The Next One

I accept being governed by an idiot, not that the general who may head the next government is one, though I wouldn’t rule it out. Democracy obliges me to bear that risk, and so I also accept losing to people I think are worse, I accept four years of decisions that appall me, I accept watching millions of Israelis celebrate exactly what I mourn, and I accept all of it as part of the bargain.

I do not accept, however, the risk that defeat might carry off with it the right to try to win the next time. I need to be certain that there will be a next time, and that is something I will not surrender.

That is why I will vote for Yair Golan and why I will support a center-right government led by that general and his entourage, a government I consider bad because it offers no real solutions for the region, solutions that, in my view, no candidate has. I will not pretend his flaws are small just because Netanyahu is far worse, but demagoguery, incompetence, corruption, and irresponsibility are flaws a democracy can confront, and there are others that destroy the very conditions it needs to exist. The difference is fundamental, and the worst flaw of all is not knowing how to lose. In the current government and in Netanyahu, its leader in chief, I see every one of the deadly sins.

This is the misogynist government that in March 2023 killed, by a single vote, an opposition bill that would have required domestic abusers to wear electronic monitoring bracelets, when the year had barely begun and seven women had already been murdered, and Ben-Gvir defended the decision on the ground that men needed protection from false accusations; it is also the government that appointed its first woman to run a ministry only after naming twenty-three men and weathering a torrent of criticism. This is the racist government that stood by while two hundred and fifty-two Arab citizens, Israelis like me, were murdered in 2025, the deadliest year on record for Arab society, and whose minister in charge of the police blamed the attorney general for the surge. And this is the fascist government that has boycotted the president of the Supreme Court since January 2025, and whose Justice Minister Yariv Levin refuses to call him by his title; in which Likud minister Idit Silman asked Donald Trump to impose personal sanctions on him and on the attorney general; whose Knesset majority elected Netanyahu’s personal lawyer, Michael Rabello, as state comptroller, and in which Levin insisted that Rabello take office anyway after the court annulled the election; and that closed out its term with one law that lets the government ignore her legal opinions and another that gives it greater control over the press.

Whoever agrees to govern a democracy agrees to be sent home by it, and governs all Israelis, not only those who voted for him. It does not matter whether the man believes he is anointed by God, whether millions of sycophants applaud him and call him king, or whether the other side is a disaster. The prime minister receives the key to a house that is not his, and if he is not reelected, he must hand it back and say goodbye. In 2021, when he lost power, Netanyahu took almost a month to vacate the official residence on Balfour Street and moved out only after missing the deadline he himself had accepted.

The majority has the right to govern and has no right to decide who deserves rights, which family is a real family, what kind of love is worthy of respect, which religion is the truest or the mightiest. Giving one’s own life to religion is each prime minister’s choice, and giving away Israel is not, because the majority governs the country and does not govern the lives of everyone else in it. Yet in its last week before dissolving the Knesset, the coalition passed a Basic Law declaring Torah study a founding value of the state and a law suspending the arrest of ultra-Orthodox men who evade the draft, while other young Jews continue to receive their call-up notices.

Even with a majority, a prime minister must be weak enough that he cannot have everything his way, and the Knesset, the courts, the press, and the opposition exist to guarantee that weakness. All of them can be imperfect and, at times, repulsive, and still they make sure our government is not all-powerful. The prime minister is free to disagree and to appeal, and he has no right to strip these checks of the power to tell him no.

Even though I suspect we won’t get past eight seats, my own candidate’s flaws will still be there if he makes it into government, and mind you, I will not keep quiet about them. I find it ridiculous, this pact of loyalty between the one who casts the vote and the one who receives it, and there is no sense in spending four years inventing rhetorical somersaults to defend every manner of folly committed by a man who works for me, not the other way around. If I help elect him, the obligation runs from him to me, and mine runs to the next generation and to the future of Israel, which depends on there always being a next election.