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You see an ugly ottoman or a faded armchair; she sees a lost history waiting to be revived
Even when she was a little kid, Ruti Wajnberg knew her grandma’s brown ottoman was ugly. She loved it anyway. Whenever she and her sisters would make the trek from New Jersey to visit their grandmother in Brighton Beach, they would roll around on the mushroom-shaped seat.
“It’s in all my memories of her apartment,” Wajnberg told me at her upholstery studio in Brooklyn. “It was my grandma’s, it’s tied up with my memories of her, and I wish I had it.”
To be clear, the brown would have to go. “I would have ripped that fabric off that stool so fast,” said Wajnberg, 41, a former product manager and software developer who started her reupholstery business Find the Thread two years ago to give new life to old furniture. “It would be so meaningful to me to have it, to watch my kids roll on it; that would bring me to tears.”
As the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and the daughter of Jews who were expelled from Communist Poland in 1968, Wajnberg doesn’t have many heirlooms. More than once, her family has been forced to leave everything behind — including, in her grandparents’ cases, the loved ones who perished at the hands of the Nazis.
When Wajnberg’s parents fled Poland as teenagers — her mother’s family to Israel and her father’s to New York via Italy — they could take very little with them. Her mother told her she’d tucked a portrait a friend had painted of her in her suitcase. It was confiscated.
“That always struck me as so sad, that experience of just arriving completely empty-handed,” said Wajnberg, who wrote her undergrad thesis at NYU about her family history. This sense of loss is part of what drew her to saving and reviving furniture imbued with personal meaning.
“I don’t have that line of connection to anything in the past. I don’t have photographs of my great grandparents, anything that belonged to them,” she said. “Possessions carry a lot of stories. They’re a reason to talk about the person and remember them.”
As ugly as the brown ottoman may have been, she wishes she’d had the foresight to ask for it when her grandmother — who was her “bestie” when she was young — died in 2016. “When we go to Brighton Beach, I talk about my grandparents, because I’m in their space,” she said. “But I’m never in their space in my space.”
These days, people come to her with all kinds of projects: thrift finds that need zhuzhing, built-in window seats that require oddly shaped cushions, salvaged church pews that could use dressing up, fabric purchased on vacation that they want to put to use, faded furniture they don’t want to part with, and pieces they inherited.
“Most often I get, ‘This was my grandma’s,’” she said. “That’s my favorite. If it was your grandma’s, I’m in.”
Finding the thread
The first thing Wajnberg ever upholstered, coincidentally, was an ottoman. “I found an upholstery class in the East Village that sadly doesn’t exist anymore, and I signed up for it, having no idea that I would like it. I just wanted a creative outlet,” said Wajnberg, who was working as a product manager at the time. She still has the ottoman she made from scratch. Looking back with a more expert eye, she said, “it’s not very well-made.” But she loved the process. The tactile, physical experience reminded her of the time she spent working in the garden on a kibbutz in Israel, and she craved more of it.
Like many first-generation Americans growing up with immigrant parents, Wajnberg didn’t always imagine this path. “The idea of an artistic life or career was not really presented as an option,” said Wajnberg, the third of four girls. Music was a huge part of her childhood in New Jersey — all the kids played piano and another instrument and sang in choirs — and she always loved making things. But the arts felt more like “a hobby option.”
“My parents understandably had this feeling that nothing that you have is yours, except for your education,” she said. “People can take your stuff and people can take your passport, and the only thing you really have is your brain.”
Wajnberg started college at NYU thinking she’d study journalism, but quickly switched to history, and interned at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. After graduation, she moved to Israel to work on a kibbutz for six months and spend time with her other grandparents in Tel Aviv. She ended up staying for three years, earning an MBA from Reichman University and taking on her first jobs in tech.
When she returned to the States, Wajnberg worked as a product manager and later pivoted to become a software developer. All the while, she kept up her upholstery hobby. After her first son was born, she remembered, she’d often put him to sleep, then head down to the unfinished basement of their building, “and just rip things up and put them back together.” She was taking online courses, watching YouTube videos, and traveling occasionally for courses wherever she could find them.
“I just knew I loved it. But I also liked my job,” she said. “I fantasized about being an upholsterer and I would meet women my age-ish who had their own shop, and it just felt so unattainably cool to me and not really a practical option,” she said. “I really had to work to shed the practicality of what I thought I needed to be doing.”
Then the pandemic hit. Wajnberg had just had her second son and when she returned from leave in the midst of lockdown, she realized she didn’t like working remotely, without the human interactions that were her favorite part of the job. She went down to four days a week so she could work Fridays at the Brooklyn upholstery studio Stitchroom.
“After a couple of weeks, I was just like, ‘This is all I can think about. This is all I want to do,’” she said. She parlayed it into a full-time job as the shop’s head of production. Three years in, she felt ready to open up a shop of her own.
‘Making things’
Wajnberg’s studio is nestled on the third floor of a building with office lofts and artist spaces across from the Brooklyn Navy Yard. A window in the back corner spills natural light onto a small desk and three sewing machines. Up front there’s a large worktable and a couple projects in progress pushed against the sides of the space. On the day I visited, there was a Victorian sofa half-dressed in yellow, green and blue flowers, and a chair waiting to be adorned in gold chenille.
Her apron, hanging by the door, is covered in leaves and flowers, a cheerful mess of reds, yellows, oranges, pinks, and greens. “I, you may have noticed, am a floral gal,” she said.
“They make me smile. They make me happy. They make me feel lighter,” she added. “I just want to be drenched in flowers while I upholster things in flowers.”
The jubilant fabrics and the warmth of Wajnberg’s personality belie what has been, in some ways, a difficult first chapter. “I’ve really only had this business in times of great pain,” Wajnberg said. She started Find the Thread in September 2023, just weeks before the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7. “I have a lot of people there,” she explained, people she loves and worries about in Israel, including all of her family on her mother’s side and friends she made while living there. “It’s painful, regardless of what your political beliefs are.”
“Like many people who come from a lineage of trauma, I have a very busy, anxious mind,” Wajnberg said. “And I really feel centered and calmer when I’m working with my hands.” To offer others the same kind of outlet — and an introduction to upholstery — she’s been giving monthly classes in her studio, teaching participants to make throw pillows or reupholster one of their own dining room chairs.
“People are really craving tactile accomplishment,” she said. At the end of each workshop, when everyone pauses and looks at what they’ve created, “there’s this real sense of pride in the room. Like, ‘I made this, I just made this thing with my hands,’” she said. “It feels so good.”
Reviving and renewing
There’s an armchair that’s been sitting in Linda Ellman’s living room in Brooklyn for decades. It was there when her two daughters were growing up, and it’s there now when her four grandchildren come over after school — the perfect cozy spot to cuddle up and read together. It always conjured up memories of a similar chair that Ellman used to sit in to read with one of her parents or her grandma when she was a kid.
“One of the important things we do with children is we hold them close, we read things to them that help them think about themselves and the world,” Ellman, a retired teacher, told me over the phone. “I’m continuing the tradition. I lived near both my grandparents and they were very much in my life, and these kids are very much in my life.”
When the fabric started falling apart, Ellman considered buying a new chair. But she was attached to the chair she already had and the many years of memories it held. So she decided to reupholster it instead, and a friend referred her to Wajnberg.
After prospective clients reach out for an initial quote, the first step is fabric selection. Wajnberg works primarily with “regular people,” rather than interior designers and other industry professionals, so she often has to guide them to figure out what they want. “I think I’ve gotten really good at pulling other people’s style out of them,” she said.
At first, she’d ask people what they were looking for and bring samples to them. Until she realized most people have no idea. Now they usually come to her studio, so she can observe their reactions closely and pull from her entire library. They may think they want one thing, and ultimately fall in love with something else. Ellman, for instance, was looking for a romantic floral pattern to echo the muted red fabric she’d had, but ended up with a bright jungle print.
“You can always say no later, so this is the moment to push yourself out of your comfort zone and have fun and explore,” said Wajnberg, who sends clients swatches so they can put them in the room, mull it over, solicit opinions, “let their pet play with it and see if they can destroy it,” and “come to a leisurely decision.” And, she said, “if you get home and you want beige, you get beige.”
Judy Mann was looking for green. Her armchair had been fading in the sun. “It was going from this magnificent pattern to kind of grayish nothing,” she told me on Zoom. She turned to Wajnberg, her neighbor, for help. “She’s warm and charming and has a sparkle to her,” said Mann, who is the retired COO of Jewish Funders Network.
Mann’s armchair project cost around $2,300, including about $800 in labor costs. It was more than she’d intended to pay to replace or refresh her chair, mostly because of the pricey fabric. According to Wajnberg, people often underestimate the cost compared to the now-ubiquitous fast furniture. Reupholstering a simple dining chair might run $100, while a complex sofa might be $4,000 or $5,000. But Ruti “conveys confidence,” Mann said. “So if I was gonna spend this kind of money, I was quite sure it was going to be worthwhile.”
Together, Mann and Wajnberg selected an arresting pattern of colorful, overgrown flowers — “wild meadow free spirit vibes,” as Wajnberg put it on Instagram. It was a departure from the green “tribal” pattern of the original chair but still fit the color scheme. “It ended up being way better than I imagined,” Mann said.
“It’s extraordinarily beautiful, in my opinion,” she said. “I’m always shocked if someone comes in and doesn’t comment about the chair.”
For Mann, Ellman, and others who have a sentimental attachment to the furniture they bring her, Wajnberg has a surprise: She makes them a small pillow out of the original fabric. “Oftentimes it’s the fabric underneath the cushion or somewhere out of the way that reveals the true color,” she said. “I’ll try to find a piece that’s vibrant, which I think is really emotional for people, because sometimes they haven’t seen it that way in so long.”
In the two years since Wajnberg started Find the Thread, she’s reupholstered everything from a settee inherited from a late grandfather’s vintage store to the chairs at Pitt’s, a new Red Hook restaurant by Agi’s Counter chef Jeremy Salamon, to a neighbor’s grandparents’ Torah scroll.
Wajnberg can’t say for sure that this is the final stop on her winding career path, but right now, it feels right. “I feel so much more like I’m part of this humming local economy than I used to when I was making things on the internet that faraway people would use,” she said.
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Mamdani calls AIPAC ‘monsters’ in rally ahead of NY primaries
(JTA) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday night accused the American Israel Public Affairs Committee of spending “millions in dark money” to ensure pro-Israel candidates win seats in tthe November midterms.
Mamdani made his remarks at a rally headlined by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at Kings Theater in Brooklyn ahead of Tuesday’s Democratic primaries for progressive congressional candidates. He called on the crowd to help elect Jewish former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, State Assembly member Claire Valdez and former Columbia encampment organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier.
In a fiery 30-minute speech, Mamdani took aim not just at AIPAC but also Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his handling of the war in Gaza. He claimed that “The monsters that we are up against, they take many different forms,” and then singled out AIPAC.
He described the major pro-Israel lobby as an organization “for whom the only thing more frightening than democracy being allowed to run its course is an end to genocide and Netanyahu’s wars.”
Mamdani continued by alleging that AIPAC moves “millions in dark money to accomplish a single goal, to preserve their power so that they can turn us against one another instead of our leaders turning towards the moral change we all know to be necessary.”
AIPAC did not respond to a request for comment about Mamdani’s remarks.
The lobby, whose endorsement was once heavily sought by politicians on both sides of the aisle, has increasingly come under fire for its campaign tactics. Pro-Israel Democrats are particularly struggling to hold onto seats as voters on the left increasingly turn against the Jewish state.
Sanders, for his part, doubled down on criticism of AIPAC when he took the stage. “The American people understand that a large part of our horrific foreign policy is impacted by AIPAC funding,” he said.
Turning to the local races, Mamdani voiced support for Valdez for her opposition to Israel. “When other Democrats chose to look the other way as Netanyahu committed war crimes, Claire didn’t just name the genocide,” he said. “She organized for a ceasefire.”
In a change of tone, Mamdani emphasized unity, including an appeal to Jewish voters.
“Whether you worship at shul, at a mosque, in a church, a gurdwara, a temple, or you don’t worship at all, we share a belief that our city deserves leaders who lead with hope and not fear,” the mayor said.
He added, “No matter where we live, how old we are, what train we take in the morning, or what bagel we order, we are New Yorkers and we want the same things,” including “a city that belongs to all of us.”
Reaction on social media was swift. One self-described mom from New York City posted on X of the rally and the Democratic Socialists of America there: “It’s pretty transparent and vile how Zohran Mamdani and the DSA are using ‘AIPAC’ as a euphemism for Jews, and how Brad Lander is going right along with it.”
Jewish writer Dovi Safier also criticized the comments, writing, “The mayor of the city with the world’s largest Jewish population is pushing conspiracy theories about ‘money men’ who ‘move millions in dark money’ to ‘turn us against one another’ — and calling them ‘monsters.’ Subtle.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Jewish groups push back against Trump’s Iran deal — but more quietly so far than in 2015
(JTA) — A growing number of Jewish groups are pushing back against the new memorandum of understanding brokered between President Donald Trump and Iran.
At least for now, however, their responses are more muted than when the same groups publicly opposed former President Barack Obama’s own Iran deal in 2015. And at least one major Jewish group that opposed Obama’s deal is backing Trump’s framework.
“Trust President Trump,” the Republican Jewish Coalition told its followers Thursday, becoming the most notable Jewish group to support Trump’s memorandum of understanding.
“President Trump has earned the trust of the Jewish community as he and his team work towards a final agreement,” RJC CEO Matt Brooks and chair Norm Coleman said in a statement. They praised the MOU, saying it “envisions a horizon of economic stability for the United States, the region, and the world,” and that it “provides an opportunity for potential new pathways to greater peace.”
The RJC cautioned that “a final deal must avoid the flaws that doomed Obama’s,” specifying that there should be “no sunset clauses” on Iran’s nuclear program and other proposals. In the days before its own statement, the group had been reposting praise of the MOU from other Trump allies, including Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Meanwhile, the American Jewish Committee and the pro-Israel lobbying giant AIPAC took a different tack. They became the largest Jewish organizations to voice concern with the new Iran deal on Thursday, issuing public objections following requests for comment from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The MOU “raises significant questions,” AIPAC said in a lengthy statement that urged Congress to intervene ahead of “a final nuclear agreement,” claiming that the terms of the MOU don’t match “President Trump’s stated objectives for the war.”
The AJC outlined what it said were seven “concerns” it had with the MOU. Like most of the other Jewish groups that responded to JTA for this story, the AJC also expressed hope that the terms of the deal could be changed to be stricter on Iran and more favorable to Israel before it is finalized. (In 2015, in response to Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the AJC said it “overwhelmingly” would “oppose this deal.”)
Trump’s MOU is not a final agreement, unlike Obama’s JCPOA. Rather, it marks the start of a 60-day negotiating period that aims to end the Iran war about to enter its fourth month. It does not yet outline any clear commitments regarding Iran’s nuclear program, which had been at the heart of the JCPOA and which is of particular concern to Jewish groups, who are roundly opposed to Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon in large part because of the risk to Israel. Many had objected to Obama’s deal in part because of its “sunset clauses” that would have phased out nuclear restrictions starting at the 10-year mark.
Regardless, many analysts across the political spectrum are concluding that Trump’s framework is a worse deal than Obama’s, in part because it provides a pathway for Iran to stage an economic recovery.
The Israeli government, which sent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to personally lobby Congress in 2015 to oppose Obama’s deal, is also strongly opposed to Trump’s — in part because it would require Israel to withdraw from fighting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. A new poll by Israel’s Channel 12 found that 71% of Israelis don’t trust Trump to look out for their country’s interests in negotiations with Iran.
Hawkish pro-Israel think tanks, including the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, issued papers knocking Trump’s deal.
“In some ways, the MOU is even weaker than President Barack Obama’s,” JINSA said. “This new deal authorizes the transfer of far more money and lifts many more sanctions on Iran than the JCPOA ever did.”
Trump and his top surrogates, including Vice President JD Vance, are increasingly signaling a lack of patience with Israel and a willingness to prioritize ending the war over stopping Iran’s nuclear program.
Some groups are waiting before weighing in. Nathan Diament, head of the Orthodox Union, declared Obama’s deal “not kosher” in 2015. On Thursday, he told JTA that the question of how to respond to Trump’s deal “will be a central topic of discussion” at the group’s leadership advocacy mission in Washington, D.C., taking place early next week. O.U. representatives are scheduled to meet with members of the Trump administration, as well as members of Congress.
JTA reached out Thursday to a wide range of Jewish groups that publicly opposed Obama’s Iran deal in 2015 to ask them their views on Trump’s. Many others, including the Anti-Defamation League and the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, did not respond by press time.
Of those who did, only Morton Klein, head of the right-wing Zionist Organization of America, castigated the MOU outright. Klein told JTA he was “extremely upset with this deal” — and with Trump.
“I find this deal just astonishing,” Klein said. “Helping out a country that Trump himself said, if they’d gotten nukes, they’d have used them on Israel and killed millions of Jews? So that mentality, now you’re helping them rebuild?”
He added, “Trump has done many wonderful things for Israel, so we’ve praised Trump for that. But now he’s doing something very bad for Israel and America.”
Such level of forceful public opposition to the deal, though, is rare in Jewish circles at present — especially in contrast with the extent of Jewish mobilization against Obama’s deal in 2015.
Back then, in addition to the usual Jewish advocacy groups, dozens of local Jewish federations across the country pushed their communities and representatives to fight it, in a sweeping and sustained show of opposition.
“This Iran deal threatens the mission of our Federation as we exist to assure the continuity of the Jewish people, support a secure State of Israel, care for Jews in need here and abroad and mobilize on issues of concern,” one typical statement, from the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, read at the time.
Three years later, during Trump’s first term, he tore up the JCPOA, calling it “a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.”
The lack of similar opposition today for Trump’s deal, Klein said, was glaring: “Nobody is taking issue with this agreement in the Jewish world.”
Among local Jewish groups, the initial reaction to Trump’s MOU has struck a measured tone. The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, one of dozens of local Jewish communal groups that publicly opposed the 2015 JCPOA, told JTA it was “concerned” that Trump’s deal “has granted Iran a new leverage point to use in the future to inflict pain on the world’s economy.”
Ron Halber, the JCRC’s head, blasted the MOU for being crafted without Israel’s input, and for requiring Israel to withdraw from its offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Similar to AIPAC, Halber said his organization would continue to push for “a final U.S.-Iran agreement” that is more favorable to Israel and takes harsher measures against Iran.
In its statement, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, which also opposed the JCPOA, did not directly weigh in on the new MOU. Instead, the federation said, “Any agreement involving the Iranian regime should be judged by its ability to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran,” among other factors.
JTA reached out to six other major Jewish federations that opposed the 2015 JCPOA, including Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, which was the first federation to oppose that deal and whose leader wrote, in 2021, “We were right.”
CJP of Boston did not respond to a request for comment. The Jewish United Fund of Chicago declined to comment, while several other federations that opposed the JCPOA — including Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix and Detroit — did not respond by press time.
In its own statement opposing the MOU, AIPAC did not outline an advocacy plan to combat it, in contrast to its full-court press against the JCPOA. An AIPAC spokesperson did not return a JTA request for comment on whether, or how, it planned to advocate against Trump’s MOU.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Who is Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli politician who could dethrone Netanyahu?
Until recently, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett appeared to be the opposition figure best positioned to challenge Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s election this fall. But a new contender has emerged: Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, whose newly formed Yashar! (“Straight!”) party is rapidly gaining popularity.
According to Israel’s public broadcaster KAN, Eisenkot’s party currently projects to win 21 Knesset seats, trailing Netanyahu’s Likud at 23. Bennett and Yair Lapid’s joint slate, Together, the duo that managed to win the 2021 elections, is polling at 17 seats. Several other major Israeli polls reflect a similar or even stronger position for Eisenkot. As of this writing, Eisenkot and Netanyahu are neck and neck on Polymarket as the most likely politician to become the next prime minister.
Amid Trump’s Iran deal, which left Netanyahu in the lurch and has been widely unpopular among Israelis, Netanyahu’s appeal as a prime minister who can ensure Israel’s security is beginning to slip. Only 11% of Israelis feel Israel won the war, and 52% feel Netanyahu’s conduct harmed Israel’s interests in the U.S.-Iran deal. A recent Channel 12 survey found that 58% of Israelis believe the country’s next prime minister should not be Netanyahu.
After Bennett and Lapid joined forces to run together this April, their popularity has been steadily decreasing. Since they announced their joint run, Eisenkot has been gaining roughly one seat per week in Israeli polling.
This reflects an important theme in Israeli politics: combining politicians does not necessarily combine their voters. Bennett, a right-wing Orthodox nationalist who has long opposed a Palestinian state, appeals to a different constituency than Lapid, a secular centrist who has expressed support for a two-state solution.
Some right-wing voters who have supported Bennett now may view him as too left-leaning for their tastes because of his alliance with Lapid. For Bennett, who was seen as someone who could take right-wing voters from Netanyahu, this is a real problem.
Enter Eisenkot: a security-focused centrist with an untraditional background. He grew up in Eilat as the son of Moroccan immigrants. If elected, he would be the first ever Mizrahi Prime Minister in Israeli history.
He did not serve in Sayeret Matkal, the elite special reconnaissance unit in the IDF that cultivated many future Israeli politicians, including Bennett and Netanyahu. Rather, he got his start in Golani, the IDF’s oldest unit. He slowly climbed through the ranks, spending his career within the security establishment before eventually becoming the chief of staff of the IDF in 2015.
His political career is relatively new. Eisenkot entered politics in 2022 as part of Benny Gantz’s National Unity party before breaking away to launch Yashar! in 2025. His time in politics, though short, has been free of scandal or feuds — beyond, of course, his frequent disagreements with Netanyahu.
Service for all
For many Israelis, Eisenkot’s public image is inseparable from personal loss. His son, Gal, was killed fighting in Gaza in 2023, and two of his nephews also died during the war. Their deaths have given Eisenkot a unique standing in a country where military service has profoundly affected many Israeli families in the last few years, especially following the Oct. 7 attacks.
This experience also resonates amid one of the most contentious debates in Israeli politics: whether ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students should continue receiving exemptions from military service. As reservists have been called up repeatedly since Oct. 7 and the IDF has faced manpower shortages, many Israelis have argued that the burden of military service is being shared unequally. Roughly 80,000 men aged 18 to 24 who are currently exempt are eligible to serve in the IDF.
According to the Israel Democracy Institute, only 9% of the Israeli public supports exempting the ultra-Orthodox from mandatory military service. Netanyahu’s coalition, which depends on ultra-Orthodox parties, has sought to preserve some form of exemption system.
Eisenkot not only faced profound personal sacrifice for his family’s military service, but he also runs on the platform “service for all,” which hopes to reform broad military exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox.
In May 2025, he shared his thoughts for the first time on a two-state solution, telling Channel 12, “I always speak in favor of a Jewish, democratic, strong, and powerful state, and from that, we should derive our decisions. I think a Palestinian state is not relevant after October 7.” He added, “We need to be very measured, build it from the bottom up, and certainly not talk about a state and a prize after this murderous event,” he said, referring to the Oct. 7 attacks. “Instead, we should make our considerations from a position of strength, take our time, and not decide from one moment to the next, certainly not talk about it now.”
One of the most visible criticisms of Eisenkot has been his lack of command of the English language. Eisenkot speaks English, though certainly not to the level of fluent proficiency of MIT-educated Benjamin Netanyahu or Naftali Bennett. Last week, a top Netanyahu aide, Jonatan Urich, posted a viral video on X splicing clips of Einsenkot speaking heavily accented English with Nethayahu’s major speeches at the UN and Congress.
Eisenkot responded to the video on a popular Israeli podcast, stating, “Where was Netanyahu’s excellent English on October 7?” he asked. “Where is his excellent English in strengthening the relationship between Israel and the United States, which this morning is at rock bottom?”
While Eisenkot’s party continues to soar in the polls, he has a long way to go before he will be able to dethrone Netanyahu, who has won six Israeli elections since 1996.
Israel’s next prime minister will not simply be the person who secures the most votes for their party. To govern, a coalition must command at least 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. To do this, political parties – though often ideologically different – must come together in the hopes of securing a majority number of seats in the Knesset.
Eisenkot’s principal rival for leadership of the anti-Netanyahu camp is Bennett. Still, both Bennett and Eisenkot have emphasized that their primary goal is to take down Netanyahu. When asked whether he would step aside for Eisenkot if that were necessary to form a government, Bennett replied: “I will do anything in the world to replace this very bad government. I will not let ego be a factor.”
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