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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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The Israel news we don’t hear – and the forces that silence us
I spent part of Shabbat reading about the stunning performance of the Israeli stock market — which is up dramatically since Oct. 7, outpacing the gains of the S&P by a significant margin.
The 35 Israeli stocks with the largest market capitalizations are up a whopping 90 percent since Oct. 7. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 was up 60 percent during that same time period.
I wondered why I had not read more about this, and was struck by what Eugene Kandel, the chairman of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, told Investors Business Daily.
“Israel was, and still is, under a PR attack from ideological actors, who finance huge campaigns against us,” Kandel said. “But even during these two years, the collaboration with so many organizations, companies, governments and investors did not stop despite threats and protests.”
Why aren’t we hearing about those collaborations?
Then the news of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah shooting broke. Instantly, all the peace of Shabbat dissipated, along with all the thoughts of collaborations — and who is covering what and why, and in which language.
Instead, I thought again of how terrorists worldwide seem to own a well-thumbed Jewish calendar. The date and timing of this massacre — on yet another Jewish holiday — was no accident, and Jews around the world know this.
We are living through a sustained campaign to make Jews afraid to be Jews. Attacks on Jewish holidays are an effort to erase Jewish joy, Jewish observance, and in the case of Hanukkah, Jewish history.
And perhaps we are also under a sustained campaign to minimize Jewish achievement.
Some politicians take notice
Some politicians are making efforts to look at the often-exhausting layers of what is happening and find ways to name them.
I appreciate the effort to find language for all of this. Representative Brian Mast, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a Florida Republican, commented that he discerns a “very specific network that is in place that works together to sow antisemitism that is now, in many cases, working on the left and right across the media, to go out there and put this wedge in this relationship.”
He was referring to the U.S.-Israel connection.
Speaking at a Hudson Institute conference on antisemitism, he called this network a “very, very serious global threat across multinational organizations, media across the globe and adversaries and terrorist organizations.”
When he said “media,” I thought of the minimal coverage of the Israeli stock exchange and the strength of Israeli stocks.
The relief of acknowledgment
I felt a strange sigh of relief as I read Mast’s comments. It was the relief of actual acknowledgment. It was the relief of hearing someone trying to name things, even though I’m not sure if “network” is the best possible word.
Because something must be said.
What I noticed the day after the Bondi Beach massacre was the deep silence. The silence came from so many people that maybe “network” was the right word for it.
I went to a non-denominational holiday party this week, and no one mentioned what had happened in Australia. I wondered what the conversation would have been like if the shooting had happened at a Christmas tree lighting, or a drag story hour that turned into carnage. What would the conversation have been if any other group, but the Jewish community, had been targeted?
It’s unlikely that there would be total silence. Total non-acknowledgment. No words in a room of people who work with words.
The threat we face is not just the threat Representative Mast detailed, or the PR threat Kandel described. It’s also the silence, a silence so loud that it is visible as candlelight in the darkness.
How to respond to silence
I don’t know how to answer silence, but maybe some wiser people out there do.
Late last night, I saw a reel of a very long line of cars with menorahs on their roofs driving along the New York State Thruway, not far from the Palisades Mall, just a short drive from where I grew up.
The line of cars went on and on. The silent message was Do not be afraid. And I saw it as a response to Bondi Beach.
I hope there are more Hanukkah menorahs lit tonight, not less. And I also hope that we can consider bringing layers of truth into the light. Sometimes, layers represent both a dose of reality and an antidote against despair.
Yes, a father and son attacked the Jewish community on a holiday. But it is deeply important and also true that an unarmed Muslim father and fruit seller named Ahmed al Ahmed jumped on one of the gunmen and undoubtedly saved many lives.
The video of that heroic act should be watched by all.
It is a reminder that perhaps there is another “network” out there, a network of those who object to hatred. And it is a reminder that generalizations can only take us so far; as my mentor James Alan McPherson taught me, a story is about an individual at an individual moment in time.
Ahmed al Ahmed showed us all the power of an individual. And the power of a single layer in any truth, and in any story.
As for all those under-discussed Israeli companies holding on in wartime, through boycotts, pushing up the index by 90 percent since the worst day in Israeli history, continuing to collaborate with partners around the globe despite a PR onslaught to isolate them — even in this darkness, and in this silence, we see you.
The post The Israel news we don’t hear – and the forces that silence us appeared first on The Forward.
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Zohran Mamdani visits the Rebbe’s Ohel, increasingly a pilgrimage site for politicians
(New York Jewish Week) — Zohran Mamdani visited the gravesite of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s late leader on Monday, one day after the shooting that killed 15 people at an Australian Hanukkah event hosted by Chabad.
Yaacov Behrman, a Crown Heights activist who works as a PR liaison for Chabad, said Mamdani reached out about visiting the gravesite, known as the Ohel.
“Following the terrorist attack in Sydney, Australia, the mayor-elect asked to visit the Ohel to pay his respects and came last night,” said Behrman, who was present during Mamdani’s visit.
The New York City mayor-elect did not publicly share anything about his visit to the Ohel on Monday, but a photo obtained and posted by Forward journalist Jacob Kornbluh showed Mamdani wearing a black velvet kippah standing at the gravesite.
Mamdani had shared a lengthy statement on Sunday morning calling the Bondi Beach attack a “vile act of antisemitic terror.”
“I mourn those who were murdered and will be keeping their families, the Jewish community, and the Chabad movement in my prayers,” Mamdani wrote.
Mamdani specifically mentioned Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was killed in the attack, and his “deep ties to Crown Heights,” the Brooklyn neighborhood that is home to the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
“What happened at Bondi is what many Jewish people fear will happen in their communities too,” Mamdani wrote.
Monday marked Mamdani’s first known visit to the Ohel, which is in the Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, and is a site with particular significance for adherents and admirers of the Chabad movement. It is the resting place of the movement’s two most recent leaders: Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and his father-in-law, Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson.
In recent years, it has become an oft-visited site by Jewish and non-Jewish politicians and public figures.
The Ohel draws 1 million visitors per year, according to Chabad’s website, who are “religious and not, laypeople and leaders, Jews and non-Jews, each one coming to pray, seek inspiration and find solace.”
Mamdani’s predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, has visited the Ohel at least seven times, and has said that he finds himself there during “the most difficult days” of his life. President Donald Trump visited the Ohel to mark the first anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Other visitors to the site in the last five years include Ivanka Trump; New York Gov. Kathy Hochul; then-Long Island congressman Lee Zeldin, who is Jewish and now heads Trump’s EPA; Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. during his presidential candidacy; Rep. Mike Lawler; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand; and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. Argentinian president Javier Millei and Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have both visited from abroad.
“There’s nothing opulent about it,” Rabbi Motti Seligson, a Chabad spokesperson, told the Free Press during a tour of the Ohel in early 2025.
Visitors have found deep meaning in their time in the open-roofed mausoleum. Booker, who prays at the Ohel on the eve of his elections, told the Free Press that he finds “something universally spiritual about that sacred space” even though he is not Jewish.
“I find my visits are both grounding and expanding,” Booker said.
Mamdani’s visit to the Ohel comes as Chabad officials and Jewish leaders are doubling down on their efforts to celebrate Hanukkah with public menorah lightings around New York City. Those events have surged in attendance in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack.
The visit is Mamdani’s most recent appearance in a primarily Orthodox Jewish space as he seeks to overcome skepticism among many Jewish voters who were turned off by Mamdani’s opposition to Israel. Voters in Crown Heights, where the Chabad-Lubavitch community is headquartered, turned out heavily for Andrew Cuomo in November’s general election.
The mayor-elect attended a celebration by the Satmar Hasidic sect last week, which is anti-Zionist for religious reasons. He was endorsed by a Satmar rabbi, Moishe Indig, and was welcomed to a sukkah by Indig in the fall.
During the Democratic primary, he made an appearance at a breakfast organized by the Council of Jewish Organizations of Flatbush, where there was a large Orthodox Jewish population.
The photo of Mamdani at the Ohel circulated in Jewish WhatsApp groups, and has been shared by some local Chabad chapters’ social media pages.
“His decision to go was surprising,” Chabad Virginia Beach wrote in an Instagram post. “But we all know that when light and darkness meet, light has the power to transform. And this place is a place of light.”
The post Zohran Mamdani visits the Rebbe’s Ohel, increasingly a pilgrimage site for politicians appeared first on The Forward.
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Iran Opposes Grossi’s UN Secretary-General Candidacy, Accuses Him of Failing to Uphold International Law
UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi holds a press conference on the opening day of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) quarterly Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, Sept. 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elisabeth Mandl
Iran has publicly opposed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi’s potential appointment as UN Secretary-General next year, accusing him of failing to uphold international law by not condemning US and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites during the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June.
During a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, Iran’s Ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeid Iravani, sharply criticized Grossi, calling him unfit” to serve as UN Secretary-General next year, Iranian media reported.
“A candidate who has deliberately failed to uphold the UN Charter — or to condemn unlawful military attacks against safeguarded, peaceful nuclear facilities … undermines confidence in his ability to serve as a faithful guardian of the charter and to discharge his duties independently, impartially, and without political bias or fear of powerful states,” the Iranian diplomat said.
With UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ term ending in December next year, member states have already begun nominating candidates to take over the role ahead of the expected 2026 election.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Israel’s relationship with Guterres has spiraled downward, reaching a low point last year when then-Foreign Minister Israel Katz labeled the UN “antisemitic and anti-Israeli” and declared Guterres persona non grata after the top UN official failed to condemn Tehran for its ballistic missile attack against the Jewish state.
Last week, Argentina officially nominated Grossi to succeed Guterres as the next UN Secretary-General.
To be elected, a nominee must first secure the support of at least nine members of the UN Security Council and avoid a veto from any of its five permanent members — the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France.
Afterward, the UN General Assembly votes, with a simple majority needed to confirm the organization’s next leader.
As head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog since 2019, Grossi has consistently urged Iran to provide transparency on its nuclear program and cooperate with the agency, efforts the Islamist regime has repeatedly rejected and obstructed.
Despite Iran’s claims that its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes rather than weapons development, Western powers have said there is no “credible civilian justification” for the country’s nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”
With prospects for renewed negotiations or nuclear cooperation dwindling, Iran has been intensifying efforts to rebuild its air and defense capabilities decimated during the 12-day war with Israel.
On Monday, Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), declared that the IAEA has no authority to inspect sites targeted during the June war, following Grossi’s renewed calls for Tehran to allow inspections of its nuclear sites and expand cooperation with the agency.
Iran has also announced plans to expand its nuclear cooperation with Russia and advance the construction of new nuclear power plants, as both countries continue to deepen their bilateral relations.
According to AEOI spokesperson Behrouz Kamalvandi, one nuclear power plant is currently operational, while other two are under construction, with new contracts signed during a recent high-level meeting in Moscow.
Kamalvandi also said Iran plans to build four nuclear power plants in the country’s southern region as part of its long-term partnership with Russia.
During a joint press conference in Moscow on Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reiterated Iran’s commitment to defending the country’s “legal nuclear rights” under the now-defunct 2015 nuclear deal, noting that Tehran’s nuclear policies have remained within the international legal framework.
Iran’s growing ties with Russia, particularly in nuclear cooperation, have deepened in recent years as both countries face mounting Western sanctions and seek to expand their influence in opposition to Western powers.
Russia has not only helped Iran build its nuclear program but also consistently defended the country’s “nuclear rights” on the global stage, while opposing the imposition of renewed economic sanctions.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has described the reinstatement of UN sanctions against Iran as a “disgrace to diplomacy.”
In an interview with the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network (IRINN), Lavrov accused European powers of attempting to blame Tehran for the collapse of the 2015 nuclear deal, despite what he described as Iran’s compliance with the agreement.
Prior to the 12-day war, the IAEA flagged a series of Iranian violations of the deal.