Kushmaro says 2026 vote lacks historical uniqueness

Danny Kushmaro, who hosts an election segment that airs nightly, calls the upcoming vote the most fateful in Israel’s history. He is not the only voice making that claim. The phrase has become a standard refrain across the current campaign.

Kushmaro argues that voters should not assume the current election is more important than any that came before. He cites the biblical book of Kohelet, which warns against romanticizing the past, to support his point that every election feels unique to those living through it.

The analyst contends that labeling the October ballot as the most important ever changes the nature of the conflict. It shifts the competition between pro-Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu blocs from a political battle to an existential war. Defeat sounds less like a setback that can be corrected in the next cycle and more like a crisis the country cannot survive.

This framing creates a difficulty in accepting outcomes. Since Naftali Bennett formed his government in 2021, Israel has faced challenges beyond just determining who should govern. The core struggle has been whether the losing side will allow the other side a chance to rule.

Before Bennett was sworn in, Benjamin Netanyahu labeled the new administration the greatest election fraud in history. He referred to broken campaign promises rather than stolen ballots, but the term cast a legitimately formed government as fraudulent. The opposition then worked to dismantle Bennett’s coalition, sometimes voting against legislation it supported to weaken the slim majority.

In recordings released in May 2022, Likud MK Miri Regev defended voting against measures that benefited soldiers and vulnerable groups. She stated that the primary goal was to topple the coalition. The government spent much of its short life fighting for survival until Netanyahu won the 2022 election and formed a hard-right cabinet.

Yair Lapid conceded the 2022 election and arranged an orderly handover. However, as opposition to the judicial overhaul brought large crowds into the streets, language of illegitimacy returned. In April 2023, former Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin told a massive demonstration in Tel Aviv that the government, though legally elected, was morally illegitimate due to its composition and actions.