They chant his name, they cheer and clap – and yet he is not the most dominant person in the room. Looming over the crowd that has gathered to hear Gadi Eisenkot, the former general who is the lead opposition challenger in Tuesday’s Israeli election, is a man who is not there. It is the man Eisenkot seeks to replace as prime minister, the man who first served in that role three decades ago and who has held it, on and off, for 19 of the past 30 years.
It is Benjamin Netanyahu. Naturally, the warm-up speakers at this evening rally in the modest city of Modi’in, halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, stress the virtues of Eisenkot, a son of working-class Moroccan Jews who rose through the ranks to become chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces and entered politics only four years ago. But every sentence might as well end with two words that go unspoken: unlike Bibi.
Even the name of Eisenkot’s party, Yashar, meaning straight or direct, carries the implied contrast with Netanyahu, who is regarded by friends and enemies alike as a maestro of the darkest political arts. When Eisenkot calls for “a country without lies”, when he calls for “responsibility and leading by example”, when he suggests US-style term limits for the role of prime minister, “because power corrupts”, everyone knows what – and who – he means. None of this comes with rhetorical fire or theatrical panache.
But the lack of charisma serves only to emphasise that Eisenkot is every inch the un-Bibi. We need someone who will do the doing part.” Spotting a journalist with a notebook, David Nadler, 74, a retired colonel who served under Eisenkot, insisted I write down the word “integrity”, meaning “he says something, he means it, he will do it”. Another sentence ending with those silent words: unlike Bibi.
It’s hard to overstate Netanyahu’s dominance not only over this campaign but over Israeli politics and political culture. The two blocs in this election are not left and right but Bibi and anti-Bibi. The latter camp includes at least two figures – the former PM Naftali Bennett and the Moldova-born Avigdor Lieberman – whose natural home is on the nationalist right and who both once worked closely with Netanyahu, only to fall out with him spectacularly.
Almost every political figure is defined, or defines themselves, in relation to Netanyahu. Eisenkot offers himself as the antidote, but listen to the pitch made by the far right and it too is all about the prime minister. Netanyahu is like a shopping trolley, says Yishai Fleisher, of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, to a group of about 30 orthodox voters in a study hall in Bet Shemesh on Thursday evening.
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