00:00:03
Speaker 1: Are Israelis going to fire Bibi Netanyahu for his failures on October 7th? Or are Israelis going to rehire Netanyahu saying, OK, that was bad, but look at all these successes. As Israelis go to the polls on October 27th for our first national elections in four years, are voters about to say bye bye Bibi? Bibi Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu's nickname is Bibi. And why are most of the polls showing that Netanyahu, Bibi Netanyahu, and his political allies are in big, big trouble and may soon be voted out of power? Who is Gadi Eisenkot? And who is his Yashar party? Why have they been surging all summer? Could Eisenkot become Israel's next prime minister? What are the main issues and dynamics at play in this election? And how should Christians be praying as Israel's election day rapidly approaches? Hi, welcome to Inside the Epicenter, a podcast of the Joshua Fund, a ministry to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus. This is Joel Rosenberg, co-founder of the Joshua Fund and your co-host with my dear and lovely wife, Lynn Rosenberg. We are in Eilat right now, right on the Red Sea. It's a beautiful little resort city in Israel that from this vantage point, you can see Egypt, you can see the kingdom of Jordan, and you can see the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It's just a beautiful place. We're here with some family and some ministry partners. But Lena, it's great to be with you. We're having fun in the sun, but Israelis are preparing for a big election day.
00:01:47
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. And it's on the lips of every Israeli. You can't talk for very long without people saying, so what do you think is going to happen? What's it going to be? And it's an amazing thing to think about. Benjamin Netanyahu has been the prime minister, not consecutively, but all together for 19 years. That is quite a long time. That is not the American two, four year terms. That is a long time. So it's hard to, honestly, it's hard to imagine Israel being led by someone else. And yet it seems that it's quite possible that's what we could be looking at.
00:02:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true. When Netanyahu was first elected, it was 1996. That's 30 years ago. Okay, now he was voted out of power in 1999. So he only served about three years. Then he was putting his comeback campaign team together in 2000. That's when I was briefly... hired just for a few months. I didn't really play some major role or anything, but I just want to say that I'm not close to Netanyahu. We've met many times over the years. Lynn's met with Netanyahu. But I just want to be fully disclosing that I did work for him once. But I've also been very, I think, open and honest both on this podcast and on All Original News and the Rosenberg Report things I agree with him on, things I disagree with him on. The Joshua Fund is not a political organization. We're a nonpartisan nonprofit and therefore nonpartisan organization. So we're not, this podcast is not about supporting Netanyahu or being against him or whatever, but it's trying to give you a sense as we get close, just two months away now to these big elections. We want you as our audience and Joshua Fund supporters and prayer partners just to know what in the world is going on And how should we pray? Right.
00:03:38
Speaker 2: I mean, we can start with some facts. You know, growing, living in Washington all our married life until we moved to Israel 12 years ago. We're very familiar with elections and politics and election cycles.
00:03:49
Speaker 1: I helped a lot of people lose over the years.
00:03:51
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, you did.
00:03:52
Speaker 1: Apparently, including Netanyahu.
00:03:54
Speaker 2: Many people have asked you to work for their enemies so that you could continue that tradition. But you're always looking at polls. People that are in politics, they want to know what are the people thinking? If the election was held today, what would happen? How would they vote? And so there have been some polls lately. And we have some of those details. Like, for instance, Israelis were asked just this last week who they prefer to be their next prime minister. Only 34% of them say Netanyahu.
00:04:22
Speaker 1: 34%.
00:04:22
Speaker 2: That's 6 in 10 Israelis saying no. To Netanyahu.
00:04:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think American evangelicals, many of whom, not all, but many of whom have a high respect for Netanyahu, would be surprised to think that 60 percent, 58 technically, 58 percent of Israelis say basically anybody but Netanyahu and that only a third of the country wants him because American evangelicals see him when he's usually at his big picture strategic perspective. He's on American television. or he's speaking to Congress, and he's giving the big picture. And we see, you know, American evangelicals see Netanyahu's accomplishments. They don't see the sausage making of internal Israeli politics. And some of the cross currents are reasons that Messianic Jews and Israeli evangelicals don't, most, don't support Netanyahu. Well, we can talk about that as we go through. But yeah, I think Americans would be generally surprised, American evangelicals surprised that Netanyahu is held in such low esteem right now. And in fact, the polls have been turning against him. Yeah.
00:05:34
Speaker 2: So I think there's a couple of things to talk about. I think for our listeners would be interesting to know, first of all, why, why would that be? What are the issues at play? I think there's several things, you know, we're, We've had a very challenging period of time, not just October 7th forward, but even prior to October 7th, the country was extremely divided, as divided as it has ever been. In fact, people, some people, Israeli leaders were saying that there could be civil war. Like there was this much.
00:06:01
Speaker 1: That was actually on the void. I mean, Israeli President Herzog that we met with, he had said publicly that Israel was on the verge of civil war. This was just five months before October 7th. Right.
00:06:12
Speaker 2: And then of course, when October 7th happened, And after the shock wore off, the instant reaction of all Israelis was to come together to put down their protesting signs. I mean, literally prior to October 7th, there were protests against Bibi for a lot of things, for judicial reform, for everything. Just the way that he was handling various issues. And we can get into that if you want, Joel. But but basically, there were so many protests that they were shutting down the highways of Israel. They were shutting down Tel Aviv. They were blocking Netanyahu's wife in beauty salons where she had to get extracted by people.
00:06:46
Speaker 1: I mean, it was universities shut down, banks shut down at its worst moment, at its lowest moment. The whole country basically came to a screeching halt and a million Israelis, a million Israelis were out on the streets protesting against Netanyahu. The country is only 10 million and 2.6 million are children. So if you think about a million out of, let's say, 7 million, that's a staggering. It'd be like 50 million Americans turning out under the streets to protest Trump or protest Biden or whatever.
00:07:18
Speaker 2: But when October 7th happened, Israelis really, for the most part, I would say largely, put down their protest signs and picked up their weapons, picked up their, just started to help, started to organize to do things to support the country. They were wanting the hostages to be freed. They were trying to organize support groups for hostage families. I mean, Israel's an amazing place when they're in a crisis, they come together like a family, like a really healthy family should, and it's amazing. The years have now worn on and people are beginning to pick up their protest signs again. And also because the election is coming close. And I think part of it is all those issues that were there before. But also, October 7th is a huge issue. Why did it happen? Did Bibi allow it to happen? And how has he handled it so far? What do you want to start explaining these things, Joel?
00:08:12
Speaker 1: It's a good question. Let's set up the sort of the edges of the puzzle again, just for a moment. We're talking about an election. So we're talking about Netanyahu is the leader of a party called Likud. That's a center right. So pretty much at this point, it's not even center. I would say a right wing party. Right now, as we sit here and we have this conversation, Lynn, right, the government led by Netanyahu, led by the Likud party with its other coalition partners. Likud has 32 seats. in our parliament. The parliament is called the Knesset, basically the gathering place. And so Likud has 32 seats of the 120 seats in the parliament. So basically one in four seats is controlled by Netanyahu and his team. Okay, so there you go. Now, polls are showing that if the elections were held right this moment, as you and I record this, Likud would drop from 32 to 20 or so. that's a collapse of one third of the support of Netanyahu and his party. So again, we'll get to the specific reasons in a moment, but that just shows how precarious Netanyahu's situation is. His coalition partners have also collapsed. His finance minister, a man named Bezalel Smotrich, his party looks like it's going to not even make it back into the parliament unless this new deal merger that Smotrich made with another party might get it five seats, six seats. But my point is, like a week ago, Smotrich was, his party had been, you know, hit by a tsunami and was heading out to sea, you know. So two senior partners of Netanyahu's party have just bolted and said, we're done with Netanyahu. We are going to start our own party. This is a former Speaker of the Parliament, former Chairman of the Foreign Relations and Security Committee, committee in the Knesset. And that's the same person, Yuli Edelstein. And Gilad Erdan, who was Netanyahu's appointee to be the Israeli ambassador to both to the UN and to the US. Like these are not insignificant backbenchers. These were senior people. And they're like, yeah, we're done with Bibi. Now, that being said, who's the challenger? Again, just setting up the context. Gadi Eisenkot. Now, Gadi Eisenkot is a very interesting figure. Right now, Well, when the year began, when 2026 began, Gadi Eisen has a party called Yashar, which basically means straight, but it can also be sort of interpreted as true or honest. But Yashar, straight.
00:10:43
Speaker 2: Right. Like I'm dealing straight with you. I'm speaking straight to you.
00:10:47
Speaker 1: Right.
00:10:47
Speaker 2: I'm not sugarcoating it.
00:10:49
Speaker 1: Exactly. But even when, you know, when you're driving along and you've got your Waze GPS system, you'll come up to a traffic circle and it'll say Yashar. It just means go straight. Okay. So that's the, That's what Gadi Aizenkot's party is called. So Aizenkot's party was at 10 seats in January. By summer, he was at 20 seats. And now we're in the fall. Several polls have him at 26 seats. He and his party are now ahead of Netanyahu. So it's basically Bibi versus Gadi. And so that's interesting. Now, we're in the city of Anglat. We're not here for this reason. but Gadi Eizenkot is an Elati. He's somebody from the city. This is a, it's a tourist town, but it's also a very blue collar town. It's an immigrant town. It's a, it's a town sort of, it's not the polished Tel Aviv suburbs that are sort of bougie, you know.
00:11:45
Speaker 2: It's what Israelis would call the periphery. So, you know, it's not the Tel Aviv to Jerusalem corridor, that center, the Merkaz, that's the center of Israel. The periphery are these anything that's far out on the edges and you can't really get farther out on the edges than Eilat. There's, there's an entire desert in between Jerusalem and Eilat. So it's, it's a.
00:12:04
Speaker 1: Four hour drive from Jerusalem here.
00:12:06
Speaker 2: So he grew up here in a place far from politics, far from, yeah, far from the Polish and the educational elite.
00:12:13
Speaker 1: Right. And there's, there's basically two different dynamics in this campaign right now. The first dynamic is, policy, yes, ideas and positions and history, like what you've done or what you've not done. There's also personality and style. And I want to start with the personality and style and do the contrast. So Netanyahu is basically from Israeli royalty. Okay, we don't really have a king here. You have to go back to King David and King Solomon and all that. But he has been in the ruling elite for and the intellectual elite of the country. His father was a major intellectual here in the country. And this goes back decades. Netanyahu, as you mentioned, has been prime minister on and off for 19 years. So he's considered sort of political royalty. Gadi Agincourt is new to politics. He served in the Israeli military for about 36 years, rising from a basic commando officer to all the way up to the IDF chief of staff. That's the equivalent of the joint chiefs of staff, the chairman of the joint chief staff. So like super high. And who appointed Gadi Eisenkot to be the IDF chief of staff? Well, that was Bibi Netanyahu. So they've worked closely in the past, but obviously they've had a huge break. So that's one difference. Netanyahu did serve in the military, but basically of the political elite, Gadi Eisenkot spent his entire career in the military until he retired and then entered politics. Also, another difference, Netanyahu is from a European Jewish ancestry, which is known as Ashkenazi. That's most Israelis. But a significant portion of the country is known as Sephardic or technically that means Spanish. But what it really means is another term is Mizrahi, which is Eastern, meaning you're Jews that you were born or your parents were born in an Arab country and then had to flee the Arab world to get to Israel. after 1948, when the Arabs kicked out almost 900,000 Jews. So Netanyahu comes from the Ashkenazi. Again, that's the intellectual elite of the country. Gadi Azenkot is from sort of the blue collar Arab Jewish background. His family is from Morocco. And there's never been a prime minister in Israel from the Sephardic or Mizrahi roots. And so the other thing is, and I'm not sure this is fair, but it is true. So a lot of people are talking here, well, Netanyahu, first of all, he did a terrible job and allowed October 7th to happen. But then once it happened and all of our sons got called up into the army and daughters, Netanyahu's oldest, Yair, went to Miami and sort of camped out for the dangers of the war, not serving in the military. But where Gadi Eizenkot's only son served in the military and was killed. in combat in Gaza fighting Hamas. And then two of Agadi Eisenkot's nephews were also killed in combat in the idea of fighting against Hamas in Gaza. So tragic. And it's not entirely fair to say that there are differences. Being the prime minister's son, are you going to send the prime minister's son into Gaza to fight? But why wasn't he in intelligence? Why wasn't he in logistics? Why wasn't he serving? I don't actually honestly know the answer, but many Israelis who are already inclined to be against Netanyahu say, look, Ghanaias understands us. He's gone through it. He's paid the price. He and his whole family, whereas Bibi made good or bad decisions based on how you see it. And his oldest son didn't even serve. So those are some of the stylistic differences. Also, Bibi is just incredibly fluent in English and polished as a speaker. And I've met him. I know both. I've spent time with Eisenkot. He's a very interesting guy. He's very warm, but he comes off as just a little more gruff. His English isn't perfect. It's good, but it's not perfect. He's more blue collar and to use sort of an American term and Bebe's definitely white collar.
00:16:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, I heard someone describe Eisenkot as a walking epitome of the nation. In the sense that he has suffered. He has suffered and he has served and he has suffered. He's carrying the sorrow of October 7th with him personally in the way that the nation has done. And so I think that's part of why people are responding to him, even though he hasn't done a lot to put out what his positions are on various things. But one more thing I just want to make sure that we understand, too, about Bibi. You said Bibi was intellectual. He comes from this, you know, sort of noble background. You know, elite and everything. But he did serve. He served his country admirably, honorably. He lost his brother, of course, who was an amazing leader, an amazing hero, a hero of Israel who was part of the raid, rescuing the hostages, the Israeli and other hostages that were held in Entebbe. back in 76. And so, uh, you know, he's the only Israeli that was killed. He led that operation. And so Bibi has felt Bibi is also a walking epitome of Israel. There's no way to say that he's out of touch or he's, he's not a man who's carried the sorrow of his people and the responsibility. We we've said many times that he has said many times that he feels he was called, he was born to protect Israel from the Iranian nuclear threat. And he has been so effective in making that case to America, in making that case to the world, and then in taking the steps to do something about it. And so we're not by any means trying to say one is more an epitome of Israel than the other. They certainly are both amazing men. We're just trying to tell you the differences and how Israelis are talking about the two in contrast.
00:18:00
Speaker 1: Right. The 60% of Israelis who are like, we're done with Bibi. Like even the most charitable of those who are against him, Again, just to be clear, there's a difference because he, you know, he does have a third of the country with him. And he, you know, if a third of the country voted for him right now, he'd have the same number of votes. But some people are saying they're with him, but they're not going to. I mean, they they appreciate him and they support him, but they're not going to vote for him and his party. So there's a there's a distinction there. It would be a little bit like maybe. I mean, I think it's just analytically like Winston Churchill won World War Two for the British. Like. understood the Nazi threat before anybody else. And then once he was given power, he worked with the president of the United States, FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and they won, right? But what happened at the end of that war? The British people were like, thank you, Mr. Churchill, but goodbye. You were the great wartime president or prime minister of Great Britain, but now we're going to turn towards somebody who can lead us into a new era, a fresh era, a domestic policy, economic growth era. And that was a big change. And I think that even people who like, look, I like Bibi. I trust Bibi. I'm disappointed by some of the mistakes, but I think that maybe we need a change. So we're not sharing with you our personal opinions. What we're sharing with you is what is the dynamic here? And there are big policy differences and there are big decisions that have been made that both Netanyahu and Eisenhower were part of. We want to share those with you. To better understand what's happening and how to pray. That's the big question is, as Israel goes forward, the God of Israel doesn't slumber or sleep. He's going to be with us forever. But he does, as we read in Daniel chapter two, he raises up kings and he removes kings, or in this case, prime minister. So we're going to get it back to this in just a moment. Don't go away. We've got more right here on Inside the Epicenter.
00:20:04
Speaker 2: Our verses for today come from Daniel chapter two, verses 20 through 22. Daniel answered and said, blessed be the name of God forever and ever to whom belongs wisdom and might. He changes times and seasons. He removes Kings and sets up Kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness. and the light dwells with him. Will you join us in praying for Israel at this time of great change, this time of great questioning? Who should lead us? Would you pray that the Israelis would turn their hearts to the Lord and say, the Lord should lead us? This is the most important thing you could be praying for Israel, that they would be calling out to God as their father and as their leader and as their protector. But in addition, pray for this election. Pray that we know that God's will will be done. We pray that people are elected and put into place that will be wise, that will do God's will, and that will also be kind to the Christians here in this land and kind to the neighbors, that they would have God's heart to be a light to the nations. This is our prayer for Israel.
00:21:21
Speaker 1: Amen. Thank you, Lynn. I also want us to pray for safety. for all of the candidates. We're in a time, obviously, in the United States, there's been multiple assassination attempts against President Trump. Actually, I just mentioned Yair Netanyahu, the oldest son. The Netanyahu's have two sons, but I'm just mentioning this one right now. There was apparently, reportedly, an assassination attempt by Iran or a plot that was discovered by U.S. and Israeli intelligence, and the Israelis whisked Yair Netanyahu Netanyahu out of Miami and got him back to Israel because of this apparent threat. So this is very real. The Iranians have already fired a drone several years ago at Netanyahu's private beach home in Caesarea. There's been efforts to try to kill Netanyahu and his family. We need to be praying for him. Gadi Eisenkot says that they are getting more and more death threats. And so the Israeli security services have just assigned a detail to him. So some challenges. So let's be praying. Before we get more into this, Lynn, I just want to, again, thank everybody for being part of this podcast. And I want to encourage you in two areas. One, we are going to, well, we're in Israel. We are inviting you to come to Israel, right? We always say we want you to learn and pray and give and go. Yes, we want you to go. We want you to go with us on our newest Joshua Fund prayer and vision tour of Israel. It'll be next March, starting on March 29th. and it goes to April 9th, and it includes the Epicenter Summit, a one-day summit with President Herzog, Ambassador Mike Huckabee, and Anne Graham Lotz, and Jack Graham of Preston Baptist in Dallas. We've also got Skip Heitzig, a pastor out of a wonderful megachurch in New Mexico, in Albuquerque, and... Myself and others. So we would really love to have you with us. We haven't had a Joshua Fund tour of Israel. since before COVID, right? Not just before the war, but before COVID. And so we would love for you to come. Two of our four buses that we're planning to take are already full and we're already starting to fill up that third. So if you're interested, you, your family, some of your Bible study, or if you're a pastor and maybe you're like, I'm not ready to take a whole tour, but my wife and I, and maybe our missions pastor or some of our elders, we'd like to come please go to joshuafund.com. Again, joshuafund.com. And you'll see all the information right up top. You can click on it and get all the details. We would love for you to come, but we want to make sure that you register and don't miss a seat. The other thing I would just say is we would love to have your financial support as well as your prayer support. And you can go to joshuafund.com. You'll see the big donate button, the yellow donate button up at the top right. You click on that. When you click on it, you're not donating yet. You're just learning what you would do. And, of course, you can mail in a check. But you can also give securely online. And if you became a monthly donor, an Epicenter ally, $ 50, $ 60 a month or more, $ 75, whatever, and become a monthly donor, that would be ideal because then we know you're with us for a longer haul. We can help plan and budget for that. So anyway, I just want to encourage you in those two areas. All right, Lynn, let's pick up with this conversation on, are Israelis about to say bye-bye Bibi, or are they saying hello to Gadi Eisenkota? What's going on here?
00:24:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's talk about the topics. What do people care about right now? One of the topics is security, of course, and how did October 7th happen? You know, we talk often, we enjoyed Bibi's political ads, you know, in recent years where he was called the babysitter and there was a family who, you know, were getting ready to go out for the night and this commercial and suddenly the doorbell rings and there's BB and they say, Oh, Mr. Prime minister, what are you doing here? And he says, I'm the babysitter. The idea was, I'm going to keep you so safe. You don't have to worry. I will protect your children. I will keep your children safe. Now on October 7th, our children were not safe. And on October 8th, they were not safe in the north when Hezbollah joined in what Hamas started in the south, in the Gaza border areas. And then going on, we've had three years of war where we have seen thousands and thousands and thousands of our young people called up as reservists and serving in dangerous places and killed in Gaza, in Lebanon. 20,000 wounded.
00:26:03
Speaker 1: More than 20,000 Israelis wounded in this.
00:26:06
Speaker 2: And that's just the physical wounding. We've talked on this podcast about the mental wounding that's been happening, the trauma that people have been through. And not just the soldiers and reservists, but the wives of those people and the children of those people. And then, of course, everyone who's lived up on the northern border and around the Gaza borders who've been enduring this. missile strikes and running to bomb shelters or being evacuated for a year out of their homes and living in hotels. And so the whole country has not felt safe, has not felt peaceful, for sure. And so this is one of the biggest issues, as always. But at this moment, Bibi's, you know, sort of ace in the, you know, in the card game, which is I am the Mr. Security. is not feeling to some people as a true strength of his anymore.
00:26:55
Speaker 1: That's right. And I think American evangelicals will say, yeah, okay, but what about, didn't he work with President Trump to destroy the Iranian nuclear program? Yes, Netanyahu absolutely did that. And to destroy most of the Iranian ballistic missile program? Yes, Netanyahu absolutely did that. And what about destroying all of Iran's Navy and all of Iran's Air Force and And doesn't Netanyahu get credit for that? And our answer would be he should. He does. Didn't he take out the entire leadership of the Hezbollah terror movement and destroy most of the ballistic missiles and missiles? terror forces in Lebanon? Yes, Netanyahu did that. And what about most, I mean, okay, the top leadership of Hamas, weren't they already assassinated? Yes. And doesn't Israel control 60% of Gaza right now and all the missiles pretty much are destroyed? Also true. Didn't Netanyahu just go to Gaza? He was literally in Gaza a couple of days ago. Yes, that's true. And so the question that our American evangelical friends often ask is, So why isn't he getting credit for that? My answer, Lynn, you might have a different answer, but my answer would be among those who think that while flawed, Netanyahu is the best leader still for Israel, he's getting a lot of credit. But there are people who, even in the Likud party, even in Netanyahu's own party, who say, I appreciate all that, but the failure of October 7th was so great that I can't forgive that politically. They may not forgive it spiritually or whatever personally, but that was the greatest slaughter of Jews on a single day since the Holocaust. So thank God that Netanyahu was able to make all these successes and other successes, persuading President Trump to bring the American embassy to Jerusalem or the Abraham Accords all true. So that's the test. And I think one of the questions is this. Are Israelis going to fire Bibi Netanyahu for his failures on October 7th? Or are Israelis going to rehire Netanyahu saying, OK, that was bad, but look at all these successes. So this security issue is a big deal. The challenge that Bibi faces is Gadi. Gadi is a former IDF chief of staff. Gadi has been in the war room. Bibi himself chose Gadi Eizenkot to be the IDF chief of staff. So Netanyahu is going to have a hard time pinning Gadi Eizenkot as soft, as weak, as inexperienced, as unable to defend Israel, right? And Eisenkot wasn't responsible for October 7th. So this is where Netanyahu's political calculus gets difficult.
00:29:49
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
00:29:49
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
00:29:50
Speaker 2: And so, okay, so that's one topic, the security and the overall, but also the handling of the war and October 7th. Then economically, The Israelis are suffering. I mean, when people have been in reserve duty for years, I mean, altogether, if you put all the days together.
00:30:07
Speaker 1: Three years now. Right.
00:30:08
Speaker 2: They've been out of work. How many hotels? Did you say 90?
00:30:11
Speaker 1: 90 hotels have gone completely out of business. The tourism industry is a wreckage. It's one of the reasons we want people to come back to Israel with us and come on a tour so we can help show the Israeli people that Christians are starting to come back. But so far, there's almost no tourists. Right.
00:30:27
Speaker 2: Now, another huge issue, I would say, is the ultra-Orthodox, the religious people in Israel. The ultra-Orthodox. We're not talking about Jewish people who are traditional, who celebrate the holidays. We're talking about ultra-Orthodox. These are otherwise called Haredi people. These are people who do not serve in the military, refuse to serve in the military. They also do not pay taxes. They, in fact... do not work. They live, the men do not work. They live on welfare because they believe that their duty to Israel and to the world maybe, but they would say to Israel, to the Jewish people is to study the Torah, to study the Talmud, to study the rabbinic writings and to discuss them and to pray during all day. And they won't serve. And this population is growing because the more children that you have, the more welfare that you get. And they have, huge families.
00:31:24
Speaker 1: They also believe in be fruitful and multiply, but there is a benefit when you don't get much money, you get welfare. You get more if you have more children, which reinforces that they're growing while other people are having maybe, well, technically 2.2, 2.4 children.
00:31:41
Speaker 2: Well, Israel does have one of the highest birth rates in the world, which is wonderful. But a large part of that is coming out of this population. And so they're growing and their power is growing. And they are part of Benjamin Netanyahu. They're a key, a linchpin to his political party. Now, I want to be really careful to say we love all the people of Israel. We love even the difficult people. I'm glad that God loves difficult people because I'm sometimes a difficult person. And so is my lovely husband here. No, but the Lord is the God of love. And so We are not absolutely not saying that these are bad people in any worse than any other bad people. However, what we do want to describe is this great animosity between this division in Israeli society that is very much felt. It's also important to say that, you know, ultra-Orthodox religious people are not, all of them are not working. There are still, there are some people who work. There are some people who serve in the military.
00:32:40
Speaker 1: But that gulf is the difference between the vast majority of the population whose kids are serving the military. Our own youngest is serving now in a combat unit and two others have served in combat units. The Messianic community does send their kids to the army and proudly serve. but the whole country is like, wait, we've been in a war for three years. Our kids are serving. We're serving. We're working hard. We, to make ends meet, we're paying taxes. Why does this whole swath of the country say, we're not doing any of that. And you, you have to pay us. And why is Netanyahu supporting that? Why? And because Gotti Eisenhower has taken the position. No, that's, we're done with that. If I become the prime minister and I build a coalition with, We're making the ultra-Orthodox send their sons to the army, and we're going to start to make economic reforms and start reducing subsidies. He's positioned himself as a military leader who says, our army can't survive if everybody doesn't do their share.
00:33:44
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And really, wouldn't you say that Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition... obviously it's tricky for Americans. I'm still under learning as an American and Israeli, this whole parliamentary system, which is what the Knesset is, you know, modeled after the British system, but you have to make a coalition. You're not, you don't just win. Your party is not just in charge. You have to be the one that gets the most seats, but nobody gets a majority of the seats, actual literal majority. And then you have to build this coalition. So a big part of the problem is, with Benjamin Netanyahu is who he has brought into his coalition. And if he loses them, then it falls apart. And so some of those people are very problematic.
00:34:30
Speaker 1: Exactly. I mean, they're very unpopular by the rest of the country. And Eisenkot, relatively new to the political world and like only been in a member of the Knesset for the last four or five years, he's seizing advantage of that. And so that's a, we talked in the first session part of the podcast about the sort of the stylistic and personality and history differences. But there are these differences in terms of actual policy and Netanyahu. So going back to that question, why isn't Netanyahu getting more credit for all these massive successes, historic successes? He said he'd take out the Iranian nuclear program. And my gosh, he did it. Why doesn't he get credit? Because it's getting undercut by how angry Netanyahu Many Israelis, not all, but most really, are angry about Netanyahu's support and alliance with the ultra-Orthodox. There's one other thing. I want to flip it back to the other side, a policy difference between Netanyahu and Eisenhower as we wrap. And I think this is going to become a big issue in the final weeks and days of the campaign. And that is this. In the spring of 2024, May, June of 2024, President Biden, who was, of course, in power at that time, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were putting a lot of pressure on Netanyahu to say, look, we can make a final deal with Hamas, get all the hostages out, or almost all of them. We'll not just do a ceasefire, but we'll say there's a total end to the war. Israel will withdraw from Gaza entirely, but you'll have all your hostages back. We'll end the war. And as a sweetener, we'll convince Saudi Arabia to make a deal with you, Israel, and bring peace between Saudi Arabia and Israel. That looks like a grand bargain and a very attractive offer. Now, in the war room, and I just interviewed one of the reporters who just wrote a wonderful book. We'll talk about that in a future episode called In the War Room, the real inside story of what has been happening over the last few years behind closed doors, inside the epicenter of it, as it were. But in that war room, Gadi Eisenkot was one of the members of the war cabinet. And his position, along with some of his colleagues, Benny Gantz, the former defense minister, and then defense minister Yoav Galant, Eisenkot's position was, let's take the deal. Biden is our best friend, meaning not as a partisan, but America is our best friend. This is the president. He stands with us. Many Democrats don't. He can get our hostages out, at least most of them. We'll end the war. We'll take the deal with the Saudis. Let's do it. And he was pushing hard on Netanyahu to say yes. Netanyahu said no. And a lot of the country at that moment, 70% of Israelis at that moment were with Eisenhower and Gallant and Gantz saying, for crying out loud, give us our hostages. Let's be done with this. Netanyahu's position was, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. We have destroyed almost all of Hamas, but the final brigades of Hamas are in the southern city of Gaza called Rafah, right on the Egyptian border. We can't leave four or five standing divisions of Hamas. We have to go into Rafah. We have to move the Palestinian civilians out. Then we have to send the IDF in and destroy what's left of Hamas. And by the way, Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, is still on the loose. Mohamed Def, the military chief of Hamas in Gaza, still alive. Sheikh Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah in Lebanon, still alive. All the missiles that are facing us from Hezbollah in Lebanon, still there. And the Iranian leadership and all their missiles, still there. We can't surrender. Now, both had a very powerful argument. In the end, Netanyahu said, was the prime minister. So he prevailed. And so Eisenkot and Gantz, they resigned in June of 24. Now, why will that come up? You could say at the time that was a fair and interesting debate. Well, what's happened since? Well, Netanyahu did move and the IDF did move all the Palestinians out of Rafah. They went in, they destroyed most, not all of Hamas. And they got the Ayatollah Khomeini, they got Sheikh Nasrallah, they got Yahya As-Sinwar, they got Mohamed Def. And Netanyahu's argument in the final days of this campaign is going to be like, you would have surrendered. That's why you should not be the prime minister. And that's going to be a strong argument. And it's going to be interesting to see how Eisenhower parries that. I think his main thing is going to be like, yeah, you got things, but is Hamas done? You said we were going to get total victory. Hamas is still in power and they're not disarmed. Is Hezbollah done? No, they're not done. Is the Iranian regime completely not a threat to us? No. You said you'd have total victory. You didn't get it. So why are you telling me that I wouldn't have gotten total victory? It's a very interesting debate. But the point is, we're just trying to give you a sense of the high stakes and the sharp elbows that are coming in these final days of the campaign. Lynn, I'll give you the last word.
00:39:46
Speaker 2: Well, only to say that, you know, the thing is that... These two men, yes. Actually, if it was just these two men and they were the only people that you could vote for, the whole country was just voting on these two men alone and not the other dozen parties or however many it is that are going to be on the ballot. They would be actually very close. It's not a huge.
00:40:06
Speaker 1: The polls say Gotti-Eisenhower right now is at 41 and Bibi is at 34. In a head-to-head sort of theoretical matchup, if it was like a presidential election, Gotti-Eisenhower would win. buy six, seven points, but that could shift in those final days.
00:40:22
Speaker 2: Right. But that's not the case. That's not the case. The case is that it's really going to be who can get the largest number of seats and who can put together the largest team to be given that opportunity to lead the government. So it's very complicated. But the beautiful thing is that it's not complicated to the Lord. And I think, you know, we can wrap by just reminding ourselves, you know, out of the Proverbs, a wonderful book of God's wisdom that Proverbs 19, 21 says, many, many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. And we can count on that, that God's purposes are going to be accomplished, that we need to stay focused on being the peacemakers in this world, being the ones that work to bring peace between God and man and between man and one another. This is our role as followers of Jesus. And so be praying for the church in Israel that, yes, we'd love to see whoever's in charge be more friendly toward the Christians, the Messianics in particular, you know, these very strong ultra religious parties really hate the Christians. And so they're given places of power when it comes to education, sometimes visas and things like that, immigration. And so they make it very difficult for Jewish people who believe in Jesus to operate well. So we need to pray for these things. There's lots to trust the Lord for, but this is just a taste of this very interesting and complicated world of Israeli politics. So we encourage you to pray and keep on learning and keep on praying.
00:41:57
Speaker 1: Amen.
00:41:57
Speaker 2: Well, let's close.
00:41:58
Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening. Please go to joshuafund.com. Learn more about the Joshua Fund Prayer and Vision Tour next spring, March into early April, and the Epicenter Summit. We want you to be there. We want you to step into the story And Lynn and I will be leading that tour, and we would just love to have you. And you can also give at joshuafund.com. Become an Epicenter ally. Become a monthly donor. Thank you. These would be great blessings to us, to the team, and, of course, to all the ministries that we invest in. Most of all, we need your prayers, and we appreciate your encouragement. Thank you so much for listening. We've got much more ahead as we head into this fall. It's a very exciting, challenging fall. And we're so grateful that you choose to be part of this podcast. Share it with your friends. Tell other people about it. And let them come inside the epicenter as well. From Eilat, the southern city of Israel, this is Joel. And Lynn. And we're so grateful for you. God bless you. Shalom from Israel. Shalom, shalom. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Are Israelis going to fire Bibi Netanyahu for his failures on October 7th? Or are Israelis going to rehire Netanyahu saying, OK, that was bad, but look at all these successes. As Israelis go to the polls on October 27th for our first national elections in four years, are voters about to say bye bye Bibi? Bibi Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu's nickname is Bibi. And why are most of the polls showing that Netanyahu, Bibi Netanyahu, and his political allies are in big, big trouble and may soon be voted out of power? Who is Gadi Eisenkot? And who is his Yashar party? Why have they been surging all summer? Could Eisenkot become Israel's next prime minister? What are the main issues and dynamics at play in this election? And how should Christians be praying as Israel's election day rapidly approaches? Hi, welcome to Inside the Epicenter, a podcast of the Joshua Fund, a ministry to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus. This is Joel Rosenberg, co-founder of the Joshua Fund and your co-host with my dear and lovely wife, Lynn Rosenberg. We are in Eilat right now, right on the Red Sea. It's a beautiful little resort city in Israel that from this vantage point, you can see Egypt, you can see the kingdom of Jordan, and you can see the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It's just a beautiful place. We're here with some family and some ministry partners. But Lena, it's great to be with you. We're having fun in the sun, but Israelis are preparing for a big election day.
00:01:47
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. And it's on the lips of every Israeli. You can't talk for very long without people saying, so what do you think is going to happen? What's it going to be? And it's an amazing thing to think about. Benjamin Netanyahu has been the prime minister, not consecutively, but all together for 19 years. That is quite a long time. That is not the American two, four year terms. That is a long time. So it's hard to, honestly, it's hard to imagine Israel being led by someone else. And yet it seems that it's quite possible that's what we could be looking at.
00:02:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true. When Netanyahu was first elected, it was 1996. That's 30 years ago. Okay, now he was voted out of power in 1999. So he only served about three years. Then he was putting his comeback campaign team together in 2000. That's when I was briefly... hired just for a few months. I didn't really play some major role or anything, but I just want to say that I'm not close to Netanyahu. We've met many times over the years. Lynn's met with Netanyahu. But I just want to be fully disclosing that I did work for him once. But I've also been very, I think, open and honest both on this podcast and on All Original News and the Rosenberg Report things I agree with him on, things I disagree with him on. The Joshua Fund is not a political organization. We're a nonpartisan nonprofit and therefore nonpartisan organization. So we're not, this podcast is not about supporting Netanyahu or being against him or whatever, but it's trying to give you a sense as we get close, just two months away now to these big elections. We want you as our audience and Joshua Fund supporters and prayer partners just to know what in the world is going on And how should we pray? Right.
00:03:38
Speaker 2: I mean, we can start with some facts. You know, growing, living in Washington all our married life until we moved to Israel 12 years ago. We're very familiar with elections and politics and election cycles.
00:03:49
Speaker 1: I helped a lot of people lose over the years.
00:03:51
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, you did.
00:03:52
Speaker 1: Apparently, including Netanyahu.
00:03:54
Speaker 2: Many people have asked you to work for their enemies so that you could continue that tradition. But you're always looking at polls. People that are in politics, they want to know what are the people thinking? If the election was held today, what would happen? How would they vote? And so there have been some polls lately. And we have some of those details. Like, for instance, Israelis were asked just this last week who they prefer to be their next prime minister. Only 34% of them say Netanyahu.
00:04:22
Speaker 1: 34%.
00:04:22
Speaker 2: That's 6 in 10 Israelis saying no. To Netanyahu.
00:04:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think American evangelicals, many of whom, not all, but many of whom have a high respect for Netanyahu, would be surprised to think that 60 percent, 58 technically, 58 percent of Israelis say basically anybody but Netanyahu and that only a third of the country wants him because American evangelicals see him when he's usually at his big picture strategic perspective. He's on American television. or he's speaking to Congress, and he's giving the big picture. And we see, you know, American evangelicals see Netanyahu's accomplishments. They don't see the sausage making of internal Israeli politics. And some of the cross currents are reasons that Messianic Jews and Israeli evangelicals don't, most, don't support Netanyahu. Well, we can talk about that as we go through. But yeah, I think Americans would be generally surprised, American evangelicals surprised that Netanyahu is held in such low esteem right now. And in fact, the polls have been turning against him. Yeah.
00:05:34
Speaker 2: So I think there's a couple of things to talk about. I think for our listeners would be interesting to know, first of all, why, why would that be? What are the issues at play? I think there's several things, you know, we're, We've had a very challenging period of time, not just October 7th forward, but even prior to October 7th, the country was extremely divided, as divided as it has ever been. In fact, people, some people, Israeli leaders were saying that there could be civil war. Like there was this much.
00:06:01
Speaker 1: That was actually on the void. I mean, Israeli President Herzog that we met with, he had said publicly that Israel was on the verge of civil war. This was just five months before October 7th. Right.
00:06:12
Speaker 2: And then of course, when October 7th happened, And after the shock wore off, the instant reaction of all Israelis was to come together to put down their protesting signs. I mean, literally prior to October 7th, there were protests against Bibi for a lot of things, for judicial reform, for everything. Just the way that he was handling various issues. And we can get into that if you want, Joel. But but basically, there were so many protests that they were shutting down the highways of Israel. They were shutting down Tel Aviv. They were blocking Netanyahu's wife in beauty salons where she had to get extracted by people.
00:06:46
Speaker 1: I mean, it was universities shut down, banks shut down at its worst moment, at its lowest moment. The whole country basically came to a screeching halt and a million Israelis, a million Israelis were out on the streets protesting against Netanyahu. The country is only 10 million and 2.6 million are children. So if you think about a million out of, let's say, 7 million, that's a staggering. It'd be like 50 million Americans turning out under the streets to protest Trump or protest Biden or whatever.
00:07:18
Speaker 2: But when October 7th happened, Israelis really, for the most part, I would say largely, put down their protest signs and picked up their weapons, picked up their, just started to help, started to organize to do things to support the country. They were wanting the hostages to be freed. They were trying to organize support groups for hostage families. I mean, Israel's an amazing place when they're in a crisis, they come together like a family, like a really healthy family should, and it's amazing. The years have now worn on and people are beginning to pick up their protest signs again. And also because the election is coming close. And I think part of it is all those issues that were there before. But also, October 7th is a huge issue. Why did it happen? Did Bibi allow it to happen? And how has he handled it so far? What do you want to start explaining these things, Joel?
00:08:12
Speaker 1: It's a good question. Let's set up the sort of the edges of the puzzle again, just for a moment. We're talking about an election. So we're talking about Netanyahu is the leader of a party called Likud. That's a center right. So pretty much at this point, it's not even center. I would say a right wing party. Right now, as we sit here and we have this conversation, Lynn, right, the government led by Netanyahu, led by the Likud party with its other coalition partners. Likud has 32 seats. in our parliament. The parliament is called the Knesset, basically the gathering place. And so Likud has 32 seats of the 120 seats in the parliament. So basically one in four seats is controlled by Netanyahu and his team. Okay, so there you go. Now, polls are showing that if the elections were held right this moment, as you and I record this, Likud would drop from 32 to 20 or so. that's a collapse of one third of the support of Netanyahu and his party. So again, we'll get to the specific reasons in a moment, but that just shows how precarious Netanyahu's situation is. His coalition partners have also collapsed. His finance minister, a man named Bezalel Smotrich, his party looks like it's going to not even make it back into the parliament unless this new deal merger that Smotrich made with another party might get it five seats, six seats. But my point is, like a week ago, Smotrich was, his party had been, you know, hit by a tsunami and was heading out to sea, you know. So two senior partners of Netanyahu's party have just bolted and said, we're done with Netanyahu. We are going to start our own party. This is a former Speaker of the Parliament, former Chairman of the Foreign Relations and Security Committee, committee in the Knesset. And that's the same person, Yuli Edelstein. And Gilad Erdan, who was Netanyahu's appointee to be the Israeli ambassador to both to the UN and to the US. Like these are not insignificant backbenchers. These were senior people. And they're like, yeah, we're done with Bibi. Now, that being said, who's the challenger? Again, just setting up the context. Gadi Eisenkot. Now, Gadi Eisenkot is a very interesting figure. Right now, Well, when the year began, when 2026 began, Gadi Eisen has a party called Yashar, which basically means straight, but it can also be sort of interpreted as true or honest. But Yashar, straight.
00:10:43
Speaker 2: Right. Like I'm dealing straight with you. I'm speaking straight to you.
00:10:47
Speaker 1: Right.
00:10:47
Speaker 2: I'm not sugarcoating it.
00:10:49
Speaker 1: Exactly. But even when, you know, when you're driving along and you've got your Waze GPS system, you'll come up to a traffic circle and it'll say Yashar. It just means go straight. Okay. So that's the, That's what Gadi Aizenkot's party is called. So Aizenkot's party was at 10 seats in January. By summer, he was at 20 seats. And now we're in the fall. Several polls have him at 26 seats. He and his party are now ahead of Netanyahu. So it's basically Bibi versus Gadi. And so that's interesting. Now, we're in the city of Anglat. We're not here for this reason. but Gadi Eizenkot is an Elati. He's somebody from the city. This is a, it's a tourist town, but it's also a very blue collar town. It's an immigrant town. It's a, it's a town sort of, it's not the polished Tel Aviv suburbs that are sort of bougie, you know.
00:11:45
Speaker 2: It's what Israelis would call the periphery. So, you know, it's not the Tel Aviv to Jerusalem corridor, that center, the Merkaz, that's the center of Israel. The periphery are these anything that's far out on the edges and you can't really get farther out on the edges than Eilat. There's, there's an entire desert in between Jerusalem and Eilat. So it's, it's a.
00:12:04
Speaker 1: Four hour drive from Jerusalem here.
00:12:06
Speaker 2: So he grew up here in a place far from politics, far from, yeah, far from the Polish and the educational elite.
00:12:13
Speaker 1: Right. And there's, there's basically two different dynamics in this campaign right now. The first dynamic is, policy, yes, ideas and positions and history, like what you've done or what you've not done. There's also personality and style. And I want to start with the personality and style and do the contrast. So Netanyahu is basically from Israeli royalty. Okay, we don't really have a king here. You have to go back to King David and King Solomon and all that. But he has been in the ruling elite for and the intellectual elite of the country. His father was a major intellectual here in the country. And this goes back decades. Netanyahu, as you mentioned, has been prime minister on and off for 19 years. So he's considered sort of political royalty. Gadi Agincourt is new to politics. He served in the Israeli military for about 36 years, rising from a basic commando officer to all the way up to the IDF chief of staff. That's the equivalent of the joint chiefs of staff, the chairman of the joint chief staff. So like super high. And who appointed Gadi Eisenkot to be the IDF chief of staff? Well, that was Bibi Netanyahu. So they've worked closely in the past, but obviously they've had a huge break. So that's one difference. Netanyahu did serve in the military, but basically of the political elite, Gadi Eisenkot spent his entire career in the military until he retired and then entered politics. Also, another difference, Netanyahu is from a European Jewish ancestry, which is known as Ashkenazi. That's most Israelis. But a significant portion of the country is known as Sephardic or technically that means Spanish. But what it really means is another term is Mizrahi, which is Eastern, meaning you're Jews that you were born or your parents were born in an Arab country and then had to flee the Arab world to get to Israel. after 1948, when the Arabs kicked out almost 900,000 Jews. So Netanyahu comes from the Ashkenazi. Again, that's the intellectual elite of the country. Gadi Azenkot is from sort of the blue collar Arab Jewish background. His family is from Morocco. And there's never been a prime minister in Israel from the Sephardic or Mizrahi roots. And so the other thing is, and I'm not sure this is fair, but it is true. So a lot of people are talking here, well, Netanyahu, first of all, he did a terrible job and allowed October 7th to happen. But then once it happened and all of our sons got called up into the army and daughters, Netanyahu's oldest, Yair, went to Miami and sort of camped out for the dangers of the war, not serving in the military. But where Gadi Eizenkot's only son served in the military and was killed. in combat in Gaza fighting Hamas. And then two of Agadi Eisenkot's nephews were also killed in combat in the idea of fighting against Hamas in Gaza. So tragic. And it's not entirely fair to say that there are differences. Being the prime minister's son, are you going to send the prime minister's son into Gaza to fight? But why wasn't he in intelligence? Why wasn't he in logistics? Why wasn't he serving? I don't actually honestly know the answer, but many Israelis who are already inclined to be against Netanyahu say, look, Ghanaias understands us. He's gone through it. He's paid the price. He and his whole family, whereas Bibi made good or bad decisions based on how you see it. And his oldest son didn't even serve. So those are some of the stylistic differences. Also, Bibi is just incredibly fluent in English and polished as a speaker. And I've met him. I know both. I've spent time with Eisenkot. He's a very interesting guy. He's very warm, but he comes off as just a little more gruff. His English isn't perfect. It's good, but it's not perfect. He's more blue collar and to use sort of an American term and Bebe's definitely white collar.
00:16:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, I heard someone describe Eisenkot as a walking epitome of the nation. In the sense that he has suffered. He has suffered and he has served and he has suffered. He's carrying the sorrow of October 7th with him personally in the way that the nation has done. And so I think that's part of why people are responding to him, even though he hasn't done a lot to put out what his positions are on various things. But one more thing I just want to make sure that we understand, too, about Bibi. You said Bibi was intellectual. He comes from this, you know, sort of noble background. You know, elite and everything. But he did serve. He served his country admirably, honorably. He lost his brother, of course, who was an amazing leader, an amazing hero, a hero of Israel who was part of the raid, rescuing the hostages, the Israeli and other hostages that were held in Entebbe. back in 76. And so, uh, you know, he's the only Israeli that was killed. He led that operation. And so Bibi has felt Bibi is also a walking epitome of Israel. There's no way to say that he's out of touch or he's, he's not a man who's carried the sorrow of his people and the responsibility. We we've said many times that he has said many times that he feels he was called, he was born to protect Israel from the Iranian nuclear threat. And he has been so effective in making that case to America, in making that case to the world, and then in taking the steps to do something about it. And so we're not by any means trying to say one is more an epitome of Israel than the other. They certainly are both amazing men. We're just trying to tell you the differences and how Israelis are talking about the two in contrast.
00:18:00
Speaker 1: Right. The 60% of Israelis who are like, we're done with Bibi. Like even the most charitable of those who are against him, Again, just to be clear, there's a difference because he, you know, he does have a third of the country with him. And he, you know, if a third of the country voted for him right now, he'd have the same number of votes. But some people are saying they're with him, but they're not going to. I mean, they they appreciate him and they support him, but they're not going to vote for him and his party. So there's a there's a distinction there. It would be a little bit like maybe. I mean, I think it's just analytically like Winston Churchill won World War Two for the British. Like. understood the Nazi threat before anybody else. And then once he was given power, he worked with the president of the United States, FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and they won, right? But what happened at the end of that war? The British people were like, thank you, Mr. Churchill, but goodbye. You were the great wartime president or prime minister of Great Britain, but now we're going to turn towards somebody who can lead us into a new era, a fresh era, a domestic policy, economic growth era. And that was a big change. And I think that even people who like, look, I like Bibi. I trust Bibi. I'm disappointed by some of the mistakes, but I think that maybe we need a change. So we're not sharing with you our personal opinions. What we're sharing with you is what is the dynamic here? And there are big policy differences and there are big decisions that have been made that both Netanyahu and Eisenhower were part of. We want to share those with you. To better understand what's happening and how to pray. That's the big question is, as Israel goes forward, the God of Israel doesn't slumber or sleep. He's going to be with us forever. But he does, as we read in Daniel chapter two, he raises up kings and he removes kings, or in this case, prime minister. So we're going to get it back to this in just a moment. Don't go away. We've got more right here on Inside the Epicenter.
00:20:04
Speaker 2: Our verses for today come from Daniel chapter two, verses 20 through 22. Daniel answered and said, blessed be the name of God forever and ever to whom belongs wisdom and might. He changes times and seasons. He removes Kings and sets up Kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness. and the light dwells with him. Will you join us in praying for Israel at this time of great change, this time of great questioning? Who should lead us? Would you pray that the Israelis would turn their hearts to the Lord and say, the Lord should lead us? This is the most important thing you could be praying for Israel, that they would be calling out to God as their father and as their leader and as their protector. But in addition, pray for this election. Pray that we know that God's will will be done. We pray that people are elected and put into place that will be wise, that will do God's will, and that will also be kind to the Christians here in this land and kind to the neighbors, that they would have God's heart to be a light to the nations. This is our prayer for Israel.
00:21:21
Speaker 1: Amen. Thank you, Lynn. I also want us to pray for safety. for all of the candidates. We're in a time, obviously, in the United States, there's been multiple assassination attempts against President Trump. Actually, I just mentioned Yair Netanyahu, the oldest son. The Netanyahu's have two sons, but I'm just mentioning this one right now. There was apparently, reportedly, an assassination attempt by Iran or a plot that was discovered by U.S. and Israeli intelligence, and the Israelis whisked Yair Netanyahu Netanyahu out of Miami and got him back to Israel because of this apparent threat. So this is very real. The Iranians have already fired a drone several years ago at Netanyahu's private beach home in Caesarea. There's been efforts to try to kill Netanyahu and his family. We need to be praying for him. Gadi Eisenkot says that they are getting more and more death threats. And so the Israeli security services have just assigned a detail to him. So some challenges. So let's be praying. Before we get more into this, Lynn, I just want to, again, thank everybody for being part of this podcast. And I want to encourage you in two areas. One, we are going to, well, we're in Israel. We are inviting you to come to Israel, right? We always say we want you to learn and pray and give and go. Yes, we want you to go. We want you to go with us on our newest Joshua Fund prayer and vision tour of Israel. It'll be next March, starting on March 29th. and it goes to April 9th, and it includes the Epicenter Summit, a one-day summit with President Herzog, Ambassador Mike Huckabee, and Anne Graham Lotz, and Jack Graham of Preston Baptist in Dallas. We've also got Skip Heitzig, a pastor out of a wonderful megachurch in New Mexico, in Albuquerque, and... Myself and others. So we would really love to have you with us. We haven't had a Joshua Fund tour of Israel. since before COVID, right? Not just before the war, but before COVID. And so we would love for you to come. Two of our four buses that we're planning to take are already full and we're already starting to fill up that third. So if you're interested, you, your family, some of your Bible study, or if you're a pastor and maybe you're like, I'm not ready to take a whole tour, but my wife and I, and maybe our missions pastor or some of our elders, we'd like to come please go to joshuafund.com. Again, joshuafund.com. And you'll see all the information right up top. You can click on it and get all the details. We would love for you to come, but we want to make sure that you register and don't miss a seat. The other thing I would just say is we would love to have your financial support as well as your prayer support. And you can go to joshuafund.com. You'll see the big donate button, the yellow donate button up at the top right. You click on that. When you click on it, you're not donating yet. You're just learning what you would do. And, of course, you can mail in a check. But you can also give securely online. And if you became a monthly donor, an Epicenter ally, $ 50, $ 60 a month or more, $ 75, whatever, and become a monthly donor, that would be ideal because then we know you're with us for a longer haul. We can help plan and budget for that. So anyway, I just want to encourage you in those two areas. All right, Lynn, let's pick up with this conversation on, are Israelis about to say bye-bye Bibi, or are they saying hello to Gadi Eisenkota? What's going on here?
00:24:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's talk about the topics. What do people care about right now? One of the topics is security, of course, and how did October 7th happen? You know, we talk often, we enjoyed Bibi's political ads, you know, in recent years where he was called the babysitter and there was a family who, you know, were getting ready to go out for the night and this commercial and suddenly the doorbell rings and there's BB and they say, Oh, Mr. Prime minister, what are you doing here? And he says, I'm the babysitter. The idea was, I'm going to keep you so safe. You don't have to worry. I will protect your children. I will keep your children safe. Now on October 7th, our children were not safe. And on October 8th, they were not safe in the north when Hezbollah joined in what Hamas started in the south, in the Gaza border areas. And then going on, we've had three years of war where we have seen thousands and thousands and thousands of our young people called up as reservists and serving in dangerous places and killed in Gaza, in Lebanon. 20,000 wounded.
00:26:03
Speaker 1: More than 20,000 Israelis wounded in this.
00:26:06
Speaker 2: And that's just the physical wounding. We've talked on this podcast about the mental wounding that's been happening, the trauma that people have been through. And not just the soldiers and reservists, but the wives of those people and the children of those people. And then, of course, everyone who's lived up on the northern border and around the Gaza borders who've been enduring this. missile strikes and running to bomb shelters or being evacuated for a year out of their homes and living in hotels. And so the whole country has not felt safe, has not felt peaceful, for sure. And so this is one of the biggest issues, as always. But at this moment, Bibi's, you know, sort of ace in the, you know, in the card game, which is I am the Mr. Security. is not feeling to some people as a true strength of his anymore.
00:26:55
Speaker 1: That's right. And I think American evangelicals will say, yeah, okay, but what about, didn't he work with President Trump to destroy the Iranian nuclear program? Yes, Netanyahu absolutely did that. And to destroy most of the Iranian ballistic missile program? Yes, Netanyahu absolutely did that. And what about destroying all of Iran's Navy and all of Iran's Air Force and And doesn't Netanyahu get credit for that? And our answer would be he should. He does. Didn't he take out the entire leadership of the Hezbollah terror movement and destroy most of the ballistic missiles and missiles? terror forces in Lebanon? Yes, Netanyahu did that. And what about most, I mean, okay, the top leadership of Hamas, weren't they already assassinated? Yes. And doesn't Israel control 60% of Gaza right now and all the missiles pretty much are destroyed? Also true. Didn't Netanyahu just go to Gaza? He was literally in Gaza a couple of days ago. Yes, that's true. And so the question that our American evangelical friends often ask is, So why isn't he getting credit for that? My answer, Lynn, you might have a different answer, but my answer would be among those who think that while flawed, Netanyahu is the best leader still for Israel, he's getting a lot of credit. But there are people who, even in the Likud party, even in Netanyahu's own party, who say, I appreciate all that, but the failure of October 7th was so great that I can't forgive that politically. They may not forgive it spiritually or whatever personally, but that was the greatest slaughter of Jews on a single day since the Holocaust. So thank God that Netanyahu was able to make all these successes and other successes, persuading President Trump to bring the American embassy to Jerusalem or the Abraham Accords all true. So that's the test. And I think one of the questions is this. Are Israelis going to fire Bibi Netanyahu for his failures on October 7th? Or are Israelis going to rehire Netanyahu saying, OK, that was bad, but look at all these successes. So this security issue is a big deal. The challenge that Bibi faces is Gadi. Gadi is a former IDF chief of staff. Gadi has been in the war room. Bibi himself chose Gadi Eizenkot to be the IDF chief of staff. So Netanyahu is going to have a hard time pinning Gadi Eizenkot as soft, as weak, as inexperienced, as unable to defend Israel, right? And Eisenkot wasn't responsible for October 7th. So this is where Netanyahu's political calculus gets difficult.
00:29:49
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
00:29:49
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
00:29:50
Speaker 2: And so, okay, so that's one topic, the security and the overall, but also the handling of the war and October 7th. Then economically, The Israelis are suffering. I mean, when people have been in reserve duty for years, I mean, altogether, if you put all the days together.
00:30:07
Speaker 1: Three years now. Right.
00:30:08
Speaker 2: They've been out of work. How many hotels? Did you say 90?
00:30:11
Speaker 1: 90 hotels have gone completely out of business. The tourism industry is a wreckage. It's one of the reasons we want people to come back to Israel with us and come on a tour so we can help show the Israeli people that Christians are starting to come back. But so far, there's almost no tourists. Right.
00:30:27
Speaker 2: Now, another huge issue, I would say, is the ultra-Orthodox, the religious people in Israel. The ultra-Orthodox. We're not talking about Jewish people who are traditional, who celebrate the holidays. We're talking about ultra-Orthodox. These are otherwise called Haredi people. These are people who do not serve in the military, refuse to serve in the military. They also do not pay taxes. They, in fact... do not work. They live, the men do not work. They live on welfare because they believe that their duty to Israel and to the world maybe, but they would say to Israel, to the Jewish people is to study the Torah, to study the Talmud, to study the rabbinic writings and to discuss them and to pray during all day. And they won't serve. And this population is growing because the more children that you have, the more welfare that you get. And they have, huge families.
00:31:24
Speaker 1: They also believe in be fruitful and multiply, but there is a benefit when you don't get much money, you get welfare. You get more if you have more children, which reinforces that they're growing while other people are having maybe, well, technically 2.2, 2.4 children.
00:31:41
Speaker 2: Well, Israel does have one of the highest birth rates in the world, which is wonderful. But a large part of that is coming out of this population. And so they're growing and their power is growing. And they are part of Benjamin Netanyahu. They're a key, a linchpin to his political party. Now, I want to be really careful to say we love all the people of Israel. We love even the difficult people. I'm glad that God loves difficult people because I'm sometimes a difficult person. And so is my lovely husband here. No, but the Lord is the God of love. And so We are not absolutely not saying that these are bad people in any worse than any other bad people. However, what we do want to describe is this great animosity between this division in Israeli society that is very much felt. It's also important to say that, you know, ultra-Orthodox religious people are not, all of them are not working. There are still, there are some people who work. There are some people who serve in the military.
00:32:40
Speaker 1: But that gulf is the difference between the vast majority of the population whose kids are serving the military. Our own youngest is serving now in a combat unit and two others have served in combat units. The Messianic community does send their kids to the army and proudly serve. but the whole country is like, wait, we've been in a war for three years. Our kids are serving. We're serving. We're working hard. We, to make ends meet, we're paying taxes. Why does this whole swath of the country say, we're not doing any of that. And you, you have to pay us. And why is Netanyahu supporting that? Why? And because Gotti Eisenhower has taken the position. No, that's, we're done with that. If I become the prime minister and I build a coalition with, We're making the ultra-Orthodox send their sons to the army, and we're going to start to make economic reforms and start reducing subsidies. He's positioned himself as a military leader who says, our army can't survive if everybody doesn't do their share.
00:33:44
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And really, wouldn't you say that Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition... obviously it's tricky for Americans. I'm still under learning as an American and Israeli, this whole parliamentary system, which is what the Knesset is, you know, modeled after the British system, but you have to make a coalition. You're not, you don't just win. Your party is not just in charge. You have to be the one that gets the most seats, but nobody gets a majority of the seats, actual literal majority. And then you have to build this coalition. So a big part of the problem is, with Benjamin Netanyahu is who he has brought into his coalition. And if he loses them, then it falls apart. And so some of those people are very problematic.
00:34:30
Speaker 1: Exactly. I mean, they're very unpopular by the rest of the country. And Eisenkot, relatively new to the political world and like only been in a member of the Knesset for the last four or five years, he's seizing advantage of that. And so that's a, we talked in the first session part of the podcast about the sort of the stylistic and personality and history differences. But there are these differences in terms of actual policy and Netanyahu. So going back to that question, why isn't Netanyahu getting more credit for all these massive successes, historic successes? He said he'd take out the Iranian nuclear program. And my gosh, he did it. Why doesn't he get credit? Because it's getting undercut by how angry Netanyahu Many Israelis, not all, but most really, are angry about Netanyahu's support and alliance with the ultra-Orthodox. There's one other thing. I want to flip it back to the other side, a policy difference between Netanyahu and Eisenhower as we wrap. And I think this is going to become a big issue in the final weeks and days of the campaign. And that is this. In the spring of 2024, May, June of 2024, President Biden, who was, of course, in power at that time, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were putting a lot of pressure on Netanyahu to say, look, we can make a final deal with Hamas, get all the hostages out, or almost all of them. We'll not just do a ceasefire, but we'll say there's a total end to the war. Israel will withdraw from Gaza entirely, but you'll have all your hostages back. We'll end the war. And as a sweetener, we'll convince Saudi Arabia to make a deal with you, Israel, and bring peace between Saudi Arabia and Israel. That looks like a grand bargain and a very attractive offer. Now, in the war room, and I just interviewed one of the reporters who just wrote a wonderful book. We'll talk about that in a future episode called In the War Room, the real inside story of what has been happening over the last few years behind closed doors, inside the epicenter of it, as it were. But in that war room, Gadi Eisenkot was one of the members of the war cabinet. And his position, along with some of his colleagues, Benny Gantz, the former defense minister, and then defense minister Yoav Galant, Eisenkot's position was, let's take the deal. Biden is our best friend, meaning not as a partisan, but America is our best friend. This is the president. He stands with us. Many Democrats don't. He can get our hostages out, at least most of them. We'll end the war. We'll take the deal with the Saudis. Let's do it. And he was pushing hard on Netanyahu to say yes. Netanyahu said no. And a lot of the country at that moment, 70% of Israelis at that moment were with Eisenhower and Gallant and Gantz saying, for crying out loud, give us our hostages. Let's be done with this. Netanyahu's position was, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. We have destroyed almost all of Hamas, but the final brigades of Hamas are in the southern city of Gaza called Rafah, right on the Egyptian border. We can't leave four or five standing divisions of Hamas. We have to go into Rafah. We have to move the Palestinian civilians out. Then we have to send the IDF in and destroy what's left of Hamas. And by the way, Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, is still on the loose. Mohamed Def, the military chief of Hamas in Gaza, still alive. Sheikh Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah in Lebanon, still alive. All the missiles that are facing us from Hezbollah in Lebanon, still there. And the Iranian leadership and all their missiles, still there. We can't surrender. Now, both had a very powerful argument. In the end, Netanyahu said, was the prime minister. So he prevailed. And so Eisenkot and Gantz, they resigned in June of 24. Now, why will that come up? You could say at the time that was a fair and interesting debate. Well, what's happened since? Well, Netanyahu did move and the IDF did move all the Palestinians out of Rafah. They went in, they destroyed most, not all of Hamas. And they got the Ayatollah Khomeini, they got Sheikh Nasrallah, they got Yahya As-Sinwar, they got Mohamed Def. And Netanyahu's argument in the final days of this campaign is going to be like, you would have surrendered. That's why you should not be the prime minister. And that's going to be a strong argument. And it's going to be interesting to see how Eisenhower parries that. I think his main thing is going to be like, yeah, you got things, but is Hamas done? You said we were going to get total victory. Hamas is still in power and they're not disarmed. Is Hezbollah done? No, they're not done. Is the Iranian regime completely not a threat to us? No. You said you'd have total victory. You didn't get it. So why are you telling me that I wouldn't have gotten total victory? It's a very interesting debate. But the point is, we're just trying to give you a sense of the high stakes and the sharp elbows that are coming in these final days of the campaign. Lynn, I'll give you the last word.
00:39:46
Speaker 2: Well, only to say that, you know, the thing is that... These two men, yes. Actually, if it was just these two men and they were the only people that you could vote for, the whole country was just voting on these two men alone and not the other dozen parties or however many it is that are going to be on the ballot. They would be actually very close. It's not a huge.
00:40:06
Speaker 1: The polls say Gotti-Eisenhower right now is at 41 and Bibi is at 34. In a head-to-head sort of theoretical matchup, if it was like a presidential election, Gotti-Eisenhower would win. buy six, seven points, but that could shift in those final days.
00:40:22
Speaker 2: Right. But that's not the case. That's not the case. The case is that it's really going to be who can get the largest number of seats and who can put together the largest team to be given that opportunity to lead the government. So it's very complicated. But the beautiful thing is that it's not complicated to the Lord. And I think, you know, we can wrap by just reminding ourselves, you know, out of the Proverbs, a wonderful book of God's wisdom that Proverbs 19, 21 says, many, many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. And we can count on that, that God's purposes are going to be accomplished, that we need to stay focused on being the peacemakers in this world, being the ones that work to bring peace between God and man and between man and one another. This is our role as followers of Jesus. And so be praying for the church in Israel that, yes, we'd love to see whoever's in charge be more friendly toward the Christians, the Messianics in particular, you know, these very strong ultra religious parties really hate the Christians. And so they're given places of power when it comes to education, sometimes visas and things like that, immigration. And so they make it very difficult for Jewish people who believe in Jesus to operate well. So we need to pray for these things. There's lots to trust the Lord for, but this is just a taste of this very interesting and complicated world of Israeli politics. So we encourage you to pray and keep on learning and keep on praying.
00:41:57
Speaker 1: Amen.
00:41:57
Speaker 2: Well, let's close.
00:41:58
Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening. Please go to joshuafund.com. Learn more about the Joshua Fund Prayer and Vision Tour next spring, March into early April, and the Epicenter Summit. We want you to be there. We want you to step into the story And Lynn and I will be leading that tour, and we would just love to have you. And you can also give at joshuafund.com. Become an Epicenter ally. Become a monthly donor. Thank you. These would be great blessings to us, to the team, and, of course, to all the ministries that we invest in. Most of all, we need your prayers, and we appreciate your encouragement. Thank you so much for listening. We've got much more ahead as we head into this fall. It's a very exciting, challenging fall. And we're so grateful that you choose to be part of this podcast. Share it with your friends. Tell other people about it. And let them come inside the epicenter as well. From Eilat, the southern city of Israel, this is Joel. And Lynn. And we're so grateful for you. God bless you. Shalom from Israel. Shalom, shalom. Thank you.
