Former Israeli Military Chief Gadi Eisenkot Emerges as Netanyahu’s Top Election Challenger

Israel’s high-stakes election on Oct. 27 will feature a contest between its longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and highly decorated retired Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot. Although Eisenkot is relatively new to politics, his extensive military career could position him to become the Jewish state’s next leader.

Several polls show Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar party holding a narrow advantage over Netanyahu’s Likud. But neither party is expected to govern alone. To form a government, Yashar or Likud will need to assemble a coalition commanding at least 61 seats.

Who is the 66-year-old Eisenkot? 

Eisenkot was born in Tiberias, in northern Israel, to a Jewish-Moroccan family that moved to Eilat, the country’s southernmost city on the Red Sea, when he was a toddler.

He spent his career in the military, choosing the infantry and serving in the elite Golani Brigade. Eisenkot reached the highest level of Israel’s armed forces when he was appointed Israel Defense Forces chief of staff in 2015, a position he held until 2019.

Yossi Melman, one of Israel’s most respected reporters on intelligence and defense, told News Media that Eisenkot “is 100% a soldier. He is very brave and humble. He is an officer and gentleman.”

Melman recalled that Eisenkot initially declined consideration for the IDF chief of staff position because he believed then-General Benny Gantz deserved the appointment. “How many people would do that?” Melman asked. He said the decision reflected Eisenkot’s modesty, honesty and lack of arrogance.

“It is a miracle he is leading in the polls,” Melman said. “He is the antithesis of what a politician should be. He is not a great orator when you compare him to Netanyahu. He radiates honesty.”

Eisenkot’s Mizrahi heritage — referring to Jews with roots in North Africa and the Middle East — would make him, if elected, the first Israeli prime minister of Moroccan origin. Since the Jewish state was reestablished in 1948, the prime minister’s office has been held by Israelis of Eastern European, or Ashkenazi, descent.

After Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people, including over 40 Americans, Eisenkot joined Netanyahu’s war cabinet as a minister without portfolio.

Melman said Eisenkot “did not set any political conditions” for joining the cabinet and that his participation “saved Netanyahu.” Eisenkot served on the war cabinet for eight months before resigning. He faulted the prime minister for failing to put forward a comprehensive strategy.

The war against Hamas, the Iran-backed terrorist movement, exacted a devastating personal toll on Eisenkot and his family. Hamas killed his 25-year-old son, Master Sergeant Gal Eisenkot, in December 2023. The group also killed two of Eisenkot’s nephews. At the time, Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, said they were devastated by Gal’s death and described Eisenkot as a “true hero.”

Danny Orbach, a military historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, offered a mixed assessment of the leading candidate to replace Netanyahu. “I think his military record and his prospects as a national leader have both significant strengths and serious weaknesses,” Orbach said. He argued that Eisenkot bears substantial responsibility for shaping the IDF that existed on Oct. 7, 2023 — an army that, paradoxically, was capable of defeating Hezbollah, striking Iran and achieving unprecedented successes on the extraordinarily difficult, tunnel-filled battlefield in Gaza, yet failed disastrously on Oct. 7.

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Orbach added that, like other chiefs of staff, Eisenkot was responsible for decisions that reduced the military’s size and for the “conceptzia,” the Hebrew term for the prevailing concept about Hamas. “In that respect, I consider him just as culpable as Netanyahu,” he said.

Israel’s military, intelligence and political leaders had accepted the “conceptzia” that Hamas could be contained through large amounts of economic aid. Hamas, however, remained committed to its radical Islamist goal of destroying the Jewish state and used the funding to strengthen its preparations for war.

Orbach said he did not believe most of Eisenkot’s support came from the candidate’s energy, enthusiasm or even his policy platform. Instead, he viewed Eisenkot as the default “non-Bibi” candidate — the figure currently carrying much of the hopes and expectations of Netanyahu’s political opponents.

Orbach also expressed doubt that Eisenkot would have shown the political resolve to oppose the Biden administration on issues of that kind.

Netanyahu and former President Biden repeatedly clashed over Biden’s attempts to rope in Israel’s efforts to defeat Iran’s seven-front war against the Jewish state.

The military historian, however, noted that “I believe an Eisenkot government could address several of Israel’s most urgent problems. It would remove Ben Gvir from power, confront the growing problem of Jewish extremist violence and terrorism in the West Bank, and begin repairing Israel’s severely damaged international legitimacy.”

Itamar Ben-Gvir is a controversial right-wing firebrand politician and the current minister of national security since 2022, who has outraged many Western European and foreign leaders with his heated rhetoric against the Palestinians.

Eisenkot’s wife, Hannah, comes from an American Jewish family. U.S. General Joseph Dunford awarded Eisenkot the Commander of the Legion of Merit because of his “exceptionally meritorious service as chief of the General Staff of the IDF” and his “contribution to the strategic cooperation between the United States and Israel [that] will have a lasting effect on both countries,” according to the Washington Institute, where Eisenkot served as a military fellow in 2019.

Nadav Eyal, an Israeli analyst and journalist for the mass circulation Israeli paper Yedioth Aharonoth, told News Media, Gadi Eisenkot is widely considered one of the most successful Chiefs of Staff that Israel has had in the last thirty years.”

He continued that “Chiefs of Staff in Israel, unlike in other countries, are really extremely capable, in general, to be prime minister. They are leading the country’s biggest organization, the IDF.”

Eyal, who writes extensively about the IDF, credited Eisenkot’s military planning against the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon and the significant defeats the Lebanese Shiite entity experienced, including the “discovery of tunnels that Hezbollah built” to enter Israel. Hezbollah immediately joined Hamas’s war against Israel in Oct. 2023.

Given the nature of Israel’s electoral system, an outright winner won’t likely be known for several days, since the leading party will need to form a coalition to get to the 61-seat mandate to run the country.