netanyahu — and What His Rise Says About Israel

What is at stake goes beyond the man. Eisenkot would be the first Mizrahi prime minister in Israel's history: the son of immigrants from Morocco, raised in Tiberias and Eilat, who rose through the Golani Brigade — the brigade of Israelis who do the hard work. He is breaking through in Likud strongholds like Dimona and Kiryat Shmona — meaning he is siphoning off the very electorate Netanyahu held through identity, not through his record. And there is Gal, his youngest son, killed in Gaza in December 2023 during a mission to recover hostages' bodies. Two nephews as well. At a time when the Prime Minister's sons did not serve in this war, Eisenkot embodies the price paid — without ever having to say it.

A Yashar! activist, Inbar Harush-Giti, sums up the phenomenon: the public recognizes in him the "honesty and humility" it wants to see again in its leaders, and claims Ben-Gurion's mamlakhtiut — "the general good comes before the good of any particular group." Eisenkot defines himself as "traditional," that Jewish identity — majority among Mizrahi voters, at once observant and open — which the religious-secular divide usually erases.

Here is the angle the mainstream press is missing: it reads Eisenkot as just another "anti-Bibi centrist." Wrong. His rise does not signal an ideological turn in Israel — his platform is too vague for that — but a shift in criteria. After two years of war, the electorate is no longer asking "right or left?" but "who paid, who served, who tells the truth?" It is a deeply Israeli yardstick, born of October 7, where legitimacy is measured in shared sacrifice. A former adviser to both Netanyahu and Bennett, Moshe Klughaft, attributes his success to a thirst for novelty. Perhaps. But if a bereaved general — Mizrahi, traditional, with no media talent — can beat the master of political communication, it means the war has changed the question Israel asks itself. And that question, no poll can make disappear.