Yair Lapid, titular leader of Israel’s opposition, said in May 2025 that The Democrats Party (“HaDemokratim”), the 2024 fusion of the Labor and Meretz parties, enjoyed strong polling numbers only because an ex-general, Yair Golan, stood at its head. But Lapid predicted that “right after the primaries, everyone will find out how radically left his party is.”
The primaries took place on June 20. Lapid appears prescient.
The Democrats’ list of candidates is comprised mostly of protest leaders and social activists, among whom are those who threatened to ignore military call-up notices; expressed support for the Palestinian Authority’s pay-for-slay program; compared the Arabs in Gaza to the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto; and supported the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
The Democrats have been criticized by both the political left and right for extremism. Gilad Erdan, a former Likud Party member, who is reportedly about to establish his own party, has already placed The Democrats beyond the pale. He says he won’t sit in a coalition of which it is a part.
Roee Neuman, a former Meretz Party spokesman and left-wing activist, sharply rebuked the party in an X post on Sunday. He complained that the candidates, (chosen in an online vote), are not only unknown to “the average person on the street,” but the ones “from the bottom of the list” are harming the party’s chances by voicing extremist views.
Neuman referred to the reaction by several candidates to the recent Arab attack on Jewish hikers near the Havat Gilad settlement in Samaria. Two Israelis were killed. Rotem Sivan, No. 19 on the list, blamed the hikers for provoking the violence by entering the area.
Moshe Radman Abutbul (No. 9) similarly appeared to blame the Jewish hikers. On July 24, the day of the attack, he criticized the media for “giving in” to the “settler’s narrative,” even while admitting he didn’t know the details, which at that point were still unclear.
In fact, it wasn’t only those at “the bottom of the list” blaming Israel. Golan himself, speaking at the campaign launch rally in Tel Aviv on July 25, accused Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz for purposefully turning Judea and Samaria into a “powder keg” ahead of the elections. “The blood of our soldiers that has been spilled, and will be spilled, is on their hands,” Golan said.
Neuman, who wants to see The Democrats succeed, warned that the Israeli public will abandon the party “in a heartbeat” if it doesn’t impose discipline. He noted that the latest polls reveal the party has already lost two mandates. Kan News found The Democrats had fallen from 10 to eight Knesset seats between its July 26 and Aug. 2 surveys. National elections are scheduled for Oct. 27.
Neuman said that the role of the candidates is to repeat the messaging decided upon by the party leader. “Anyone incapable of doing that should above all shut his mouth,” he said.
The Democrats may have reached the same conclusion. Ynet reported on July 30 about an internal party meeting during which candidates were ordered not to post independent messages without prior approval.
Unfortunately for The Democrats, the Ynet report provided the right-wing with further ammunition. It revealed that during the meeting, Gaby Lasky (No. 6) demanded that Golan stop using the term “Judea and Samaria” and replace it with “West Bank.”
The expression “Judea and Samaria,” once closely associated with the Israeli right, has over time gained broad acceptance in Israeli discourse. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionism Party immediately jumped on the report, posting to X that it proved once more Golan’s radicalism.
Lasky’s own radicalism is beyond dispute. An attorney and former Knesset member for Meretz, she represented Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi, tried for slapping an Israeli soldier in an infamous case in 2017. Tamimi received an eight-month prison sentence.
“It remains a tragedy that a 17-year-old girl will spend eight months in prison for driving soldiers away from her home, but Ahed and Nariman [her mother, also sentenced] could never expect a fair trial,” Lasky said at the time.
Lasky also serves as legal adviser to radical-left groups, including Breaking the Silence, an NGO active in promoting “war crimes” charges against Israel.
She is not the only candidate on the list to encourage charges against Israel. Avi Dabush, (No. 13), serves as executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR). In June 2024, RHR issued a joint report with another NGO, Yesh Din, supporting the ICC’s arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.
Bearing Dabush’s signature, the report said, “The requested warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant enumerate the crimes of starvation, extermination and deliberate attacks against a civilian population. This is a far-reaching step, but an important and necessary one, given the scale and severity of the crimes of which they are suspected.”
Most Israelis expressed outrage at the arrest warrants.
Similarly, Nava Rozolyo, (No. 16 on the list), an anti-government protest leader, said in an October 2024 interview that one of the purposes of the protests was to prod the international community to act against Netanyahu’s government.
Rozolyo was also served a restraining order after stalking the prime minister’s wife, Sara Netanyahu.
Somaya Bashir, (No. 10), an Arab candidate and social activist, sparked anger in May 2025 when she posted on her Facebook page a comparison between the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and the residents of Gaza. She captioned two photos: “GAZA 2025" and “POLAND 1945.”
Candidates who bring more gravitas to the list will do little to assuage the Israeli public’s concerns that the party is extreme in its views. Nimrod Sheffer, (No. 11), boasts a stellar resume. He is a former fighter pilot and retired Israel Defense Forces major general, a former head of the IDF Planning Directorate and former CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries.
But he was dismissed from reserve service after initiating and signing a petition of nearly 1,000 pilots in April 2025, calling for the immediate release of the hostages even if it meant an abrupt end to the Gaza war. Sheffer was criticized at the time for undermining a silent understanding that politics and the military must be kept separate.
Party chairman Golan, a former IDF deputy chief of staff, who commanded the IDF’s Northern Command and Home Front Command, and was also the head of the Operations Directorate, boasts the most prestigious background.
Yet, in 2016, in a Holocaust memorial speech, he suggested that there were trends in Israel similar to those leading up to the rise of Nazi Germany.
“If there’s something that frightens me about Holocaust remembrance it’s the recognition of the revolting processes that occurred in Europe in general, and particularly in Germany, back then—70, 80 and 90 years ago—and finding signs of them here among us today in 2016,” he said.
His comments drew widespread condemnation. Golan backtracked, clarifying that he had no intention of comparing Israel with Nazi Germany.
In May 2025, Golan aroused public ire when he told Kan public radio: “A sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations.”
His remarks were widely condemned by members of the opposition and the coalition. Netanyahu denounced the comments as “wild incitement” and of “echoing the most despicable antisemitic blood libels.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said the “serious and false defamation of IDF soldiers is a red line.”
Opposition leader Lapid said, “Our fighters are heroes and are defending our lives. The statement that they kill children as a hobby is wrong and a gift to our enemies.”
In defense, Golan said his criticism was “in no way directed at the army.” He said he was trying to warn that the policies of the government’s far-right leaders risked turning Israel into a “pariah state.”
The irony he did not mention is that prominent members of his own party were working to hasten that pariah status.
