Netanyahu feels the Winter chill

Of all the numerous new political groupings to have emerged as the election campaign gathers pace, former general Ofer Winter’s People of Israel party, launched on Tuesday night, is the one that has Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu most worried. The Likud leader routinely traduces his opponents as dangerous leftists, but that won’t work with Winter, who has for years been what might best be termed a conditional ally of Netanyahu’s. (The prime minister reportedly consulted with him in the early months of the post-October 7 war in Gaza.) Although Yair Netanyahu indeed rushed to characterize him as a servant of the left , Winter is a religious rightist to his soul, who told the officers in the Givati Brigade he commanded that 2014’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza was a religious war against a “blasphemous” enemy, who adamantly opposes Palestinian statehood, and who unabashedly declared in Tuesday’s opening campaign speech that the only solution in Gaza is “emigration.” Winter vowed in that speech to “do everything to establish as broad a right-wing government as possible, with as many Zionist partners as possible” — phrasing that echoed Netanyahu’s reiterated pledge this week to form a “broad national government,” and that might therefore be considered music to the prime minister’s ears. Except Winter also declared, with very careful wording, that “anyone who thinks, after October 7, that the public will accept everything remaining the same in the political sphere, without new people entering the system, is making a bitter mistake.” That didn’t quite constitute the explicit demand opposition front-runner Gadi Eisenkot is making, for the resignation of anyone who held a “central role” at the time of the Hamas invasion, but it was no endorsement of Netanyahu’s continued prime ministership. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Newsletter email address Get it By signing up, you agree to the terms Winter is anything but tainted by October 7. In IDF limbo himself at the time, he dashed to the front from his home in the Galilee with his personal firearm and fought (Hebrew link) in the area of Kibbutz Be’eri. (The Knesset slate he announced on Tuesday includes Sigal Kraunik-Atia, the widow of Be’eri’s security coordinator Arik Kraunik , who was killed defending the kibbutz.) He is a proven, outspoken advocate for integrating Haredim into the IDF; indeed, he was confronted and denounced as a traitor by ultra-Orthodox extremists this month as he left a conference he had addressed about special tracks for Haredi enlistment. A protester shouts at former IDF Brig. Gen. Ofer Winter during a demonstration against an IDF recruitment conference for the Haredi community in Jerusalem, August 4, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90) It is that stance that makes his party’s entry into the election campaign so spectacularly problematic for Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party. Smotrich is loathed by much of his natural Orthodox, right-wing, settler and pro-settlement base for having supported the ultra-Orthodox parties’ campaign throughout the lifespan of the outgoing coalition to enshrine in legislation mass Haredi exemption from military service. If Smotrich’s party was the least-bad option for that community, which lost so many lives at the front these past three years, Winter gives it an enticing alternative, and the handful of polls published in the days before Winter’s launch showed him clearing the electoral threshold while pushing Smotrich below it. Advertisement Winter may also take votes from the criminal recidivist Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party for the same reason. And from Shas, which, wobbling in the polls, is pathetically now feverishly disseminating videos and posts asserting itself as a party of yeshiva study and IDF service alike, when its current spiritual leader hitherto advised draft dodgers to flush their conscription orders down the toilet and its political leader strategically dragged Shas away from military service for fear that, once in uniform, its supporters would leave the fold. But Netanyahu and the Likud party are also immensely vulnerable in this election for having overseen the capitulation to the untenable ultra-Orthodox demand for continued mass exemption from service — even as Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has warned that the IDF is facing nothing less than collapse amid a desperate shortage of recruits. Netanyahu has lately taken to insisting that all Haredi males who do not genuinely study full-time in yeshiva must serve, but he fired Yuli Edelstein as chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee for seeking to impose those terms, and the Israeli electorate, though volatile, is not that forgetful. Defense Minister Naftali Bennett meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L), IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi (R) and Brig. Gen. Ofer Winter, the military secretary to the defense minister (at rear), on November 12, 2019. (Ariel Hermoni/Defense Ministry) Astute enough to have placed a hawkish, Israel-defending Arab Christian, Yoseph Haddad, in second place on his slate, Winter has also been close for years to some key figures in the anti-Netanyahu right — including Avigdor Liberman, for whom he was briefly military attache when the Yisrael Beytenu leader was Netanyahu’s defense minister in late 2018, and Naftali Bennett, in the same role in 2019-20. Winter and Bennett go back decades, having served in the IDF together. His relationship with Eisenkot, it can be assumed, by contrast, is less warm, since it was Eisenkot as chief of staff who in 2018 passed him over for promotion and blocked him as a candidate for Netanyahu’s military secretary ( reportedly because of his operational performance in the 2014 “Black Friday” battle in Rafah, after the abduction of Lt. Hadar Goldin’s body, and his contacts with reporters and political activists). From right, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, Military Secretary to the Prime Minister Brig. Gen. Eliezer Toledano and head of the Shin Bet Nadav Argaman speak during a visit to the IDF’s Gaza Division on July 17, 2018, amid an increase in violence from the Gaza Strip. (Kobi Gideon/GPO) As such, it is not impossible that Winter’s party, if it takes off, could truly reshuffle the political deck in terms of that “broad as possible” right-wing government he is promising to work toward. That’s a big “if,” however, for a genuinely new party, with no established organizational structure and mechanisms, albeit with an influencer deputy, Haddad, who has hundreds of thousands of followers on numerous social media platforms. Right now, however, it is Netanyahu who is feeling the Winter chill. Advertisement This has been an unusually lousy week for the prime minister. First, on Monday, Ben Gvir, battling him for votes, nastily undermined him by announcing the rediscovery of the wreck of the ultra-Likud-symbolic Altalena cargo ship, prompting Netanyahu to rush out a video statement in which, pitifully and characteristically, he hailed Menachem Begin’s heroic restraint in avoiding nascent state civil war even as he exacerbated decades of right-left division by denouncing David Ben-Gurion’s attack on the Irgun gun-running vessel. Then, on Tuesday, Smotrich’s sledgehammer-wielding thug MK Zvi Sukkot further battered his government’s standing and all of Israel’s good name by smashing up a Palestinian terror memorial as hapless IDF troops looked on. Far-right lawmaker Zvi Sukkot smashes a Palestinian monument to ‘martyrs’ in the West Bank village of Madama, August 25, 2026 (MK Zvi Sukkot’s office) And now a new and potentially potent challenge to the leadership of his own camp has arrived — a fresh face, intransigently hawkish, unwilling to surrender to the ultra-Orthodox extortion that much of the electorate cannot condone, untainted by the October 7 failures Netanyahu wants the electorate to forget. Thus far, Netanyahu has issued two warnings against Winter. On Monday, he advised voters not to waste their support on the various small right-wing parties that risk falling below the Knesset threshold. And on Tuesday, as Winter was launching People of Israel, he demanded that such parties either “leave, or unite with existing parties.” It’s a safe bet that Netanyahu is examining more effective strategies for defusing the threat, since Winter looks most unlikely to choose either of those options. — This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here . Help us report truthfully on social media As a multimedia journalist, my job is to take the quality, fact-based journalism produced by The Times of Israel newsroom and make it accessible across every platform — from Instagram posts to podcasts to short-form videos. This is how many, especially young people, consume news these days. But misinformation is rampant on social media. Our team at ToI produces accurate, responsible short-form reporting on Israel and the Jewish world. 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Sign in to stop seeing this Most Popular 1 ‘Where to kill Barron Trump?’: Iran said to put $10 million bounty on US president’s son 2 PM hails finding of Irgun arms ship Altalena, denounces Ben-Gurion for attacking it in 1948 3 Winter launches nationalist ‘People of Israel’ party; Netanyahu warns it could doom the right 4 Crime boss shot dead in broad daylight at Caesarea gas station 5 ‘You are all that matters to me’: Report reveals top aide’s intimate notes to Trump 6 Far-right MK smashes monument for Palestinian ‘martyrs’ during IDF-escorted West Bank tour 7 Netanyahu says Iran ‘tried to murder one of my sons,’ doesn’t give further details 8 Israeli startup led by cybersecurity veterans lays off workforce and shuts down read more: Israel & the Region Ofer Winter People of Israel party Benjamin Netanyahu 2026 Israeli election If you’d like to comment, join The Times of Israel Community. JOIN THE TOI COMMUNITY Already a member? 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