Benjamin Netanyahu has stood at the United Nations podium more often than any Israeli leader, using the world stage to warn about the threat from Iran, defend Israel’s policies and make his case with maps and other props.

On Thursday, Netanyahu is set to deliver his 15th address to the General Assembly, where he is expected to tout Israel’s military successes against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, push back against mounting criticism of Israel and lash out at New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has called him a war criminal. His U.N. appearances have served him politically back home. But with Israelis heading to the polls on Oct. 27 and Netanyahu facing another tough reelection fight, the question hanging over his familiar appearance at the green marble podium is: Will he be back next year?

The stakes in Israel’s election

American Jews and Washington insiders have watched Israeli elections closely from afar for decades. But the Oct. 27 Knesset election may feel unusually close to home.

After years of war in Gaza and Iran, and a right-wing government in which far-right cabinet ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir have wielded significant influence, Israel’s standing in the United States has fallen sharply. Benjamin Netanyahu has become deeply unpopular among Democrats and American Jews, and many find themselves caught between a strong emotional attachment to Israel and growing discomfort with the actions of its government.

That makes this election more than the latest referendum on Netanyahu. Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is seeking a seventh term after surviving political crises that repeatedly appeared likely to end his career, most significantly after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack.

The election could help determine Israel’s direction after years of growing divisions over the Palestinians, the power of the religious right and Haredi parties and the future of the country’s democratic institutions. And if Netanyahu loses, a new government could try to repair Israel’s battered image in the United States, rebuild ties with Democrats and reconnect with parts of the American Jewish community — even without bringing nearly as much change in Israeli policy as some might hope.

The candidates and coalitions on the ballot

Six weeks before Israelis vote, at least 10 lists of 38 parties that submitted a slate have a viable chance of crossing the 3.25% threshold to win seats in the 120-member Knesset: The current ruling coalition, the Likud Party; the far-right Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism party; and the Haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism. Another Party competing for votes on the right is Amcha Yisrael, led by retired general Ofer Winter. The center-left vote is split among three parties: Yashar, headed by former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot; Beyachad, the alliance of former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid; and the left-wing Democrats, headed by former IDF major general Yair Golan. There is also Avigdor Lieberman, a headliner whose secular, nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party has been part of the anti-Netanyahu bloc since 2019.

The two Arab lists — the United List, a coalition of three Arab Israeli parties, and Ra’am led by Mansour Abbas — are generally counted outside either bloc. But their seats could determine who governs after the election. Ra’am, which joined the Bennett-Lapid government in 2021, has allied with Yoav Segalovitz, who formerly headed the Israel Police’s Investigations and Intelligence Division, to seek a role in a future government, while the United List has left open the possibility of supporting an opposition-led government.

Polls show neither Netanyahu’s bloc nor the parties seeking to replace him have a clear path yet to the 61 seats needed for a Knesset majority.

That leaves three possible outcomes for Oct. 27 amid a larger question being asked from Jerusalem to Washington: Will the Netanyahu era finally end? And if it does, how much would Israel actually change?

The most likely scenario: Anti-Netanyahu bloc wins — without a majority

Recent polls point to a familiar problem in Israeli politics — the kind of deadlock that paralyzed the country for nearly two years in 2019 and 2020. The Zionist parties opposed to Netanyahu could win more seats in this election than the bloc that made up the current coalition government of Likud, the religious right and Haredi parties, but still fall short of the 61 seats needed for a majority.

Eisenkot, who has emerged as Netanyahu’s chief rival, has floated a path to a government that does not require a majority in the Knesset.

He could attempt to establish a minority government while Arab lawmakers abstain during the confidence vote rather than formally joining his coalition. Eisenkot has carefully called this a “Zionist minority government,” saying he would make no deals with Arab parties. Netanyahu has made the prospect of an Eisenkot government dependent on the left and Arab parties a central campaign argument. He is betting that after the collapse of the Bennett-Lapid government in 2022 and the trauma of Oct. 7, even voters who want change may be wary of such an arrangement.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported earlier this month that Eisenkot’s campaign is concerned that some candidates on the slate could refuse to support such an arrangement, so he is considering internal measures to ensure that lawmakers who cannot support the government’s formation resign rather than break away.

But getting sworn in could dramatically transform the political landscape. Netanyahu would no longer be prime minister.

Eisenkot could then try to expand his government by attracting parties or members currently aligned with Netanyahu, consider a split-power government with Netanyahu, and if Netanyahu stepped aside after losing power, a new Likud leader might consider joining a government led by Eisenkot, Bennett or Lieberman.

Or the minority government could quickly fall apart, sending Israel to another round of elections. But this time Eisenkot would run as the incumbent prime minister, while Netanyahu would have to decide whether to try to return to power as the opposition.

Probable scenario: Netanyahu does it again

Netanyahu could outperform polls and receive enough seats to either block the opposition from forming a government or win an outright majority.

Netanyahu pulled off a surprise victory in 2015 and made a remarkable comeback in 2022 after losing power. In the last few years he has survived a long-running corruption trial and the failures of Oct. 7, which many predicted would end his political career. Instead, he’s kept his coalition together through a full four-year term.

Netanyahu is still considered the preferred candidate for prime minister by more than a third of the Israeli electorate and is dominating among voters identifying with the center-right.

In what would likely be the final term for the 76-year-old longest-serving Israeli leader, Netanyahu could seek a different legacy by moderating his tone and pursuing a unity government with Eisenkot or Bennett. But that would mean breaking campaign promises and abandoning some of the political partners who helped keep him in power. And his opponents would have to put aside years of deep distrust and disagreements – and justify the move in the name of political stability.

Possible scenario: The end of an era — but who becomes prime minister?

If Netanyahu’s bloc loses and he cannot find a way to stay in power, the election would not automatically make Eisenkot prime minister. Ending the Netanyahu era is one thing for the three opposition leaders. Deciding who replaces him is another.

Bennett and Lieberman come from different backgrounds than Eisenkot, with years of political experience and ambitions of their own. They could offer very different styles of leadership, with a dramatic change in tone and relationships but little change in policy from Netanyahu’s.

Bennett, 54, now polling as the head of the third-largest party, has done this before. After the 2021 election, his party Yamina won only seven seats. Yet the deadlocked political map allowed him to negotiate a rotation agreement with Lapid and become prime minister as head of a diverse coalition that, for the first time in Israeli history, included the participation of an Arab party.

During his short tenure as prime minister, he demonstrated calm and unity, and proved that removing Netanyahu would not automatically be interpreted as Israel moving left. He  maintained good relations with former President Joe Biden and speaks fluent English. His stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — he opposes the creation of a Palestinian state and backs an aggressive approach toward Hamas — resonates with current Israeli public opinion. He also prioritizes military and civic service for all Israelis, an issue that has strained Netanyahu’s coalition and deepened tensions over exemptions for the growing Haredi population.

Lieberman, 68, may be the longest shot for prime minister, but perhaps the most experienced Israeli politician after Netanyahu. Serving in key government roles — leading the defense, finance and foreign ministries — in the past two decades, Lieberman has long warned about the dangers posed by Hamas and has criticized the government’s strategies in Gaza. In 2018, he resigned as defense minister over a ceasefire in Gaza, which he called “surrendering to terror.” His strong opposition to exemptions and subsidies benefiting the Haredi community has previously positioned him as a spoiler in earlier elections.

Recent polling puts his party at an average of eight or nine seats — enough to give Lieberman leverage in who leads the government.

After so many elections centered on whether Netanyahu could survive, this one may finally answer a different question: What does Israel look like without him?

The post Will today’s Netanyahu speech at the UN be his last as Israeli Prime Minister? appeared first on The Forward.

 

University of Washington canceled him. University of Texas offered limited seating. On Thursday, Cornell University will open the doors of its historic chapel to host Hasan Piker, a controversial left-wing pundit with a history of antisemitic comments.

Three universities, three different receptions for the far-left Twitch streamer who has attracted millions of fans with his raw rhetoric that  has veered, on more than one occasion, into antisemitism. Most recently, Piker warned American Jews who “keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel,” that someone could eventually “take action against” them.

Universities seem torn about whether – and how – to host him. Jewish campus groups are divided too. Jewish Voice for Peace invited Piker to Cornell, along with other student groups, while Cornellians for Israel opposed his appearance.

A statement released by leaders of Hillel at Cornell University emphasized their commitment to the campus as a place for disagreement, pluralism and debate, but put Piker in a different category.

“Mr. Piker’s views… go against our values as Americans and Jews, and his hateful, antisemitic rhetoric is repulsive,” the statement said.

That outrage has not discouraged campus groups including College Democrats, democratic socialists and pro-Palestinian organizations from booking the rising influencer, who has campaigned with a number of progressive Democratic candidates leading up to the midterm election. They say Piker, 35, is the voice their generation needs to hear to get out the vote.

“This is a guy that has a modern media presence,” one student told the Yale Daily News when Piker appeared there in April. “He reaches to our demographic exactly, people that are our age.”

But Piker, who told students that empathy was the core philosophical underpinnings of his political beliefs, has laughed at the suggestion that campus antisemitism is on the rise. In one livestream, he called a Jewish man a “bloodthirsty, violent pig dog,” accusing him of wanting to execute every Palestinian in the street. In another, discussing efforts to compel ultra-Orthodox Jews to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, he described them as “inbred.”

At Northwestern University, where he appeared in March, a student asked Piker how to talk about the Middle East conflict with his Zionist friends without ending the friendship.

“I think you shouldn’t give up on your friends and try to have normal conversations with them about how they probably don’t care about Israel as much as they think they do,” Piker responded, according to The Daily Northwestern, “because if they did, they’d probably live there.”

In his remarks at Yale, Piker called the wars that have cemented America’s imperial roots “an endless series of butcheries, each more perverse and more tragic than the last.”

“What was the point of defeating the Nazis if we went on to dominate so much of the globe as violently as we have?”

‘Heckler’s veto’

Ryan Ansloan, senior program counsel in the policy reform department of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), says those comments are not enough to bar Piker from speaking on campus.

Ansloan warns against canceling or preventing events based on what is known as a “heckler’s veto,” or the possibility that a percentage of the campus community is not going to like it.

“Ultimately it sends a bad message to the campus community that if you complain enough or threaten to disrupt an event you don’t like, you can get your way and prevent that event from even taking place,” he told the Forward. “That has implications that go beyond that single event and can have a chilling effect. As long as that student body remains on campus, that incident is going to stick in their minds.”

Conservatives have long championed free speech on campus, often accusing activists on the left of wielding safety concerns to disinvite alt-right speakers to campuses. Think British far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and his tour a decade ago; or Ann Coulter, who was harassed off the stage coincidentally at Cornell, her alma mater.

But since the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University last year, safety has been raised by activists on both sides of the political aisle, Ansloan said. According to FIRE’s Campus Deplatforming Database, many objections are tied to speakers on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For example, after opposition from the right, the University of Southern Maine in February revoked seven invitations and canceled a one-day conference titled “The Consequence of Palestine.”

Around that same time, the Catholic University of America rejected a request from the campus chapter of the Students Supporting Israel (SSI) to host U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, a Jewish congressman from Florida, who has drawn public condemnation for his anti-Muslim rhetoric, and Dany Tirza, a retired IDF colonel and security fence architect to speak on the West Bank barrier.

With Piker, outrage has paled to the demand. At Cornell, tickets for Piker’s appearance in the 600-seat university chapel were claimed within hours of their release. Piker also will be live streaming the event on his Twitch channel.

At the University of Texas, University Democrats planned to host the Sept. 30 event in a 466-seat auditorium, but 2,500 people signed up. Despite suggestions from campus police to find a larger venue, the university has not been willing to provide one with more space.

“This has the potential to be the largest political event in Austin since like 2018,” the group’s president Adit Raha told a local TV station, adding that he hasn’t ruled out shifting the event off campus.

“This event will be happening no matter what. We’re not going to cancel the event.”

But even Democratic politicians in Texas are concerned.

“Free speech allows difficult and controversial views, but it does not require anyone to stay silent when someone has a history of hateful comments about Jewish Americans, 9/11 and Hamas terrorism,” U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) wrote on X. “Jewish students at UT should not be made to feel targeted or unsafe on their own campus.”

Cancellation was the solution at the University of Washington for an upcoming talk in January 2027. While the university insisted in a statement that it’s “dedicated to the free exchange of ideas, including on controversial topics and involving provocative speakers,” it reviewed the process by which the Piker lecture was planned and determined it along with six other events “did not meet the necessary level of rigor for University-hosted events in the Speaker Series.”

A university spokesman clarified that those seven invitations, including Piker’s, did not undergo the committee review. No effort has been made to reschedule Piker and submit the invitation for review.

The statement continued: “Going forward, procedures will be updated to ensure the standards we have for University-hosted events like the Speaker Series are met, particularly so that we can help elevate the level of dialogue on divisive topics during a polarized time in our country.”

The post One university canceled Hasan Piker. Another has him going to the chapel tonight. appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — Hundreds of members of New York’s Jewish community competed against stand-still traffic, security details and dozens of black SUVs Wednesday night to reach Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza near the United Nations.

Their plea? For world leaders at the global body’s annual General Assembly to take antisemitic violence seriously.

“This week world leaders are gathered in our city, right down the street at the United Nations, to discuss global challenges,” Eric Goldstein, CEO of the UJA-Federation of New York, said in his opening remarks. “But we know that they are not addressing the rampant proliferation of antisemitism across the world.”

Organized by UJA and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, the evening rally featured a number of interfaith speakers, as well as survivors of various antisemitic hate crimes around the world from Nova to Bondi Beach.

Devorah Halberstam, whose son Ari was murdered on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994 in a terror attack, gave an impassioned speech, imploring world leaders to “tell your people: Take this message back to your countries. Antisemitism must stop. Not tomorrow. Not when it becomes politically expedient. Right now.”

A number of speakers Wednesday night criticized New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, questioning whether he could truly be a mayor to New York City’s Jews who fundamentally disagree with him on Israel. Others, like Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called out a more general “deliberate passivity in the face of antisemitism,” likening it to complicity.

Also speaking Wednesday was George Zamot, a UPS driver who intervened in July’s stabbing attack on the Upper West Side, in which a Jewish man and an Asian man were injured.

While some speakers focused on the dangers of antisemitism, a few addressed moments of community that resulted from such terrible events.

In a display of unity, Nova music festival survivor Shalev Biton gave remarks while also translating the remarks of Younes Alkarnawi, the Bedouin man who saved his life.

The rally’s audience dwindled as the evening wore on, and a small group of counterprotestors from the anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta became increasingly loud.

The demonstration follows recent public gatherings addressing antisemitism in New York City, including a contentious prayer vigil held by two Orthodox Jewish day schools outside the mayor’s home of Gracie Mansion last week.

It also marks a pivot toward more community advocacy within the scope of UJA’s work. (70 Faces Media, the parent company of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and New York Jewish Week, receives UJA funding.)

In an interview earlier this week with eJewishPhilanthropy, UJA’s executive vice president for community strategy and external relations Hindy Poupko called the Wednesday evening rally “an attempt to ensure that our narrative doesn’t get drowned out during this U.N. week.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Hundreds rally at United Nations to urge world leaders to address antisemitism  appeared first on The Forward.