(JTA) — When Ilana Mittman, a retired social scientist with American and Israeli citizenship, began arranging a trip to Israel from her home in Baltimore, she planned to observe her late father’s Yahrzeit and cast her ballot in the national elections on Oct. 27. Checking her voter registration status online, she made a startling discovery: She had been excluded from the voter registry and was ineligible to vote.

The discovery came as a shock. Mittman’s mother was born in pre-state Palestine. Her parents had drained swamps in order to create arable land and served in the Haganah pre-state military organization.

Mittman has lived in the United States since 1980, having moved for her husband’s medical studies and career. But she has never viewed her life abroad as severing her ties to Israel. She watches television in Hebrew, follows the country’s news, stays in frequent contact with family, donates to the country’s emergency services and engages in pro-Israel advocacy efforts.

“I didn’t really choose to leave the country; I fell in love with a man who came from overseas, and I followed him,” she said. “I’ve grieved for the loss of my country and my friends … It’s been a constant, chronic sorrow.”

Puzzled by the discovery of her voter status, Mittman reviewed her records through the Ministry of Interior online portal and noticed that on March 7, 1986, her residency status had been altered under administrative “Code 51.”

That date matched a visit to the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco shortly after the birth of her son, where she went to register him as an Israeli citizen in accordance with consular requirements. She said that during that routine appointment, consular staff took away her state-issued ID card without explanation, leaving her with only her passport for foreign travel.

“I remember how bad of a feeling it was to give that document away,” Mittman recalled. “I felt I gave a part of myself away when that happened. But I didn’t know that my biggest right as a citizen – the right to vote – was just robbed from me.”

When she spoke with friends in the expat community, it turned out that others had found themselves in a similar situation. Some only made the discovery after they had already made expensive travel arrangements to return to Israel for the election, since voting must be done in person.

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Under Israel’s Basic Law: The Knesset, every Israeli citizen aged 18 or older has the right to vote, unless a court has deprived them of that right. In practice, however, voting is limited to those included in the voter registry.

Israelis whom the government classifies as nonresidents are assigned a designation known as Code 51 and removed from the voter registry, even though they retain their citizenship.

As expats across North America, Europe, Australia and South Africa began to realize in the lead-up to the October vote that they were no longer in the voting registry, they began comparing their experiences in a WhatsApp group that grew to some 120 members.

Some, like Mittman, had not voted in Israel for decades. Others, like kibbutz-born Ayala Graham, had returned to vote in the previous elections, held just four years ago. Yet others retained their eligibility, such as Graham’s husband, who hadn’t cast a ballot in Israel in four decades.

“My blood is boiling from this situation,” said Graham, who left Israel in 1986. “I am a citizen through and through, and I was very offended by this arbitrary rejection. I feel that in these elections, the situation is even more acute than in 2022.”

With the grounds for rescinding voting eligibility opaque and no easy path to appeal the exclusion, the disenfranchised Israelis decided to pursue legal action. They are calling the grassroots initiative to restore their voting eligibility “Our Right to Vote – Code 51.”

To challenge the Code 51 exclusions, the group raised money for legal representation through crowdfunding. Then they initiated a multi-stage legal strategy designed to exhaust administrative remedies before escalating to Israel’s Supreme Court.

Represented by attorney Gilead Sher, they submitted a Freedom of Information request to compel the Israeli Ministry of Interior to disclose the criteria behind the administrative “Code 51” designations. Then they sent letters to the Ministry of Interior, the attorney general and the Central Elections Commission requesting the immediate restoration of their status.

The Israeli Ministry of Interior has not yet responded to the group’s letter about Code 51, the criteria used to remove expats from the voter registry, or the total number of citizens affected by the regulation.

Israeli Ministry of Interior spokesperson Yaffa Shai did not address questions about the meaning of Code 51 posed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Instead, she pointed to Israeli election law, which requires voters to be listed in the Population Registry as residents, with an address in Israel, and stressed that the ministry had conducted “an extensive multilingual campaign” urging citizens to check their voter status.

Since the law requires that the voting registry be finalized on Sept. 3, the legal team set a one-week deadline for administrative responses. If the matter remains unresolved, they intend to file an emergency petition directly with the Central Elections Commission and the High Court of Justice.

There is no known official count of how many Israeli expats have been excluded from the voter registry. “We received a rough, totally unofficial estimate of several dozen thousands, out of whom we represent about 120,” said Sher, the lawyer.

He stressed that there is also no clarity regarding the criteria used to remove citizens living abroad from the voter registry. “Our argument is that whatever this arbitrary Code 51 stands for or signifies, it cannot override the constitutional right to vote,” he said.

Sher acknowledged the possibility that some expats who travel to Israel to vote may only discover their status on election day. Given the tight timeframe before the election, Sher is seeking both temporary relief and an interim injunction in the petition to ensure eligible citizens are not disenfranchised while bureaucratic procedures are reviewed.

‘Essentially voter suppression’

On the West Coast, another Israeli expat, Silicon Valley attorney Rony Sagy, was struck by the arbitrariness of the system, particularly given her past travels to Israel during election cycles.

For the IDF elite unit veteran, maintaining a close connection to Israel has been consistent over decades of living in the U.S. Her career as a San Francisco–based lawyer has included serving as a legal bridge between Israeli startups and American tech companies, and she travels to Israel several times a year, renews her passport and keeps a permanent address in the country.

She suspects that her name was removed from the voter roll following a routine consulate visit for passport renewal sometime in the 1980s, during which she was required to surrender her domestic Israeli ID card. She noted that the experience was difficult enough for someone with deep connections to the country, but the lack of transparency surrounding the act added insult to injury.

“Voting was always very, very important to me,” Sagy emphasized. “My understanding was that my voting rights would not be hampered by the confiscation of my ID card. The uneven, unidentified way or form of removing certain people from the voter rolls is essentially voter suppression.”

The debate over Israeli citizens’ inability to cast ballots from abroad with limited exceptions (for example, official government representatives stationed abroad), has been ongoing for decades. Proponents of overseas voting note that most Western democracies allow it. Opponents argue that the large number of Israelis living abroad could potentially sway an election, even though those living in Israel bear the consequences of its outcome more directly.

Public opinion in Israel on overseas voting is split, though polls typically focus on whether expats should be allowed to cast ballots from abroad rather than retain their eligibility to vote if their center of life is elsewhere.

A survey last year by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 51% of Israelis opposed allowing citizens living abroad to vote from overseas, while 39% supported it. Opposition was particularly high among Arab respondents – 55% opposed, 36% supported – relative to Jewish respondents. Among Jewish respondents, opinion was evenly divided, with 45% supporting and 45% opposing overseas voting.

Attitudes were also strongly associated with respondents’ own willingness to leave the country. Among Israelis considering moving abroad, 52.5% supported overseas voting and 40% opposed it, compared to 34% support and 55% opposition among those not considering leaving Israel.

Members of the group challenging the denial of their eligibility to vote point to the global economy, which facilitates remote work, as well as the rising number of Israelis who have left the country since Oct. 7, 2023,  due to Israel’s enmeshment in several regional wars. Some have deliberately chosen to disconnect. Mittman, however, believes that the number of years spent living abroad should not define the strength of one’s connection.

“What do you mean by center of life?” she asks. “If I spend hours a day immersing myself in Israeli culture, if I am supporting friends and relatives in Israel and charitable causes in every way I can … I feel that my heart is there, that I’ve never ceased to be an Israeli. So, what does it mean to be a citizen if you cannot vote?”

She insisted that this initiative to restore expats’ voting rights is not partisan: “If somebody told me today that I can vote, I don’t know who I’m going to vote for. I have not decided.”

Regardless of whether the legal challenges are resolved ahead of the election, she plans to make the trip, spending election day volunteering to help elderly and mobility-impaired voters reach their polling stations.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Israeli expats push for voting rights in Oct. 27 election  appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff distanced himself from left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, who has called Ossoff a “dark-horse” presidential candidate, citing Piker’s “reckless and dangerous rhetoric” about American Jews.

Ossoff is facing criticism from some of his state’s local Jewish community over his votes to block certain arms sales to Israel. He has joined a chorus of Democrats who criticized Piker this week over recent comments that many interpreted as justifying threats to American Jews, including a number of democratic politicians.

Speaking on a Twitch livestream on Aug. 20, Piker stated, “If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone’s going to come around and take action.” Piker added, “Not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.”

An Ossoff spokesperson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday that he “unreservedly rejects reckless and dangerous rhetoric suggesting that policy advocacy invites violence against the Jewish community or any community.”

“American Jews and all Americans must have the freedom and security to speak out and petition their government without fear of reprisal,” the spokesperson added.

Ossoff’s politics and sharp criticism of Trump have generated buzz about him potentially running for president in 2028, and have attracted some left-wing figures who have lauded his messaging.

Piker was initially among those figures, telling the Jewish Telegraphic Agency  in April that he was “intrigued” by Ossoff.

“I think he’s very charismatic, and he’s done things that I’ve found to be interesting, given his position in Georgia, when he was one of the first lone voices in the Senate that actually was critical about sending aid to Israel early on,” Piker said at the time. “I was like, that’s a unique position for — he’s Jewish as well — for a young American Jew to take in Georgia.”

Piker said that he heard from young Georgian Jews in his online community who “could not believe that their synagogues and their rabbis and their organizations in their communities took out like a full page ad yelling at Jon Ossoff for taking a stance against arming the State of Israel.”

Ossoff’s campaign had never responded to requests for comment about Piker until Thursday, as a slew of Democrats condemned the anti-Israel streamer’s comments.

Later that day, Piker was decidedly less enthusiastic about Ossoff when speaking on his stream.

“I don’t like Jon Ossoff,” Piker said, adding that he had “wanted to see if he had the right instincts” before declaring himself a full-fledged supporter.

“This is a moment where it’s very clear that he does not have the right instincts.” he added.

In a post on X, Piker also explained how Ossoff’s Israel stance was what sparked his initial excitement about the senator.

“i think jon ossoff’s best strengths came from his lack of interest in attacking his left flank & focusing on trump’s corruption & scandals instead,” Piker wrote. “i said he was a dark horse because he’s been smart enough to back restrictions on weapons transfers to israel at times regardless of his incredibly conservative voting track record otherwise.”

The clash between Ossoff and Piker comes as members of the Jewish community in Atlanta have criticized the Jewish Democrat, largely over his votes to block certain arms sales to Israel. Ossoff is running for reelection in November in a high-profile battle against Republican Rep. Mike Collins that could determine which party controls the Senate.

Ossoff first voted to block weapons sales to Israel in November 2024, spurring a critical open letter from several Georgia Jewish organizations including synagogues, Jewish schools, the local Anti-Defamation League chapter and other groups. His vote also drew the attention of AIPAC, which released 30-second ads attacking U.S. senators — including Ossoff — who had voted to block weapons sales.

Michael Morris, publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, penned an open letter earlier this month blasting Ossoff for voting to block weapons sales to Israel again in July 2025 and April 2026.

“I hear you claim, over and over again, that you support Israel — that your support is ‘ironclad,’” Morris wrote. “It is not.”

Morris accused Ossoff in the letter of “lying to me and your constituents” about his support for Israel. Days later, Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared to run with that accusation in a post that attacked Ossoff, in response to the Senator’s remark about Donald Trump and his aide Natalie Harp.

“Ossoff routinely lies as the Jewish leaders in Atlanta pointed out recently and we should accept that he is a profoundly dishonest politician with no sense of honor,” Gingrich wrote.

Asked about Ossoff’s comments on Piker, Morris told JTA he agreed with the statement, but that it wasn’t enough to win his support.

“It’s better than him supporting Piker — absolutely, 100%,” Morris said. “But, you know, talk is cheap, and trying to push one extremist a little bit out of the envelope — it’s one little step forward. Very little.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Jon Ossoff joins Democrats distancing from Hasan Piker appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — The discovery this week of the sunken arms ship the Altalena, which almost sparked an Israeli civil war just one month after the fledgling state was created in 1948, has become a political battle ground for right-politicians seeking support in advance of the Oct. 27 elections.

“There is no more mobilizing ethos on the right than Altalena,” Udi Lebel, a leading scholar of the affair at Bar-Ilan University, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The ship’s detection, he said, bolstered what he viewed as efforts by both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of the far-right Otzma Yehudit to campaign in this election on identity and victimhood rather than policy.

The Altalena had arrived from France in June 1948 carrying about 900 Jewish immigrants and a large shipment of weapons acquired by the Irgun, the more militant pre-state paramilitary group led by Menachem Begin. Its rival, the Haganah, was the largest military organization in pre-state Israel and formed the main foundation of the newly established IDF.

Begin wanted 20% of the weapons on board the Altalena for Irgun forces in Jerusalem, while then-prime minister David Ben-Gurion insisted that armed forces and weapons come under the authority of the newly established state. Sixteen Irgun members and three IDF soldiers were killed in the fighting, during which a shell hit the ship setting it ablaze as it was moored off the Tel Aviv shore.

Until the battle, the Irgun had been a separate force from the emerging national army. The Altalena shelling established the authority of the army over all military forces, ensuring that the right-most flank of the war effort would be subordinate to the new leadership.

The burned-out vessel remained there for more than a year before being towed farther out to sea and deliberately sunk. Its precise location was subsequently lost, prompting repeated searches over the decades. The story of the ship has remained embedded in Israel’s national consciousness as a warning of how internal discord can spiral toward civil war.

In a joint statement Monday, Ben-Gvir and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, both from Otzma Yehudit, announced that the vessel had been located at a depth of about 1,650 feet, roughly 12 miles offshore.

The search, commissioned by the Heritage Ministry and carried out by the government’s mapping body called the Survey of Israel, which operated in this instance without involvement from the IDF. Ita specially equipped ship with advanced sensors and underwater mapping systems, the ministers said, adding that the wreck was found largely intact.

Lebel questioned whether the wreck had been located in its entirety, saying the government had yet to produce clear photographic evidence and citing archival records he said documented repeated efforts under Ben-Gurion to destroy and sink the vessel. He also noted that no American naval experts had been brought in, despite the vessel’s origins as a World War II U.S. Navy landing ship.

Monday’s announcement of the discovery quickly became part of the election campaign, with Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir invoking Begin’s legacy to make competing appeals to right-wing voters.

Ben-Gvir publicized the find without first informing Netanyahu or Defense Minister Israel Katz, surprising both men, according to Israeli reports, a detail that quickly fed speculation about tensions between the coalition partners. Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir later delivered separate remarks at Tel Aviv’s Etzel Museum, which is dedicated to the Irgun, with the prime minister avoiding a joint appearance with his far-right coalition partner.

It was not the first time Netanyahu had kept his distance from Ben-Gvir on the eve of an election. In October 2022, less than two weeks before that year’s vote, Netanyahu waited for Ben-Gvir to leave the stage at a holiday event rather than be photographed alongside him. Reports at the time said the two were nevertheless meeting regularly and coordinating their campaign and media strategy.

Netanyahu used his remarks on Monday to focus on Begin’s decision not to retaliate after the ship was shelled, saying the Irgun leader had “stopped the fight” and prevented the nascent state from descending into civil war.

“That’s the lesson of the Altalena,” he said, before tying the episode to his own campaign pledge to form a “broad national government” after the upcoming Oct. 27 election.

“We are brothers. Political rivals, yes, but we are brothers. We are of one nation, one future, one fate,” he said.

Ben-Gvir described the Altalena as a symbol of the historic marginalization of Israel’s right, drawing a parallel between his own treatment and that of Begin, Ben-Gurion’s bitter political rival. The vessel’s recovery, he said, closes “an open wound.”

“Begin knew the taste of persecution, what it was like when people did not want to be photographed with you on the same stage,” Ben-Gvir said.

Begin went on to found Herut, the forerunner of Likud, and led Likud to power in 1977, ending nearly three decades of Labor-led rule. Ben-Gvir’s early political career was tied to extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, whom both Begin and his successor, Yitzhak Shamir, ostracized from the mainstream right.

Ben-Gvir’s allies explicitly linked the photo-op snub to his repeated claim that Netanyahu plans to form a government after the election with Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the centrist Yashar party and the prime minister’s main rival in recent polls, saying it was “exactly what they did to Menachem Begin,” according to the right-wing Israel Hayom newspaper.

The confrontation has been widely interpreted in Israel as part of the contest between Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir for the same pool of right-wing voters. Haaretz political columnist Yossi Verter described Ben-Gvir’s handling of the Altalena discovery as “genius.”

Veteran political commentator Ben Caspit offered a similar reading, writing in Maariv that Ben-Gvir had effectively hijacked one of Likud’s most potent historical symbols and turned it against Netanyahu, “snatching from under the prime minister’s nose” the legacy of Begin. Caspit wrote that Ben-Gvir was relishing his appearance at the museum, while anyone familiar with the prime minister could see “how much he was suffering” by being there.

Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, rejected that reading altogether, describing the apparent rupture between Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir as a political ruse coordinated between the two to mislead voters and shore up support for another right-led government.

“This is not a genuine fight, and there is no real estrangement,” Talshir told JTA. “They are coordinating with each other because they share the same goal of increasing turnout on the right.”

Talshir said the apparent split allows Netanyahu to present himself as a more moderate figure to wavering Likud voters, who she said are “very troubled” by the country’s political divisions, while Ben-Gvir can present himself as the right-wing partner being pushed aside.

“Netanyahu is using the rhetoric of a broad national government to create the illusion among right-wing voters that he wants to repair the divisions within the country,” she said, noting that he was deliberately avoiding the word “unity,” which would suggest a commitment to govern with opposition parties.

She added that there was “no chance in the world, under any possible election results, that Netanyahu would prefer a government with even one component of the current opposition over an extreme-right coalition like the one he had and still has.” One reason was Netanyahu’s ongoing criminal trial, which she argued made him unlikely to choose coalition partners for whom the rule of law is a central principle.

Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States who served under Netanyahu, rejected the idea that the Altalena clash was a coordinated ruse. He also disputed Talshir’s view of Netanyahu’s coalition preferences, saying the prime minister has historically preferred broader governments that allow him to occupy the political center. Oren pointed to Netanyahu’s 2009 government, which included former prime minister Ehud Barak’s Labor Party and embraced a demilitarized Palestinian state, saying that kind of ideologically diverse coalition was “comfortable” for him.

“The nightmare of the last four years is that he’s been the leftmost person in his coalition,” Oren said. “He would love to get [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and Ben-Gvir out” of his government.

Oren said Netanyahu could ideally seek what he called a “Zionist government” that excluded both Arab and ultra-Orthodox parties. The difficulty, he said, is that opposition parties have expressed their refusal to join a government led by Netanyahu, raising the question of what role he could play in such a coalition.

“He needs to be prime minister because it’s existential for him,” Oren said, particularly in light of his ongoing corruption trial. “If he’s not prime minister, he’ll have to appear in court as citizen Netanyahu. That’s a potentially dangerous situation for him.”

Lebel said the Altalena story was being used to revive among right-wing voters a sense that they were again being delegitimized and persecuted.

He also called Netanyahu’s invocation of Begin’s vow to prevent civil war “politically manipulative,” arguing that Begin made the statement during a genuine internecine confrontation in which his movement was treated as illegitimate, a reality he said bears little resemblance to Israel’s political divisions today.

“Begin made his pledge during a confrontation in which there really was another side that did not want to see him or his supporters in power and viewed everything he represented as illegitimate,” he said. “Netanyahu today is not confronting another side that refuses to accept him, because he himself is the elite and controls the entire public administration.”

Talshir argued that Netanyahu’s invocation of Altalena also ignored the principle at the heart of the original confrontation. Netanyahu, Talshir said, gave Ben-Gvir control of the police and empowered him in ways that undermined that principle.

“Netanyahu can keep saying until tomorrow that he opposes civil war. But in practice, he is the person who created Ben-Gvir politically and gave him the power to establish militias that are personally loyal to the minister, and that frequently challenge the police’s professional chain of command,” she said.

“Netanyahu’s presentation of the Altalena is just another part of a false campaign that he is trying to sell to the public, specifically to Likud voters,” she said.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post How the sunken 1948 Altalena arms ship became an election battleground in Israel in 2026 appeared first on The Forward.