The Knesset and Yad Vashem are three miles apart. One is Israel’s parliament, the other is the world’s most visited Holocaust memorial. The distance between the lessons of the two institutions has never felt wider. Set to be held in October, Israel’s elections are the first since the October 7 attack and the resulting Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran wars, arriving at a moment of intense polarization at home and extraordinary scrutiny abroad. Into this charged atmosphere, voices across the Israeli political spectrum are calling for national unity — specifically, a broad coalition that would bring Likud back into shared governance. The argument deserves a direct answer: there is no path to democratic renewal that runs through a party that has normalized calls for the annihilation of a civilian population.
The record is not ambiguous. Knesset Deputy Speaker Nissim Vaturi wrote that the IDF should “burn Gaza now” and stated that Israel’s goal was “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth.” When asked to clarify, he called for the separation of women and children and for killing all adult men in Gaza. Tally Gotliv, a Likud Knesset member, called for the use of nuclear weapons against Gaza. Moshe Saada, also of Likud, approvingly quoted an acquaintance who told him that everyone in Gaza should be killed. In September 2025, Minister Gila Gamliel stated in a press conference that Israel would turn the Gaza Strip into a place unfit for human habitation until the population leaves, adding the same would happen in the West Bank — describing it not just as her own position but as the goal of the whole government.
These are not fringe statements made by marginal figures who embarrass the party. The Knesset Ethics Committee ruled that Vaturi’s repeated calls to “burn Gaza” did not violate any ethical standards. The Israeli Attorney General declined to prosecute Vaturi for charges of inciting violence against Palestinians. Likud did not censure any of these officials. The statements were made, amplified, and absorbed without institutional consequence. That is not a personnel problem. It is a party culture.
The “National Unity” Trap
The appeal to national unity is understandable after years of political warfare, a catastrophic intelligence failure on October 7, and wars on multiple fronts. Israel’s society is exhausted and fractured. The desire to stop fighting each other and face shared challenges together is genuine. But unity cannot be built on moral equivalence between those who challenged democratic institutions and those who defended them, or between those who called for the annihilation of civilians and those who did not.
Likud leads current polls but its coalition is falling behind. The most significant new development of the 2026 election cycle is Beyachad, a joint list uniting former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s newly registered party with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, announced in April 2026 under Bennett’s leadership — a merger that came after polls showed Yesh Atid weakening while Bennett’s party was running close to Likud. Some voices within this emerging bloc have suggested that a Likud without Netanyahu would be a legitimate governing partner. That reasoning runs into a hard wall of evidence. The genocidal statements cited above were made by sitting Likud members — not former members, not fringe candidates, but currently active lawmakers and ministers who have faced no party discipline and remain on the list.
Smotrich was incredibly effective in advancing his ideological goal of expanding Israel’s control over the West Bank, overseeing the rapid expansion of settlement approvals, illegal outposts, and bureaucratic steps to erode distinctions with sovereign Israel. Both Smotrich and Ben-Gvir were sanctioned by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand for inciting violence against Palestinians, while the government of Slovenia banned them from the country. International isolation of this scale reflects not a diplomatic misunderstanding but a substantive judgment about conduct — one shared by governments that are not, by any measure, hostile to Israel’s existence.
The Arab Parties Question
The contradiction at the center of the unity argument is worth naming plainly. The main opposition bloc has claimed to represent “80 percent of the country” — a figure that explicitly excludes the 20 percent who are Arab citizens. Lapid said “only those who evade IDF service and the extremists aren’t invited.” They categorically reject any cooperation with the Arab Joint List.
This position inverts any coherent logic of democratic renewal. Arab citizens of Israel have, since October 7, demonstrated civic participation and consistent commitment to democratic norms. Their political parties have operated within the rules of the parliamentary system. Yet the same voices calling for inclusion of Likud — a party whose members have publicly described Palestinians as subhuman and called for mass killings — treat Arab parties as illegitimate partners simply because of who they represent. Voters in Israel have already begun asking whether the new bloc will allow Arab parties, which represent 20 percent of Israeli citizens, to join the coalition or accept their endorsement to win a majority.
The answer to that question will define what kind of democracy Israel is choosing to rebuild. These elections take place during a period of intense polarization in Israel and amid international scrutiny. Rebuilding trust, restoring institutions, and repairing the social contract cannot happen alongside a party that has spent years dismantling those same institutions and using the language of annihilation against a civilian population. The moral line is not between right and left. It is between those who accept the basic norms of democratic governance and those who have made a project of destroying them.
Original analysis inspired by Ron Gerlitz from Haaretz. Additional research and verification conducted through multiple sources.
