Winter has arrived. No, it is still boiling hot and humid in Tel Aviv. And no, not Game of Thrones. By Winter, I mean Ofer Winter, the newest politician on the Israeli right, who launched his party last night in Jerusalem.
Ofer Winter is the Ben-Gvir you would design if you could, which is why his announcement matters more than the polls suggest.
Unlike Ben-Gvir, who never served in the IDF because of his extremist activity, Winter commanded Givati, Duvdevan and the 98th Division. He fought in Gaza in 2014 and again after October 7.
Winter has one solution for Gaza: emigration. When such a line is said by the TikTok minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, that sentence is a provocation, said by an IDF general, it is a plan.
Voluntary emigration as floated by Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, several Likud ministers, and now Winter, is sugar-coated ethnic cleansing. Moreover, early last year the security cabinet approved Defense Minister Israel Katz’s proposal for a Voluntary Emigration Administration inside the Defense Ministry, and Winter was reportedly touted as its director.
Winter is asking to run that ministry, and the crowd in Jerusalem chanted “Our next Defense Minister” back at him.
So who exactly does Winter appeal to? After all, there are so many right-wing parties popping up.
Israeli public opinion has moved right since October 7, while Netanyahu, the prime minister and undisputed leader of the right, has become much less popular. That gap is where Winter is looking for votes, and my instinct is that he is betting the voters who left Netanyahu after October 7 will come to him rather than to the center-right options, and that he can hand Netanyahu a government on the way.
It is much harder to label an IDF brigadier general a messianic extremist than it is Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, one convicted of supporting a terrorist organization and inciting racism, the other detained by the Shin Bet during the Gaza Disengagement.
Moreover, this is something Winter thought through, and his list is evidence. Make no mistake, his list is right-wing, but it appears more moderate and more mainstream. Netali Shem Tov anchored Channel 13’s Friday news and spent years at Channel 12. Lali Deri lost her son in Gaza. Neither has been near politics, and that is the point.
Winter’s most notable addition though, is one of Israel’s most well-known advocates on the international arena, Yoseph Haddad. He is an IDF veteran who has spent years defending Israel on cable news and campuses abroad.
He said he intends to be the first Arab in the security cabinet. He also attacked the Arab parties for representing Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank instead of their own voters. Winter endorsed him from the stage as the next public diplomacy minister.
Now, nobody thinks this wins Arab votes aside from maybe Haddad’s immediate relatives. I highly doubt Arab citizens of Israel are voting for a party whose leader wants Gaza emptied, because of Yoseph Haddad.
Last week, Likud officials reportedly pushed Netanyahu to reserve Haddad a spot on their list to keep him from Winter, which tells you that he is an electoral asset. Haddad is no asset for Arab voters (they don’t like him very much) but for right-wing Israelis who mistakenly believe that his PR efforts on Israel’s behalf are helpful, and Winter has aimed him at a domestic audience. For example, I have cousins in Beer Sheva who think Yoseph Haddad’s Israel advocacy does wonders for the country, and they vote for the opposition bloc.
And that is very much by design, and for proponents of Israeli democracy, dangerous. Ben Gvir made the Israeli right pay a price in respectability for every position it held; for every Ben-Gvir stunt, from nooses to crocodiles, the damage in Israel and around the world was huge. Ofer Winter gives the extremist policies a trendier vibe, dressed in an IDF uniform, with a list that is mostly secular. Winter’s party is the only Zionist party with an Arab in its second spot.
Now, this also threatens Netanyahu, but the threat isn’t that he will take votes from the coalition because Netanyahu knows he is a natural ally. The threat is that, according to polls, Winter puts Smotrich’s Religious Zionists, a key coalition partner, at risk of dropping below the threshold. Then again, Netanyahu is known for forcing mergers in order to avoid the chance of having right-wing votes go to waste.
Although Winter promises something different, it is much the same. And though Winter says he will not put anyone connected to October 7 on his list, he will recommend Netanyahu for the premiership, the man who carries the most responsibility for that day.
Today, two close liberal friends from Tel Aviv sent me a picture of his list and asked if his party would sit with Bibi. I thought the answer was obvious, it wasn’t. That is the exact point.
Nothing to applaud.
Isn’t this good news? Shouldn’t we be happy that someone who is on the right but is not a Kahanist and has Arabs on his slate is taking support away from Smotrich and Ben-Gvir? I wouldn’t vote for Ofer Winter either but his entrance into politics is good news. Netanyahu is very upset about it.