What is your take on this development?
I personally see this as a very positive breakthrough with a real potential to increase Palestinian voter turnout, similar to the 2020 elections. I would also love to see the Palestinian-Jewish party Makom Lekulanu join as their fourth member closer to the deadline to completely prevent wasting votes.
Netanyahu's election tactics are heavily focused on delegitimizing Arab Israeli citizens and their political parties, and the main opposition party leaders (including Eisenkot, Bennett, Lapid, Lieberman) follow suit and refuse to say they would include Ra'am or the Joint List in any future coalition. In almost all recent polls, the Zionist opposition parties cannot form a government without including either Arab Israeli parties, which would lead to a deadlock and another election under Netanyahu's caretaker government.
Would Ra'am's inclusion of former Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovich, a former high-ranking Israeli Police figure, be the way to legitimize Ra'am's inclusion in the future coalition? Or will some of the opposition parties still boycott them?
tl;dr - I apologize for the rant, but I wanted to air my frustrations and hear your feedback.
I’m Israeli. I served in the IDF as an officer (in a non-combat unit). I grew up inside the usual Israeli framework: Zionism was not presented as one political ideology among others. It was history, survival, family, morality, belonging and basic common sense. You could criticize Netanyahu, oppose settlements and call yourself left-wing, but there were boundaries you were not supposed to cross. You were expected to reassure everyone that you were still patriotic, that the army was fundamentally moral, that Israel only wanted peace, and that Palestinian suffering was tragic but somehow never Israel’s responsibility.
I don’t believe those things anymore.
Over the last few years, and especially through the destruction of Gaza, my mental health has deteriorated rapidly from watching what Israeli society has become, or at least from the realization of what it has been for years. It is not only the government. It is the public discourse, the casual racism, the celebration of destruction, the inability to see Palestinians as full human beings, and the way even supposedly liberal Israelis treat Palestinian political participation as dangerous or illegitimate.
I keep waiting for some widespread moral awakening, and instead I see people becoming more extreme. I see politicians compete over who can be harsher. I see military service used as proof of moral authority rather than something that should be examined critically. I see “liberal Zionists” opposing Netanyahu while repeating blatant anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism. I see protests filled with Israeli flags and patriotic speeches that demand democracy for Jewish Israelis while refusing to confront occupation, apartheid, mass killing or Palestinian exclusion.
Even the Israeli “left” feels increasingly fraudulent to me.
I recently voted in the Democrats’ primary. I spent hours researching the candidates because I wanted to support the small number who genuinely oppose the occupation and defend Palestinian rights. I voted for Mossi Raz, Yariv Oppenheimer, Gaby Lasky and three Palestinian candidates. Raz and Oppenheimer did not make the realistic part of the list. The resulting party feels like another version of Yesh Atid: liberal Zionists who want to repair Israeli institutions, but are terrified of saying clearly that Palestinian citizens and their elected parties are equal and legitimate political partners.
To be fully transparent, I voted Hadash in the last general election. I regretted it afterward because Meretz failed to cross the threshold, and I wondered whether I had contributed to that. But Meretz in 2021 did not really earn my vote either. It joined the "change" government, accepted endless compromises, and behaved as though remaining respectable inside Zionist politics mattered more than fighting for Palestinians. Now Meretz no longer exists independently, and the more I examine my actual beliefs, the more obvious it becomes that Hadash is much closer to representing me than the Democrats ever will.
My priorities are ending the occupation, preventing further mass killing, Palestinian equality and freedom, stopping settlements and settler violence, accountability for Israeli crimes, and genuine Jewish-Palestinian reconciliation. These are not secondary issues to me. They are the issue. I do not care how progressive a party is on domestic economics or religion and state if it accepts permanent domination over millions of Palestinians.
I recently left Israel partly because I could no longer tolerate living inside this atmosphere, and I had the privilege of having the chance to leave (I realize a lot of people with my views don't have the means to do it). It was an attempt to protect my mental health and create distance from a society that made me feel increasingly ashamed and trapped. I also wanted to ensure that my future children would not grow up being told that joining the military is an unavoidable moral duty. My partner and I have agreed that our children will not serve in the IDF.
But unfortunately, leaving has not solved my identity problem, and it keeps hovering over my head.
I am now surrounded mostly by Zionist diaspora Jews. Many are decent people, including people I love. My girlfriend tries to understand me, but she is skeptical of some of where I have ended up politically. I constantly feel pressure to soften myself. Criticizing Netanyahu is acceptable, opposing settlements is usually acceptable, but saying I no longer identify as Zionist, that I may be becoming anti-Zionist, that Palestinian parties should hold real power, or that I do not want my future children sent to Zionist schools and camps feels like crossing a social line.
At the same time, I often feel alienated from non-Israeli and non-Jewish spaces that broadly share my politics. Some people hear that I am Israeli, or that I served in the IDF, and decide that I am permanently contaminated or that anything I say is an attempt to centre myself. I understand why Palestinians and their supporters are angry. I am not asking anyone to comfort me or absolve me. But it leaves me feeling that I belong nowhere.
Among Zionist Jews, I am too radical, disloyal or self-hating. Among some anti-Zionists, I am still simply Israeli and a former IDF soldier, therefore suspect.
I feel politically homeless, but also culturally trapped. I cannot erase Hebrew, my childhood, my family, my memories or the person I was. But “Israeli” increasingly feels less like a neutral description and more like an accusation I have to answer for. I did not choose to be born into this society, but I feel forced to spend the rest of my life proving that it does not speak for me.
What hurts most is that I once believed Israeli society could correct itself. I believed Jewish history would make us sensitive to dehumanization and collective punishment. Instead, I have watched historical trauma become a justification for permanent fear, exceptionalism and domination. We were taught “never again,” but too often the actual lesson seems to have been “never again to us.”
I’m writing this because I need to know whether other Israelis have experienced a similar break. Did you reach a point where liberal Zionism no longer felt morally sufficient? How do you cope with the grief and shame of watching your society become something you cannot defend? How do you build relationships with Zionist family and friends without constantly censoring yourself? And how do you participate in anti-occupation or anti-Zionist spaces without feeling that your nationality and past service permanently disqualify you?