Temper Your Expectations for Israel

Israeli election results still pending

Israelis went to the polls yesterday for the first time since the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and the one-sided slaughter and destruction of Gaza. Now, reporters are looking closely at exit polling to try and ascertain the outcome.

Do not read an article that talks to you about exit polling. Have we learned nothing? Nothing at all? Exit polls are worthless, and you will have your answers soon enough.

Al Jazeera reports that the actual vote counts are expected to be finalized by Friday. As of this writing, they have 77 percent counted already:

“Netanyahu’s bloc has 54 seats. Eisenkot’s bloc has 49. Arab parties have 17 seats.”

Of course, the final vote count will be far from the end of it. Israel is a multiparty parliamentary system. The government (what Americans might call the cabinet, but it includes the prime minister) is picked by a majority of Israel’s legislature, the Knesset. Whichever bloc wins will have to assemble a majority coalition, a process that can take weeks.

More to the point, you should not get your hopes up for what throwing Netanyahu and his fascist brigade out would mean for Israel’s treatment of Palestinians or its general behavior in the region. Nils Adler, Caolán Magee and Umut Uras in Al Jazeera put it well:

“While Netanyahu’s comments during the election reflect ‘deep racism’ towards Arabs in Israel, Eisenkot ‘is not that different,’ Antony Loewenstein, an investigative journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker, has told Al Jazeera.

“‘On the key main issues—the West Bank, Gaza, Iran, relations with the Middle East—there are remarkably few differences,’ he said.

“‘I’m not ignoring the Netanyahu-Ben-Gvir disaster of the last four years and what they’ve been doing across the region, but the alternative will not make many changes. It’ll be cosmetic changes in the West Bank, potentially, arresting some of the most violent settlers.

“‘But on the basic facts, they have a very similar worldview, which I would argue is “Greater Israel,” and that’s very dangerous.’”

Netanyahu is a criminal and a sleazebag, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are fascists as bad or worse than Stephen Miller, and the political situation in Israel is overwhelmingly bad, bad, bad. I will believe they are moving in a better direction not when Netanyahu and his coalition partners are thrown out of power, or even when he or any of them are imprisoned for corruption. No, I will believe it if and only if the opposition to Netanyahu’s coalition completely integrates an Arab party or parties into their bloc. Until then, Israel will continue on its path as a militaristic ethno-state that is increasingly a pariah.

Don’t grow numb to the corruption

We mentioned an excerpt of Matthew Cole’s new book on Jared Kushner’s corrupt dealings in the Middle East during the first Trump term last week. Edith Olmsted in the New Republic has more from it today:

“Jared Kushner was allegedly paid $50 million by a foreign government to get former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson fired.

“In the new book Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East, author Matthew Cole reported that the United Arab Emirates paid Kushner millions to oust Tillerson, who had allegedly become extremely cozy with the Qataris.”

This is an incredible revelation if true. Our relationship with the Gulf monarchies is bad enough on its own terms, in how it has played out across ordinary administrations for decades. But Gulf oil money being spent to change U.S. cabinet personnel is proof that these relationships cannot be saved. Just as we have delayed accountability against Trump officials for far too long, we have delayed accountability against our supposed allies in Middle East who have wormed their way more and more into our domestic politics and corporate governance. This cannot be allowed to stand. These relationships must be severed or the monarchs must be forced to pay a political price that actually hurts, such as real democratic reforms.

The only comfort I can take at this moment is that their cozy relationship with Donald Trump is quite literally blowing up right now, as his adventures in Iran have made them among the primary targets of that regime.

Once again, this payoff to get a U.S. secretary of state removed—incredible—was in the first Trump term. Their corruption is much, much worse now, and by and large right out in the open. No one is trying to hide the Russian diesel tankers making their way for the US right now. No one is trying to hide the memecoins pulling in cash for the Trump family; they were announced publicly!

And then, of course, there are the pardons. Gabe Kaminsky, Steve Reilly and Daniel Klaidman report at CBS:

“All told, Mr. Trump's clemency orders have erased at least $119 million in unpaid restitution since January 2025, a CBS News investigation has found.

“All told, Mr. Trump's clemency orders have erased at least $119 million in unpaid restitution since January 2025, a CBS News investigation has found. …

“CBS News reviewed court judgments in over 160 clemency orders Mr. Trump issued from January 2025 through October 2026, including restitution that remained unpaid when clemency was granted. The review excluded his more than 1,500 blanket pardons and commutations tied to the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, in which courts typically ordered standard restitution of $500 or $2,000 to help cover damage to the U.S. Capitol.

“Those who lost out on restitution range from small family food businesses to community banks, candy maker Mars Wrigley, the IRS and other agencies, actor Terry Crews and a trust in the name of baseball star Alex Rodriguez. The $119 million figure doesn't cover restitution prosecutors sought but judges hadn't yet ordered—such as the $660.8 million sought from former Nikola CEO Trevor Milton before the president granted his pardon.”

What is wiping out those restitutions about? I don’t think I have to spell that out for you.

The courts mostly keep doing their job

We talked yesterday about the administration’s attempts to interfere in the midterms in California, Alaska, and Washington state.

A court had already blocked the interference in California and the 9th Circuit has rejected their appeal. As David Kurtz reports in Talking Points Memo:

“The Trump DOJ was asking the appeals court to order Los Angeles County to begin immediately segregating the mail-in ballots of voters on a dubious list of 20,000 alleged noncitizens that the administration has compiled. Under the Trump administration scheme to disrupt election procedures and processes, those ballots would not be counted until the citizenship of those voters was verified.

“The per curiam opinion is a tidy 17 pages mostly on procedural grounds that had the support of Judges Mark J. Bennett (Trump) and Gabriel P. Sanchez (Biden). But a lengthy dissent from Judge Patrick J. Bumatay (Trump) on the merits of the case prompted a separate concurring opinion from Bennett. Sanchez also wrote his own concurrence.

“While Bennett and Sanchez didn’t feel the need to reach the merits of the case, they each said in their concurrences that they would have ruled against the administration on the merits, too.”

They kicked it back to the district court and the administration is simply running out of days to make this happen before the votes are in.

In Alaska there is not, as of this writing, any action from a court, but the state has asked the DOJ’s lawsuit to be dismissed. As James Brooks reports in the Alaska Beacon:

“Attorneys representing the state of Alaska have asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice that is seeking to halt the certification of the state’s ongoing U.S. Senate election.

“The lawsuit, ordered by President Donald Trump and filed last week, asks the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska to prevent the Alaska Division of Elections from declaring a winner in the election unless the winner is the incumbent, Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, an ally of the President.

“Shortly before noon Tuesday, Judge Sharon Gleason, an Obama appointee who is presiding over the case, issued an order stating that the federal government has until 3 p.m. Thursday to submit written arguments against the dismissal request. The state has until noon Friday to offer a rebuttal.”

I am skeptical that the administration will come out on top of this one, either.

In spite of the bad behavior of the apex court specifically, the court system overall and district courts specifically have proven quite reliable in most cases. I am cautiously optimistic that this latest round of desperate lashing out by the administration will get stopped in its tracks. For much of the country, it is possible it is already too late to even make a big impact on the outcome.

An important source of power

The president of the United States on Tuesday unveiled his closing campaign message.
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw.bsky.social) 2026-10-28T04:14:27.392Z

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