Oded Balaban

Oops, He Did It Again

On Ari Shavit’s column “Oops, We Did It Again” (ynet, September 22, 2026) and its recorded version, “Oops, the Liberals Did It Again,” of September 26

Oded Balaban — University of Haifa — balaban@research.haifa.ac.il

September 2026

Five weeks before the October 27 election, Ari Shavit published a column in ynet titled “Oops, We Did It Again” and recorded it under a title more precise about its addressees, “Oops, the Liberals Did It Again” (Shavit, 2026e). The column announces the defeat of the Israeli opposition and assigns it a culprit, the liberals. According to Shavit, Benjamin Netanyahu devised a three-stage strategy (inflate Gadi Eisenkot in order to knock Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Liberman out of the game, then deflate him, and after the election bring him into a national government with the ultra-Orthodox), and the liberals carried it out to the letter. The remedy would be an emergency summit of Eisenkot, Bennett, and Liberman, with “an enlightened right” in the leadership and “a powerful and winning Zionist story.”

What makes the column dangerous is its signature. Shavit has attacked Netanyahu for years, harshly and in print, and those attacks are real. They also work as credentials, and without them no one would read him to the end. A call for unity with Likud, for right-wing leadership, or for excluding the Arab parties, coming from a Bibist, is not heard. Said by a man who has called Netanyahu what Shavit has called him, it is heard. Nine years ago, writing about his book, I called this criticism as a receipt: the narrated horror of Lydda bought him the right to absolve those who committed it. Here the criticism buys him the right to be believed.

The prescription is dangerous for the opposition and beneficial to Netanyahu for four reasons. First, five weeks before the election it demoralizes opposition voters by repeating to them the myth of the invincible magician, the centerpiece of Likud propaganda. Second, it calls for merging lists that, according to every 2026 poll, lose seats when they unite. Third, it demands putting the right at the head and fighting on nationalist ground, where Netanyahu is strongest, and thereby drives away center and left voters. Fourth, it rules out in advance the only majority that exists today against Netanyahu, the one that includes the Arab parties, and leaves as the way out a unity government with Likud, which is what Shavit himself has been calling for for years. Each of these steps favors Netanyahu, whatever the intentions of the one who proposes them.

The Chess Player of the Century

The column rests on a portrait of Netanyahu as an omniscient strategist, “the great artist of divide and rule,” “the chess player of the century,” and, in the written version, “the magician.” Everything the opposition did over the past year appears in that portrait as a move he foresaw. Eisenkot rises because Netanyahu inflated him; Eisenkot falls because Netanyahu deflated him; if Eisenkot ends up in a unity government, that will be the third stage. A scheme in which every outcome confirms the plan explains nothing, since no fact could refute it. Shavit presents it as analysis, and it works as retrospective prophecy.

The sources do not support it either. What the press documents about Likud is what happens in every campaign, namely that it attacks whoever leads the polls. Ben Caspit described how the government’s smear machine first prepared a file against Bennett and turned on Eisenkot once he moved to the front (Caspit, 2026). Attacking the frontrunner is the ABC of electioneering; Shavit turns it into a three-move game planned a year in advance.

The portrait also has an effect that does not depend on its accuracy. The myth of the invincible magician is a central piece of Netanyahu’s propaganda, because it discourages the opposing voter before he or she votes. A column that, five weeks before the election, declares that “we are on the brink of disaster,” that the turnaround “was within reach and slipped away,” and that the liberals “made every possible mistake” repeats that message to the one audience Likud cannot reach on its own, the opposition’s.

The Numbers and What They Leave Out

Shavit’s figures are accurate. Between May and June 2025, with Bennett leading the polls and Eisenkot still in Benny Gantz’s party, the opposition bloc without the Arab parties stood at around 60 seats (62 on Channel 12 on June 4, 60 on Channel 13 on June 18, 61 in Maariv on June 25). In September 2026 it polls between 52 and 55 (54 on Channel 12 on the 22nd, 52 on Channel 13 on the 23rd, 55 in Maariv on the 24th) (Wikipedia, 2025; 2026). What the column omits is the path between the two endpoints.

Eisenkot overtook Bennett in mid-June 2026 and became the opposition’s leading list, with 22 to 26 seats. For the next two months the bloc held between 57 and 60; in mid-August Channel 12 gave it 60 and Maariv 61.

The drop comes at the end of August and in September, and it coincides with other events. The list of General Ofer Winter, founded on August 25, entered the polls with four or five seats; the reservists’ list of Yoaz Hendel crossed the electoral threshold; and the Arab parties reunited in the Joint List. Over the same period Netanyahu’s coalition also fell, from about 51 seats to 46 or 47. The bloc lost votes through the fragmentation of the map, and the chronology refutes the claim that it lost them because Eisenkot was left alone at the top.

The same polls give Eisenkot’s bloc 54 seats against 46 or 47 for the coalition; on September 23 Haaretz ran the headline that Eisenkot’s bloc beats Netanyahu (Haaretz, 2026). To reach the “tie between the blocs” or the “clear advantage for the right” that Shavit announces, one has to add to Netanyahu the new lists of Winter and Hendel, which today belong to neither bloc. The imminent disaster comes out of that addition.

A larger omission remains. Shavit’s “bloc of repair” excludes the Arab parties, which now add up to twelve or thirteen seats. With them, the opposition to Netanyahu exceeds 61 seats in every poll cited. Shavit does not even discuss that possibility, because he takes it as ruled out. That is the premise of the Likud campaign, whose slogan against the opposition candidate reads “Gadi has no government without the Arabs” (N12, 2026), and the same premise Shavit stated in November 2025 when he called on the liberals to ally with “a million moderate right-wingers” instead of with Arabs or the ultra-Orthodox (Shavit, 2025d). The arithmetic that, in his words, “says it all” is done by the adversary’s rules.

The Union That Subtracts

Shavit’s prescription is union, and the polls have measured it several times. In May 2026 Maariv tested a joint list of Together (the list of Bennett and Yair Lapid), Yashar (Eisenkot’s party), and Liberman’s party; separately they added up to 49 seats, united to between 44 and 49 depending on who headed it. In June and July a merger of Together with Yashar yielded 34 to 39 seats against 40 or 41 separately; in September Israel Hayom recorded 36 against 37 (Wikipedia, 2026). In no case does union add, and in almost every case it subtracts, by up to seven seats. Channel 12 reported that Eisenkot hesitated over the merger for precisely that reason (Times of Israel, 2026a).

There was also a real experiment. Bennett and Lapid joined forces in April in the Together list, headed by Bennett, which started at 24 to 28 seats and now stands between 11 and 15. On September 17, five days before his column, Shavit’s appearance on the Haaretz podcast went out under the title “Bennett Was Wrong to Join Lapid” (Shavit, 2026d). Union saves Israel, except for the only union actually made, which was a mistake.

Israeli electoral history confirms what the polls show. Likud and Yisrael Beytenu won 42 seats separately in 2009 and 31 together in 2013; Blue and White and New Hope, 14 separately in 2021 and 12 together in 2022. The Zionist Union of 2015 (21 seats separately, 24 together) is the exception, and it was precisely the center-left union that Shavit supported at the time. A merger that shifts the leadership to the right puts at risk the center and left voters, who stay home or migrate to smaller lists, some of which may fall below the threshold, as happened to Meretz in 2022.

Who Refused to Unite?

Shavit blames the liberals for failing to unite. The facts of recent weeks point elsewhere. Lapid offered to drop to third place on the list if Eisenkot joined (Times of Israel, 2026c). Channel 12 reported in August that Bennett and Liberman were discussing a post-election merger to stop Eisenkot, and that Bennett held that the prime minister should be the “most experienced” or “most right-wing” leader rather than the head of the largest party (Times of Israel, 2026b). Eisenkot, for his part, signaled that he would not join a list he did not head. Those who refused were a former chief of staff and the two right-wing leaders whom Shavit wants in the leadership. The only liberal on the scene, Lapid, was the one who offered to step aside.

On September 2 Shavit had written in ynet that “Bennett must accept Eisenkot’s leadership” (Shavit, 2026c). Bennett did not accept it. Twenty days later the column does not address a single reproach to him; the blame falls on the liberals, and Eisenkot, who three weeks earlier was supposed to lead everyone, becomes “Bibi’s precious mineral” if he runs alone. A few weeks ago Shavit published Bennett: The Hour of Truth, a book built on some hundred hours of conversation with Bennett (Shavit, 2026b), and the column itself carries that news in its byline. Readers are entitled to keep this in mind when they are asked for “an enlightened right” in the leadership.

Amit Segal, Witness for the Prosecution

In the middle of the column Shavit brings in an authority. “Amit Segal said a few months ago that Gadi Eisenkot is a precious mineral. True.” Segal is Channel 12’s chief political commentator and the most widely followed analyst identified with the right. I could not find the phrase in any source outside Shavit’s column, including Segal’s columns of late August. Even assuming it is accurate, the procedure is telling. To tell the opposition who its candidate should be and with whom to ally, Shavit chooses as his witness the commentator closest to Netanyahu’s camp and agrees with him without reservation.

Shavit has written this column before. In March 2015, on the eve of the election, he urged moderate Israelis to unite behind Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, two center-left leaders. The choice was, according to the title, “either Lapid or hope,” and to those torn between the Zionist Union and Meretz, the party of the left, he recommended Meretz, because “there is no parliamentary democracy in this country without Meretz” (Shavit, 2015a). On March 18, the day after the defeat, he wrote that “Israel’s television-kissers are more foolish than its mezuzah-kissers,” that the vote for Lapid “split the moderate bloc and handed power back to Likud,” and that “every seat for Lapid was a seat directly for Netanyahu” (Shavit, 2015b).

In the same column he added that “one cannot fail to say a good word this morning about Benjamin Netanyahu,” “the superb campaigner” who pulled off “a breathtaking act of political magic” (Shavit, 2015b). Eleven years later he swapped the prescription for its opposite. Then salvation was a center-left leadership and union around Herzog; now it is an enlightened right at the top and a nationalist story. Two things remain identical, the guilt of the liberals and the magic of Netanyahu. With those two constants the column can be written before every election without looking at the polls.

Where He Attacks Him and Where He Helps Him

Against anyone who accuses him of complacency, Shavit can display his attacks on Netanyahu, which exist and are harsh. In August 2024 he called him “a strategic blind man who led his nation to the edge of the abyss” (Shavit, 2024a); in Foreign Affairs he wrote that his right-wing coalition had not strengthened the Jewish state but weakened it (Shavit, 2024c); in October 2025 he called the strike in Doha “the folly Netanyahu committed” (Shavit, 2025b). All these judgments look to the past. His proposals look to what is still being decided, and there the direction is different.

The left column gathers judgments on accomplished facts, which commit no one to anything. The right column gathers proposals on what is at stake, the criminal trial, the judicial overhaul, the composition of the opposition, and the next government. On each of these questions Shavit’s proposal coincides with what favors Netanyahu. The third stage of the plan Shavit attributes to him, bringing Eisenkot into a broad national government, is the program Shavit himself says he defended “again and again,” and which, according to the Jerusalem Post, Likud is considering in the form of a rotation with Eisenkot (Jerusalem Post, 2026). Shavit presents as a trap the very thing he proposes.

What Netanyahu Gains from These Attacks

The mechanism is not new in him, and that is how I recognized it. I watched it work in 2017 on other material, in My Promised Land, where what was being paid for was the absolution of an ethnic cleansing (Balaban, 2017). Nine years later the material has changed and the operation has not: what is bought today is the credibility of an electoral prescription.

Nor is the label “leftist” innocent. Shavit reproaches the liberals for preferring “a candidate the right can label a leftist” and claims that Netanyahu sought a rival with “left-wing positions.” The Likud campaign says the same with fewer detours. “It is either left or right, that is the essence of this election,” “there is no Yashar, it is a bluff,” Netanyahu said on September 18 (Walla, 2026). By demanding that the opposition defend itself against that label by moving to the right, Shavit accepts the axis Likud chose for the election and asks the opposition to play on that ground, where Netanyahu is, by his own column’s account, the chess player of the century.

Oops, Again

Shavit’s title says the liberals did it again. What repeats itself is his column, the one of 2015 and the one of 2026, with the prescription inverted and the same culprit. If the opposition heeded him, it would reach October 27 demoralized by the myth of the magician, merged into lists that every poll shows losing seats, under a right-wing leadership that drives away its center and left voters, and with the majority that includes the Arab parties ruled out in advance. And should it win nonetheless, Shavit’s program would lead it into a unity government with Likud. The prescription needs no hidden purpose to produce that result. It is enough to follow it.

References

Balaban, Oded. 2017. “La lágrima como recibo. Sobre Mi tierra prometida, de Ari Shavit” (The Tear as Receipt: On Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land). Published at odedbalaban.com, September 26, 2026. English version, “The Tear as Receipt,” https://odedbalaban.com/2026/09/26/the-tear-as-receipt/

Caspit, Ben. 2026. Opinion column. Walla!, September 25. (In Hebrew.)

Haaretz. 2026. “Israel Election Poll: Eisenkot’s Bloc Beats Netanyahu as Likud Gains Ground.” Haaretz, September 23.

Jerusalem Post. 2026. Report on a Likud rotation with Eisenkot. The Jerusalem Post, August 26.

N12. 2026. Report on the Likud campaign “לגדי אין ממשלה בלי הערבים” (Gadi has no government without the Arabs). N12, July 23. (In Hebrew.)

Shavit, Ari. 2015a. “או לפיד או תקווה” (Either Lapid or hope). Haaretz, March. (In Hebrew.)

———⁠. 2015b. “המהפך שלא היה” (The turnaround that never was). Haaretz, March 18. (In Hebrew.)

———⁠. 2024a. “נתניהו הוא האיש שרצה להיות צ׳רצ׳יל – אבל לא היה” (Netanyahu is the man who wanted to be Churchill but was not). Maariv, August 10. (In Hebrew.)

———⁠. 2024b. Interview on Nadav Perry’s podcast. Srugim, September 9. (In Hebrew.)

———⁠. 2024c. “What Israel Has Lost.” Foreign Affairs, October 5.

———⁠. 2024d. Podcast interview. Israel Hayom, November 3. (In Hebrew.)

———⁠. 2025a. “שבוע של גיבורי-על” (A week of superheroes). Makor Rishon, June 22. (In Hebrew.)

———⁠. 2025b. Column on the strike in Doha. ynet, October 4. (In Hebrew.)

———⁠. 2025c. “כשלון הרל״ב מוכיח – צריך רל״ק” (The failure of “Anyone but Bibi”). ynet, November 11. (In Hebrew.)

———⁠. 2025d. “ברית ליברלית-מסורתית” (A liberal-traditional alliance). ynet, November 19. (In Hebrew.)

———⁠. 2025e. “חנינה תמורת הפיכה” (A pardon in exchange for the coup). ynet, November 30. (In Hebrew.)

———⁠. 2026a. Farewell column. Makor Rishon, February 20. (In Hebrew.)

———⁠. 2026b. בנט – שעת אמת (Bennett: The Hour of Truth). Tel Aviv: Kinneret Zmora-Bitan. (In Hebrew.)

———⁠. 2026c. “רגע לפני חצות: לכו ישר וביחד” (A moment before midnight). ynet, September 2. (In Hebrew.)

———⁠. 2026d. “הציבור עובר מנתניהו אל הימין הקיצוני. בנט טעה כשהתחבר ללפיד” (The public is moving from Netanyahu to the far right; Bennett was wrong to join Lapid). HaShavua podcast, Haaretz, September 17. (In Hebrew.)

———⁠. 2026e. “אופס, עשינו זאת שוב” (Oops, we did it again). ynet, September 22. Recorded version: “Oops, the Liberals Did It Again.” (In Hebrew.)

Times of Israel. 2026a. Liveblog, September 4.

———⁠. 2026b. Liveblog, August 8.

———⁠. 2026c. “Lapid Said Willing to Drop to Third Spot on Ticket with Bennett if Eisenkot Joins.”

Walla. 2026. Statements by Benjamin Netanyahu, September 18. (In Hebrew.)

Wikipedia. 2025. “2025 Opinion Polling for the 2026 Israeli Legislative Election.” Accessed September 26, 2026.

———⁠. 2026. “Opinion Polling for the 2026 Israeli Legislative Election.” Compilation of polls by Channel 12, Channel 13, Kan, Maariv, and Israel Hayom. Accessed September 26, 2026.