Tel Aviv
One of Gadi Eisenkot’s most important electoral assets is a simple and undeniable fact: he is not Benjamin Netanyahu. And for many voters in one of the most critical elections in Israel’s history, that may well be enough.
But one of his other assets became the center of a political storm when Yinon Magal, a prominent television host widely seen as Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesperson, blasted the prime minister’s main rival. In a series of racist remarks, Magal called Eisenkot a “monkey” of “Mizrahi-Moroccan heritage” run by “Ashkenazi elites.”
The comments hit long-standing inequalities between Jews of European descent and Jews of Middle Eastern origin, sparking a political and media storm. Magal later claimed that he did not want to make fun of Eisnekot’s ethnic origins; rather, he was using an underworld term for a leader managed behind the scenes. Even Netanyahu, not known for his contrition, condemned the remarks.
Still, the episode shed light on Eisenkot’s family history.
For years, many Mizrahi voters have traditionally supported Netanyahu’s Likud party. Eisenkot, 66, son of Moroccan immigrants who became Israel’s general-in-chief, grew up in Tiberias and Eilat, outside the country’s centers of political power. His story stands in stark contrast to Netanyahu’s elite Jerusalem upbringing in circles of power.
Eisenkot rarely mentions his ethnicity, but analysts believe that is part of his appeal. Despite scoring in the single digits in the polls a year ago, he emerged as the leading opposition candidate to unseat Netanyahu in the Oct. 27 vote. Israel has never had a Mizrahi prime minister. If Eisenkot comes out on top, it will be a first.
Eisenkot is the second of nine children and the father of five. He is a relative newcomer to politics after spending most of his life in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
He enlisted in the Golani brigade in 1978 and rose through the ranks during a 40-year career to become chief of staff from 2015 to 2019, under Netanyahu.
His tenure was one of the most controversial episodes in recent Israeli military history. In 2016, Staff Sgt. Elor Azaria shot dead a wounded Palestinian attacker in Hebron. Despite pressure from right-wing politicians – including Netanyahu – Eisenkot supported a military investigation and trial, saying he defended the army’s discipline and ethics.
He entered politics in 2022 alongside another former chief of staff, Benny Gantz. After Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the two joined Netanyahu’s emergency war cabinet. But they left in June 2024, pointing to the lack of a clear post-war strategy.
By this time, the war had already taken a heavy toll on Eisenkot’s family. His youngest son, Gal, 25, was killed fighting in Gaza in December 2023, two months after the start of the war. Two of his nephews also died in combat.
“At Gal’s grave, I swore that the price he and his friends paid, those he knew and those he did not know, would not be in vain,” Eisenkot wrote in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper in April 2026. He called this singular promise central to his political mission.
Eisenkot enters the home stretch as the opposition’s strongest candidate.
Most recent opinion polls predict his Yashar party will win 20 to 23 of the 120 Knesset seats up for grabs, more than Likud. He also leads Netanyahu in a poll to determine who is best suited to become prime minister.
But victory is far from assured, and poll numbers – which can be inaccurate – matter less than the arithmetic of the Israeli coalition.
In the Israeli system, even if Eisenkot’s party comes out on top, the president does not automatically task it with forming the government. The mandate goes to the legislator most likely to form a coalition. And this is where the calculations begin.
Opinion polls suggest that neither Netanyahu’s bloc, which includes far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties, nor the anti-Netanyahu bloc are on track to reach a 61-seat majority. Political impasse is a very real possibility.
Eisenkot’s path to power runs through left, right and center parties, and could depend on Arab parties in some scenarios. Netanyahu has spent years working to delegitimize any cooperation with Arab parties, and some other opposition leaders have already said they will not work with them.
Eisenkot said he would try to form a government even without 61 seats, raising the possibility of a minority government backed by Arab parties from outside. But the right-wing parties expected to be part of his coalition could reject this option.
A former military planner, Eisenkot is unlike Netanyahu in character, style and temperament. His campaign billboards presented him as “a warrior, a leader, a unifier.” His party is called “Yashar” – “right” in Hebrew – inspired by the words of former October 7 hostage Eli Sharabi: “It’s not good, it’s not left, it’s right.”
His main campaign promises are domestic and responsible. He promises the creation of a state commission of inquiry into the failures of October 7, which Netanyahu has resisted since the start of the war. It also promises military conscription or compulsory national service for all citizens; the outgoing coalition depends on parties that demand maintaining blanket exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews.
On security, however, he is a hawk who shares many of Netanyahu’s positions. Like almost all of Netanyahu’s rivals, he has largely supported Israeli military operations in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. Within the IDF, it is associated with the “Dahiyeh doctrine” – using overwhelming force against civilian infrastructure to deter future militant attacks – and the “campaign between wars”, a strategy of covert, low-intensity operations aimed at eroding enemy capabilities without triggering a full-scale conflict.
Regarding Iran, he shares Netanyahu’s central goals of preventing it from acquiring nuclear weapons and weakening Tehran’s proxy network. But he has criticized the lack of strategy in the last conflict and says military gains must be accompanied by diplomacy.
He lambasted Netanyahu for his handling of the Gaza war, accusing the prime minister of prolonging the conflict and endangering Israeli hostages for political reasons, an accusation that ultimately led him to leave the war cabinet.
Eisenkot comes from a security background, and some of his coalition partners are likely to be right-wing parties, unwilling to accept a radical change in Israel’s strategic direction. In Gaza, he pledged to end Hamas rule within 18 months, either by implementing Trump’s ceasefire plan or through what he called “creative” military operations.
In practice, Netanyahu’s stated goals are broadly similar, but Eisenkot asserts that “as long as Netanyahu is in power, Hamas remains in power.”
Before entering politics, Eisenkot warned that continued Israeli control over Palestinians in the occupied West Bank risked creating a binational state, which he called “the end of the Zionist vision.” Since October 7, however, he has rejected the two-state solution, recently declaring in an interview that anyone who continues to defend it is “delusional,” without presenting an alternative vision.
He opposes formal annexation and illegal outposts and called the Israeli government’s plan to build in the controversial E1 area of the West Bank a “mistake” because of the international cost. And he has pledged to quell settler violence and what he has openly called “Jewish terrorism,” accusing the government of tying the hands of security forces.
Trump made his preference clear: On Sunday, he gave Netanyahu his “complete and total support,” calling him “a great warrior prime minister.” Anyone else, he warned, would be the “bad leader,” suggesting that the United States should then confront Iran on its own.
Eisenkot and other opposition leaders have urged the White House, through intermediaries including Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson, to stay out of the race, according to Israeli sources familiar with the efforts. It didn’t work. Netanyahu and Trump share a long history, spanning the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem in 2017, the exit from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, the 2020 Abraham Accords and the 2025-2026 strikes against Iran.
When political analyst Barak Ravid asked Trump if he could work with another prime minister, he replied: “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, who wants to take a chance?”
Yet over the past year, Netanyahu has taken steps that have angered Trump and others in his administration, including strikes in Lebanon and Gaza that have undermined his peace efforts in the region.
An Eisenkot-led government, without Netanyahu’s far-right partners Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, would likely be more moderate and give Trump more leeway to pursue regional diplomacy, including on the path to Saudi normalization, a long-held ambition.
Although Riyadh still demands a credible path to Palestinian statehood, a coalition that does not rely on the far right would likely find it easier to move in that direction.
Gn world
