Spectator journalist Noa Hoffman spent six days on the ground covering Israel’s election, and the questions Israelis are divided on aren’t the ones Europe keeps asking.

What she found was a country that is deeply divided, but not over the questions European politicians keep asking.

Almost nobody she met, on the left or the right, Jewish or Arab, believes a two-state solution is realistic anytime soon. The real fault lines are elsewhere. One is whether Benjamin Netanyahu bears responsibility for October 7. Another is the growing fury over Haredi exemptions from military service, while reservists put their lives and careers on hold again and again.

Noa takes us from the working-class Mizrahi streets of HaTikva, where voters chanted for “King Bibi,” to martini bars in Neve Tzedek, where Israelis asked her whether London has “fallen.” She visited a kibbutz in the Gaza envelope that was attacked on October 7. There, a young mother told her how she held the safe-room door shut while terrorists searched her home, with two bullets set aside for a last resort. A few kilometres away in Sderot, the mood was entirely different.

We also discuss:
🗳️ Why Israel’s class divide mirrors Britain’s Labour–Reform split
🕌 Mansour Abbas, Ra’am, and why senior security figures say he’s someone you can work with
🇬🇧 How Israelis see Europe’s struggle with Islamism, and why the conversation in the UK is finally shifting
⚖️ Arab parties that oppose a Jewish state running freely for the Knesset, and what that says about the “apartheid” charge
🔮 What happens next: a unity government, a deal with the Arab parties, or yet another election?

Noa Hoffman is a Political Correspondent at The Spectator. Despite being early in her career, she has already collected an impressive list of honours. She was named New Journalist of the Year at the British Journalist Awards, and Young Journalist of the Year at the London Press Club Awards, and she’s been recognized among the most influential women in Westminster.

Read her Spectator piece: “Can Netanyahu pull off one more great act of survival?” https://spectator.com/article/can-netanyahu-pull-off-one-more-great-act-of-survival/

Chapters
00:00 Intro: Noa Hoffman
01:31 First impressions: a divided Israel, but not how Europe thinks
04:30 The Haredi draft exemption explained
10:45 “Are you okay?” Israelis worried about London
17:37 Why it’s finally possible to talk about Islamism
19:02 Why people vote Bibi: the Mizrahi working class
24:36 Arab parties, “as-a-Jews,” and democracy in Jaffa
27:26 Inside the Gaza envelope: kibbutzim vs Sderot
33:16 Netanyahu and responsibility for October 7
35:06 Mansour Abbas and the Hamas question
38:36 The results, and what happens next

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