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Will Israel ever have another leader who truly wants peace?
Thirty years ago, on November 4, 1995, I attended a pro-peace rally in Tel Aviv’s central square. It was a joyous, carnival-like atmosphere.
“We have decided to give peace a chance — a peace that will resolve most of Israel’s problems,” Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said. “I was a military man for 27 years. I fought as long as there was no chance for peace. I believe there is a chance for peace. A big chance. We must seize it.” Rabin stepped off the stage and headed toward his awaiting car at the bottom of a concrete stairway. Then, three shots rang out, and the trajectory of Israel’s history changed.
It seems incredible in this era of tunnel vision, radicalism and cynicism to even recall Rabin’s last words. His assassin did more than end a man’s life. He also ended the possibility of a better version of Israel, and set the country on a course that has led to a crisis of identity, democracy and purpose.
The Israel that emerged after Rabin’s death was one deprived of its moral center. It was an Israel where fear triumphed over hope, where slogans replaced strategy, and where a cunning politician named Benjamin Netanyahu deployed every conceivable cynicism to stay in power. The tragedy of Rabin’s death is not only what was lost, but what was gained: a political culture of manipulation and paralysis.
Rabin’s realism
Rabin was a successful leader because he embodied a realism forged in battle, combined with the moral courage to pursue reconciliation with the Palestinians.
He knew that if Israel was going to remain a state that was both democratic and Jewish-majority, it needed to separate itself from the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. He could see, too, that rule over millions of disenfranchised Palestinians would corrode Israel from within.
Because of these eminently sensible perspectives, in the months before his assassination, he was targeted by the most virulent and hysterical protest campaign in the country’s history. Led by the youthful Netanyahu, this campaign viewed Rabin’s willingness to partition the Holy Land, and to hand parts of biblical Israel to the Palestinians, as treason and heresy.
The outlines of a final settlement were already visible, and may have been achievable if Rabin had lived. They involved mutual recognition, phased withdrawal, a Palestinian state that was demilitarized but sovereign, and an Israel at peace with itself and its neighbors. The extremists on both sides, who hated compromise, would have lost their momentum. The world, and the Middle East, might have been spared a generation of bloodletting.
Instead, Netanyahu, elected as prime minister by a whisker in 1996, pretended to honor the Oslo Accords while quietly strangling them. His project ever since has been to make Israelis disdain Rabin’s vision of pragmatic decency. He came into office on a wave of fear following Hamas suicide bombings, and his consistent message to Israelis since has been that peace is naïve, and negotiation with the Palestinians is futile.
This anniversary of Rabin’s assassination could not come at a more striking moment — with Israel involved in a fragile ceasefire after two years of war, which have decisively proven just how disastrous Netanyahu’s omnipresence in Israel has been.
The few times I met Rabin, as a young political reporter at The Jerusalem Post — including once at his home in Ramat Aviv — I was struck by his how his combination of skepticism and blunt pragmatism with a grasp of strategic realities gave him a kind of credibility that was essential.
That kind of leadership is what Israel needs, again, today. But where can it be found?
‘Who could possibly replace him?’
The convulsions of the past two years, triggered by Hamas’ invasion and massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, have undermined Netanyahu’s efforts to shape Israel’s future around a rejection of peace. Every poll since that day has shown Netanyahu losing the next election, and badly.
Yet as Israelis contemplate life after Netanyahu, the same lament is heard again and again: “But who could possibly replace him?”
That refrain is as revealing as it is absurd. Versions of the same sentiment have been heard in every country that has fallen under the thrall of an authoritarian populist cloaked in democratic legitimacy: Russia under President Vladimir Putin, Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
The question accepts the premise of personal indispensability that such leaders cultivate — the notion that the state cannot function without them. In all these states, the idea that no one else could govern is a myth propagated by those who benefit from the paralysis.
Who could replace Netanyahu? Not one person, but a democratic alliance — a potential coalition of competence, sanity, and moral seriousness that Israel has long deferred in favor of the familiar. They could band together to try and create a 61-seat majority in the Knesset, enough to oust Netanyahu from the prime minister’s office in the next election
Perhaps best primed to lead them is former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot. He possesses a moral gravitas born of personal sacrifice — he lost a son in the line of duty in the early days of the Gaza war — and combines military realism with a social conscience and intellectual curiosity rare among generals. The son of Moroccan immigrants, he could bridge Israel’s enduring ethnic divides. Quiet in manner, almost austere, he has reminded many of Rabin: uncharismatic but unbreakable.
Former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who briefly governed before the 2022 election, remains an alternative. Once dismissed as a television personality dabbling in politics, Lapid, the face of liberal centrism, has matured into a disciplined leader of the opposition. His brief premiership was notable for calm professionalism and relative honesty.
He is secular, pro-market, and pro-Western, a believer in diplomacy and inclusion. His weakness: For some Israelis he seems too polished, too Tel Aviv, insufficiently rooted in the gritty national narrative that Rabin embodied. Still, Lapid commands international respect and a clear moral compass.
Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party, is the conscience of Israel’s old left: articulate, brave and deeply troubled by the moral decay of occupation and theocracy. He speaks plainly about the dangers of fascism and clerical capture, and his military record protects him from the usual accusations of naivety.
Golan’s appeal is limited to the educated and idealistic minority — but history has a way of catching up to such men. It doesn’t hurt that on Oct. 7, he picked up a gun and rushed into the field, in southern Israel, hunting for terrorists.
On the pragmatic right, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett stands as a curious figure: religious but modern, nationalist but not delusional. His short-lived government was marked by quiet competence and a surprising willingness to include Arabs in his governing coalition —something no Likud leader has ever dared. He might, if he returns, be the one who can sell compromise to the right without appearing weak.
And former Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman, often caricatured as a hawk, has in recent years emerged as a voice of secular rationalism. A blunt ex-Soviet with the instincts of a bar bouncer — a job that, in fact, appears on his resume — Lieberman detests the Haredi stranglehold on Netanyahu’s current government. He also understands the demographic peril posed by the occupation of millions of Palestinians — which is odd, considering that he is a West Bank settler. He is no liberal, but he is pragmatic and worldly — precisely the kind of tough realist who could, paradoxically, enable reform.
United by fury
What will matter is not ideology but integrity — the willingness to see the country as a shared project rather than a personal fiefdom.
The real challenge is the electoral math. Netanyahu’s machine persists because it is unified: a coalition of Haredim and ultranationalists bound by shared interests and an obsession with power. The opposition, meanwhile, is fragmented by persistent issues of ego and ideology.
To reach 61 seats, a post-Netanyahu bloc must unite centrists, parts of the pragmatic right, and the Arab parties. This need not mean Arab ministers in the cabinet, but it does require normalization of Arab political participation, as Bennett and Lapid briefly demonstrated. The taboo, although it was broken, is not yet dead. It should be.
But the arithmetic, while brutal, isn’t impossible — because a majority could be united not by ideology, but rather by fury. Fury at corruption, at extremism, at being held hostage by fringe coalitions. A leader who can channel that anger, which keeps building in society, into constructive purpose will find fertile ground.
Amid tragedy, a lesson
That night 30 years ago, I ran to nearby Ichilov Hospital after Rabin’s shooting. Inside, Rabin was already on the operating table. I was there when Rabin’s top aide, Eitan Haber, walked out to tell reporters — at the time, I was night editor of the Israel bureau of the Associated Press — of Rabin’s death.
The reporters, ordinarily immune to showing public emotion, cried out. I have goosebumps at the memory of it.
I filed updates to the story from my apartment overlooking the square where Rabin was shot until the early hours of the morning. Around 3 a.m., it occurred to me that no new prime minister had been announced. That something so obvious was overlooked reflects the degree of shock that characterized the moment. I called Uri Dromi, a key government spokesman, and asked who was now in charge of the country. He didn’t know either.
Dromi called me a short while later to tell me that, in fact, the ministers had held a vote and had in effect elected Shimon Peres, the foreign minister and a longtime rival of Rabin’s for the Labor Party leadership. Peres was destined to fumble the ball: he missed a chance to call a snap election that he would have won by a mile, and by the time he did call a vote, in May 1996, the country was in the throes of a spasm of terrorism.
But the country carried on. Peres replaced Rabin. Netanyahu replaced Peres. Life finds a way forward, in a country as in a person.
No one is irreplaceable.
The post Will Israel ever have another leader who truly wants peace? appeared first on The Forward.
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France 24, Mother Jones Receive UN Award for Work Built on Word of Discredited Ex-Contractor Who Lied About Israel
Anthony Aguilar, a former contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) who previously served as a US Army Green Beret. Photo: Screenshot
The UN press corps on Friday gave an award to news outlets France 24 and Mother Jones for their reporting based on the testimony of Anthony Aguilar, a US Army veteran and former contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) who has made discredited claims against Israel.
France 24 and Mother Jones were awarded the Bronze medal in the Ricardo Ortega Memorial Prize category at the UN Correspondents Gala Awards, an event hosted by the UN Correspondents Association at the global body’s headquarters in New York City. The award is for broadcast coverage of the UN, its agencies, and field operations.
According to France 24, its journalists were the first to interview Aguilar on camera on the morning of July 23, 2025. Aguilar claimed he witnessed human rights abuses perpetrated by the Israeli military and others at sites run by the GHF, which until the Gaza ceasefire went into place was an Israel- and US-backed program that delivered aid directly to Palestinians, with the goal of blocking Hamas from diverting supplies for terrorist activities and selling the remainder at inflated prices.
France 24 and Mother Jones both published a story based on Aguilar’s testimony.
However, it was revealed last year that Aguilar’s most explosive claim, about the death of a Gazan boy, was false and that he was fired by the GHF for his conduct and pushing misinformation.
Aguilar claimed he witnessed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) shoot a child — Abdul Rahim Muhammad Hamdene, known as Abboud — as the GHF was distributing humanitarian aid on May 28.
After Aguilar made his claim, he rapidly rose to prominence, presenting himself as a whistleblower exposing supposed Israeli war crimes. His story gained traction internationally, going viral on social media. He subsequently embarked on an extensive media tour, in which he accused Israel of indiscriminately killing Palestinian civilians as part of an attempt to “annihilate” and “disappear” the civilian population in Gaza.
However, Aguilar, who erroneously labeled the boy in question as “Amir,” gave inconsistent accounts of the alleged incident in separate interviews to different media outlets, calling into question the veracity of his narrative.
The GHF launched its own investigation at the end of July, ultimately locating Abboud alive with his mother at an aid distribution site on Aug. 23. The organization confirmed his identity using facial recognition software and biometric testing.
Abboud was escorted in disguise to an undisclosed safe location by the GHF team for his safety, according to The Daily Wire, which noted that the spreading of Aguilar’s false tale put the boy’s life in danger, as his alleged death was a powerful piece of propaganda for Hamas.
Fox News Digital reported that Abboud and his mother were safely extracted from the Gaza Strip in September.
In footage obtained by both news outlets, the boy can be seen playfully interacting with a GHF representative and appearing excited ahead of their planned extraction.
During the summer, as Aguilar’s claims were receiving widespread media attention, the GHF released a chain of text messages showing that Aguilar was terminated for his conduct. It also held a press conference to present evidence showing that Aguilar “falsified documents” and “presented misleading videos to push his false narrative.”
There was no apparent mention of the revelations about Aguilar’s narrative when the award was given out on Friday.
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University of Sydney Fires Staff Member Over Antisemitic Abuse of Students
Illustrative: An anti-Israel protest at the University of Sydney in Australia, April 26, 2024. Photo: Dean Lewins via Reuters Connect
The University of Sydney in Australia has dismissed an employee who was filmed shrieking at Jewish students over their support for Israel, a tirade in which she described them as “depraved” and inhuman.
“They’re shredding children!” staff member Rose Nakad screamed at the students in October, repeating pro-Hamas propaganda Hamas falsely accusing Israel of targeting Palestinian children in Gaza. “You are a f—king filthy Zionist. Nothing to do with being a Jew, you disgusting, depraved person.”
On Monday — just one day removed from the Bondi Beach massacre in which gunmen opened fire on Jews celebrating the start of Hanukkah in Sydney, hospitalizing dozens of people in addition to the 15 individuals who were murdered — the university denounced Nakad’s conduct as “distressing and utterly unacceptable.” It had previously suspended Nakad, signaling its appreciation of the gravity of her misconduct amid a global surge in antisemitism.
“The behavior that took place on our campus in October this year was deeply distressing and utterly unacceptable. We immediately suspended the staff member pending a formal process and have now terminated their employment on the grounds of serious misconduct,” the university said in a statement.
“This decision followed careful consideration in line with our clear expectations of behavior and our obligation to make sure our campuses are safe and welcoming for all,” the university continued. “Hate speech, antisemitism, and harassment have no place at our university and when our codes of conduct are breached, we do not hesitate to take disciplinary action.”
It added, “We continue to work on making our campus safe for all and if our codes are breached, we do not hesitate to take disciplinary action.”
In footage obtained by Sky News, Nakad approached several students celebrating the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. She asked if they were “Zionists” and continued to harass them as they asked her to leave.
“A Zionist is the lowest form of rubbish,” Nakad said to the students, according to the video. “Zionists are the most disgusting thing that has ever walked this earth.” The staff member described herself as an “indigenous Palestinian,”
Australia had seen its share of antisemitic outrages before the Bondi Beach shooting, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.
In December 2024, for example, the home of Lesli Berger, former president of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, was vandalized, having been graffitied with a swastika. Next to the infamous Nazi symbol the vandal spray-painted the words “Jordan Gayter,” believed to be a misspelling of the German phrase for “Juden Gatter,” or “Jewish Gate.”
In November 2023, mere weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, a Jewish man was assaulted by an anti-Israel mob because he took down an advertisement of a pro-Palestinian rally. Someone then thumped him on the back of his head, knocking him to the ground. Then three men joined in and proceeded to punch and kick him while calling him a “pro-Jew dog” among other names.
The onslaught concussed the man and, causing other injuries, fractured his spine. He reportedly spent four days in the hospital and later told a local media outlet that he is “very lucky” to be alive.
In one notorious episode in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, hundreds of pro-Hamas protesters gathered outside the Sydney Opera House chanting “gas the Jews,” “f—k the Jews,” and other epithets.
The explosion of post-Oct. 7 hate also included vandalism and threats of gun violence. For example, a male assailant repeatedly punched a Jewish man while screaming “dirty rotten Jew c—t”; a group of young men jumped a Jewish boy, whom they called a “dirty Jew”; and pro-Hamas protesters “spat on, threatened, and kicked” an elderly Jewish woman during a demonstration held to raise awareness of antisemitism.
Anti-Israel sentiment has also led to vandalism. In June 2024, the US consulate in Sydney was vandalized and defaced by a man carrying a sledgehammer who smashed the windows and graffitied inverted red triangles on the building. The inverted red triangle has become a common symbol at pro-Hamas rallies. The Palestinian terrorist group, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, has used inverted red triangles in its propaganda videos to indicate Israeli targets about to be attacked. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “the red triangle is now used to represent Hamas itself and glorify its use of violence.”
Now, in the closing weeks of 2025, antisemitism in Australia has led to the deadliest terrorist attack in the country’s history.
Australian officials said they identified the mass shooters at Bondi Beach as Sajid Akram, 50, who was killed at the scene, and his son Naveed Akram, 24, who was in critical condition in a hospital. The younger suspect reportedly came to the attention of Australia’s domestic intelligence agency in 2019 for his ties to a Sydney-based cell of the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Tributes Pour in for Jewish Director Rob Reiner, Wife After Couple Found Dead, Son Arrested on Murder Charges
(From left) Rob Reiner, Michele Singer, Romy Reiner, Nick Reiner, Maria Gilfillan and Jake Reiner attend the Los Angeles Premiere of ”Spinal Tap II: The End Continues” at The Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles, California, US, Sept. 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Aude Guerrucci
Dozens of people in Hollywood have expressed profound sadness following the news that visionary Jewish filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were found dead in their Los Angeles home on Sunday night and that their middle son is being charged with murder.
Reiner, 78, was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1947. In the 1970s he co-starred in the sitcom “All in the Family” before becoming the famous director behind movies such as “This Is Spinal Tap,” “Stand by Me,” “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally…” and “A Few Good Men.” Earlier this year, Reiner released the sequel, “Spinal Tap: The End Continues.” He also directed the 2015 film called “Being Charlie,” inspired by his son Nick’s longtime battle with heroin addiction and the impact that his substance abuse had on the family.
On Sunday, Reiner and his wife, 68, were found dead by what police described as an apparent homicide at their home in Brentwood, California. Their middle son, Nick, is being held at Los Angeles’ Twin Towers Jail, having been arrested on murder charges in connection with their deaths. The 32-year-old reportedly has his bail set at $4 million. “As a result of the initial investigation, it was determined that the Reiners were the victims of homicide. The investigation further revealed that Nick Reiner, the 32-year-old son of Robert and Michele Reiner, was responsible for their deaths,” the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) said in a statement on Monday.
“I saw them night before last looking healthy and happy,” Jane Fonda wrote in an Instagram post. “I am reeling with grief. Stunned.” She shared a photo of the late couple on Instagram and wrote that they were “wonderful, caring, smart, funny, generous people, always coming up with ideas for how to make the world better, kinder.”
Fonda also said the couple had recently been helping her to relaunch the Committee for the First Amendment, a group that champions freedom of expression from government censorship.
“My heart is broken,” Zooey Deschanel said in a tribute to Reiner, who played her father on the show “New Girl.” She called Reiner “the absolute warmest, funniest, most generous of spirits. A truly good human being. An incredible artist and such a playful and fun collaborator.”
“I cherish the time we spent working together and the many films he made that have shaped who I am,” she added. “Rob and his lovely wife Michele were always so kind and it brought me so much joy any time I was lucky enough to see them. I’m absolutely devastated. Sending so much love to their family and friends.”
The estate of Norman Lear, the legendary producer who created “All in the Family,” released a statement remembering the close relationship between the two men. “Norman often referred to Rob as a son,” the statement said. “The world is unmistakably darker tonight.”
Jerry Seinfeld said Reiner had one of the biggest influences on his career aside from Larry David, who co-created “Seinfeld,” and the late George Shapiro, who was Seinfeld’s manager and a producer on the renowned sitcom. Reiner also helped save “Seinfeld” from almost being canceled, Seinfeld said. He shared a photo of himself alongside Reiner and his father, the late actor Carl Reiner.
“Our show would have never happened without him. He saw something no one else could,” Seinfeld explained in an Instagram post. “When nobody at the network liked the early episodes, he saved us from cancellation. That I was working with Carl Reiner’s son, who happened to be one of the kindest people in show business, seemed unreal.”
“I was naive at the time to how much his passion for us meant,” Seinfeld added. “Rob and Michele married right as our show was starting and they became an imprint for me of how it’s supposed to work, each one broadening the other. Their death, together, is impossibly sad.”
Kathy Bates, who won an Oscar for her leading role in Reiner’s 1990 horror “Misery,” said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly that Reiner was a “brilliant and kind, a man who made films of every genre to challenge himself as an artist.”
“I’m horrified hearing this terrible news. Absolutely devastated. I loved Rob,” she added. “He changed the course of my life … My heart breaks for them both. My thoughts are with their family.” She also said the late director was someone who “fought courageously for his political beliefs” and praised his wife as a “gifted photographer.”
Novelist Stephen King, who wrote the books that inspired Reiner’s films “Stand by Me” and “Misery,” praised the late director in a post on X as a “wonderful friend, political ally, and brilliant filmmaker.”
“You always stood by me,” King added.
Paul Feig, the director of “Bridesmaids,” posted a photo of himself and Reiner at Comic-Con and wrote that the latter “was my true hero.”
“One never knows if it’s proper to post during something as tragic as this,” Feig said. “But I just want the world to know what so many of us know in the industry. Robert was the best.”
Reiner and his wife are survived by two sons Jake and Nick, and their youngest daughter Romy, who reportedly called 911 on Sunday after discovering the bodies of her parents.
Rob and Nick allegedly got into a “very loud argument” on Saturday night while attending a Christmas party hosted by former talk show host Conan O’Brien, People magazine reported, citing multiple sources. Rob and his wife were found dead at their home the next day.