Likud<\/a>, is in his political twilight.\u00a0<\/p>\nEven so, between them the two\u2019s transitions jointly reflect the sunset of Netanyahu\u2019s career.<\/p>\n
Edelstein, whose three political decades included stints as minister of health, speaker of the Knesset, and chairman of the defense and foreign affairs committee, was appalled by the draft-evasion bill that ultra-Orthodoxy\u2019s leaders demanded, and Netanyahu vowed to pass.<\/p>\n
By doing so, Edelstein voiced the revulsion of hundreds of thousands of Orthodox right-wingers who have borne the brunt of the fighting this country has endured since autumn 2023, with families left fatherless and businesses shuttered for hundreds of days.<\/p>\n
Eisenkot, at the same time, became an emblem of this ordeal\u2019s worst part: bereavement.<\/p>\n
The lifelong warrior\u2019s loss in Gaza of one son and two nephews, Gal and Maor Eisenkot, and Yogev Pazi, made him a potent symbol of what the serving population endured while the non-serving population\u2019s leaders labored to etch non-service in constitutional stone.<\/p>\n
Moreover, Eisenkot\u2019s zenith and Edelstein\u2019s rebellion show that Netanyahu\u2019s loss of political altitude is about much more than the current war\u2019s events.<\/p>\n
Edelstein and Eisenkot are representatives of two populations disconnected from Netanyahu<\/p>\n
Edelstein and Eisenkot are representatives of two populations that were wheels of the social wagon Netanyahu rode to Israel\u2019s helm: the so-called Moroccans and Russians.<\/p>\n
The latter included the past 40 years\u2019 immigrants not only from Russia, but also from the rest of the former Soviet Union and its neighbors. The former refers to the immigrations of the \u201950s and \u201960s, which were predominantly from Morocco, but also from many other Muslim lands.<\/p>\n
Both immigrations generally identified with Netanyahu\u2019s hawkishness. In addition, the \u201cRussians\u201d liked his economic policies, and the \u201cMoroccans\u201d liked his rhetorical embrace of tradition (though there was little of it in his private life). In between these electorates stood the religious Zionists, who hailed mostly from veteran, Ashkenazi Israel, but were fashioned as the lynchpin of Netanyahu\u2019s rainbow coalition of minorities.<\/p>\n
It all worked well for him until the outbreak of this decade\u2019s multiple wars. Now the \u201cRussians\u201d feel what Edelstein feels: that Netanyahu abused them. That while he had them fight war after war, he had other citizens get away with serving not one day. And that while he happily collected their votes, he did nothing to solve their problems, like allowing civil marriages, or easing the conversion rules that he abandoned to ultra-Orthodoxy\u2019s devices.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s also what happened with the \u201cMoroccans.\u201d<\/p>\n
When this electorate sees Gadi Eisenkot, they see a role model, a success story of a humbly born \u201cMoroccan\u201d like them. When considering his tragedy, they identify with him, and fume at his detractors. And when juxtaposing his humility and sacrifice with his rival\u2019s arrogance and conceit, a growing number of them side with Gadi, and loathe his antithesis.<\/p>\n
The Netanyahu operation\u2019s clumsy effort to disparage Eisenkot\u2019s imperfect English only underscores the threat they detect. Eisenkot\u2019s English is actually fluent, he is a graduate of the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The attempt to lie about his English only shows that Netanyahu doesn\u2019t know how to deal with this kind of \u201cMoroccan,\u201d one who refuses to play the role of the servile extra that Bibi has given other \u201cMoroccans\u201d over the years.<\/p>\n
Looking at Netanyahu\u2019s continuous cultivation of Shas, a machinery that deliberately prevents non-Ashkenazi Israelis\u2019 military service and educational enlightenment, and thus sabotages the emergence of more self-made \u201cMoroccans\u201d like Gadi Eisenkot, many \u201cMoroccan\u201d voters are finally asking: What has Bibi done to us?<\/p>\n
What has he done to you? He did to you what he did to \u201cthe Russians.\u201d He took you for a ride. It\u2019s been way too long, and the damage has been catastrophic, but it\u2019s still not too late for you to finally get off his bus and hand Bibi Netanyahu the poetic justice that the career he built on your backs demands.<\/p>\n
www.MiddleIsrael.net<\/a><\/p>\nThe writer, a Hartman Institute fellow, is the author of the bestseller, The Jewish March of Folly (Yedioth Books 2026), now available in English on Amazon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Talk about poetic justice. Hardly two days after intimidating soccer\u2019s governing body to cancel a Team USA footballer\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4410,955,85,46,21141,43,62373],"class_list":["post-534567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-elections","tag-gadi-eisenkot","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-likud","tag-news","tag-yuli-edelstein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Gadi](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/729273.jpeg\"\/)
Gadi Eisenkot, head of the Yashar party attends a conference in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, July 9, 2026. (credit: Sharon Leibel\/Flash90)<\/p>\n