Two elections, a week apart — one a blue tsunami, the other far less decisive. Two days after the Democrats swept the midterms, Yonit and Jonathan ask what the result means for an Israel that voted against Netanyahu's government without quite repudiating him. JD Vance names the US relationship with Israel as one of four reasons his party lost, Trump announces an end to aid on election morning, and Yair Lapid and newly-elected Democratic congressman Brad Lander argue it out on X — so is a Netanyahu-free government now a strategic necessity and would a friendlier face even be enough? At home: Herzog's consultations, the 48-seat minority government spoken of in whispers around Gadi Eisenkot, and the Shin Bet chief's bid to question Arab lawmakers without evidence. Plus a Chutzpah award for a serial winner in a hard hat, and a Mensch nominee whose new job has nothing to do with trains.

00:00:00 Intro: two elections, one week apart
00:01:28 The blue tsunami and Israel: a repudiation of Trump, not of Netanyahu
00:11:43 What a moderate Democrat means now: Talarico, Vance's four reasons
00:13:10 Yair Lapid versus Brad Lander on X
00:19:07 Trump as a cornered animal: the Iran question
00:21:56 Obama's aid and Trump's cut: the Netanyahu bookends
00:24:26 Charisma: Ossoff, Talarico, Shapiro and Eisenkot
00:27:41 Israeli headlines: certification, Herzog's consultations, UTJ
00:31:51 The 48-seat minority government scenario
00:37:58 David Zini, the Shin Bet and the Attorney General; the Abu Shehadeh arrest
00:45:27 Chutzpah and Mensch of the Week

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A week after Israel voted, the identity of the next government is still unclear — but one thing is not. Israel's Palestinian citizens turned out in record numbers and Arab-led parties will have 19 seats in the new Knesset. No government of change can form without them. Nagham Zbeedat, who covers Palestinian affairs and the Arab world for Haaretz, refused to vote in Knesset elections for many years but she ended her personal boycott last week, casting a ballot in her hometown of Sakhnin. She tells Yonit and Jonathan what the surge in Arab turnout was really about — and why it is not a vote of confidence in the system. Where do Ra'am and the Joint List part ways? Can either of them meet Gadi Eisenkot's conditions, and what would a war with Iran or Gaza do to a coalition that depended on them? Looking ahead, what do Israel's Jews and Arabs need to understand about each other if there is to be a chance of a better future?

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Two days after Israel voted, Yonit and Jonathan are in the same room in Tel Aviv, working out an election Jonathan calls a win within a loss for Netanyahu and a loss within a win for Gadi Eisenkot — a coalition shrunk from 64 to 53, and still no path to a government without him. Yonit, after her eleventh election night as anchor, on why the exit polls got it wrong and the ten-week clock that starts once the president hands out the mandate. Then the question diaspora callers keep putting to Jonathan: how, three years after 7 October, is Netanyahu still there? The answer runs through Benny Gantz, 11 October 2023 and Neville Chamberlain. Plus the Qatar turnout allegation, the oak in whose shade nothing grows, a Chutzpah from the Michigan Senate race and a Mensch awarded to a few million people at once. 
 

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Israel voted on 27 October — and by Wednesday afternoon, with 85 percent of the ballots counted, Benjamin Netanyahu had lost his majority and nobody could remove him. The bloc against him stands at 67 seats in a Knesset of 120, and still every route to a government looks blocked: unity with Gadi Eisenkot, a minority government resting on the Arab parties, or another election. Yonit, straight off anchoring Channel 12's election night, and Jonathan talk through the three scenarios and the stranger ones underneath them — a Trump-guaranteed rotation, a united-bloc offer Netanyahu would have to refuse — plus the record Arab turnout and what drove it, why Shas and Ben-Gvir shrank while Likud grew, and what a parliamentary majority can do while nobody can form a government

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Join us on Unholy Live on YouTube the moment the polls close: https://youtube.com/live/EUhNvryZQSo?feature=share

After a dizzying final weekend of campaigning, in which Benjamin Netanyahu warned Israelis that if he were removed from office a 'second Holocaust' would follow, the voters themselves are about to have their say. Jonathan talks to New Yorker editor David Remnick - who recently wrote an in-depth profile of Gadi Eisenkot - all about the man trying to topple Netanyahu. What brought Eisenkot to this moment - and what it would mean for Israel and the wider world if he succeeds?

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Reunited in the same studio in Tel Aviv just five days before Israelis head to the polls, Yonit and Jonathan dive into the high-stakes homestretch of an election that feels less like routine politics and more like a referendum on the country’s soul. Jonathan reports from the ground—from the packed, expat-heavy El Al flight from London to a campaign rally with Gadi Eisenkot—while Yonit parses the razor-thin bloc arithmetic, the damaging fallout from the Yonatan  Urich Qatari funding investigation, and the electoral tightrope Benjamin Netanyahu is walking with ultra-Orthodox draft evasion.

They also look across the Atlantic to the agonizing choices facing Jewish voters in Michigan’s midterm contest, award our Chutzpah trophy to an American envoy in urgent need of an English dictionary, and find an unexpected, deeply moving Mensch in the southern desert dust.

Don't miss Unholy's Livecast on Election night, October 27th: https://unholy-podcast.com/live/

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With just a week to go, Israel’s election campaign caught fire at the weekend, thanks to an incendiary intervention by one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s most ardent media supporters. Channel 14’s Yinon Magal re-opened a deep racial divide when he repeatedly referred to Netanyahu’s prime challenger, Gadi Eisenkot - whose family roots are in Morocco - as a “monkey”.

What are the origins of the Mizrahi-Ashkenazi divide in Israeli society - and what place does it continue to play in the life and politics of the country? Yonit is joined by journalist and author Matti Friedman for a deep examination of a key Israeli faultline.

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Twelve days before Israel votes, Yonit observes that the national mood is neither Britain in 1997 nor America in 2008 - a nation certain that it’s on the brink of change - but one of pure tension on both sides. In the final stretch, Binyamin Netanyahu is on an interview blitz, making no secret of his plans to maintain his current coalition while insisting Itamar Ben-Gvir will not be defense minister—a denial Jonathan reads as an outright forecast.

Meanwhile, Gadi Eisenkot warns voters that his slate must be the largest in the anti-Bibi bloc, Naftali Bennett takes the lead for a joint ticket while his partner Lapid goes conspicuously quiet and Jonathan wonders if Netanyahu can simply peel off defectors after election day. Then, the electoral arithmetic that will decide the night: why the Arab parties sit outside both blocs, and whether a minority government could actually function.

Plus: Chutzpah of the Week from an American campus, a strictly kosher if high Mensch award and a reminder that Unholy goes live on election night, 27 October, the moment the exit polls drop.

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Two weeks before Israel votes, the polls seem to be telling two different stories — Channel 14 has the Netanyahu bloc at 63 seats, Channel 12 has it at 49. Dahlia Scheindlin, pollster and senior analyst at Haaretz, who has advised nine Israeli election campaigns, tells Yonit and Jonathan the picture is far less wild than it looks. Why do six of eight pollsters agree while two keep drifting? Who is actually still undecided, and does the much-discussed wave of expats flying in to vote amount to anything? Why have October 7 and everything since barely moved an electorate that has been shifting one way for fifteen years? And what is the iron rule that lets a pollster name your vote before you know it yourself — in an election whose result, she argues, now rests in the minds of six men.

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Three years after October 7th, and eighteen days before Israel votes, this third anniversary felt different from the first two — and yet it may not move a single vote. With no state commission of inquiry, a flydubai near-disaster that echoed the state's failures and polls that point in wildly different directions, Yonit and Jonathan ask if the question of Netanyahu's responsibility has already been priced in by the Israeli electorate. They discuss whether a restrained, divided opposition is fighting according to the rules against a campaign that is not, and whether Avigdor Lieberman could end up in the prime minister’s chair - as the leader of a realigned right. Outside Israel, Zohran Mamdani and the Green Party of England and Wales approached October 7th in something other than solemn mood. Plus: a crowded field for Mensch of the Week and a Chutzpah award that takes aim at punctuation.

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Three years ago this week, Amir Tibon spent ten hours in a safe room in Kibbutz Nahal Oz with his wife and daughters while Hamas gunmen moved from house to house. They stayed there until he was rescued - by his father, a retired general, who had driven down from Tel Aviv with a pistol to get them out. Amir has now moved with his family back to the kibbutz.

Jonathan talks to Tibon — Haaretz journalist and author of The Gates of Gaza — about that return, why the third anniversary feels heavier than the first two, and why he lies awake over the election on 27 October as well as over the gunfire still audible from Gaza. Is the coming vote a verdict on the failure of 7 October, or on who can stop the next one?

Watch it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/KXcVvPmzQpo

00:00 Unholy Conversations - 3 years since October 7th
01:13 Introduction to Amir Tibon's Story
05:01 The Impact of October 7th on Amir's Family
08:52 Returning to Nahal Oz: A Journey of Resilience
13:42 Reflections on the Third Anniversary of October 7th
18:46 The Political Landscape and Future Concerns
 

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