Hands Off Their Ballot: Why Is an American President Running Coalition Talks for Netanyahu?

Picture this, friend.

It's the morning after our midterms next Tuesday.

Control of Congress is up for grabs.

And the prime minister of Israel goes on social media to announce that his endorsement “turned the tide” for the Republicans, then tells a reporter he'll “take a look” at helping pick who runs Congress.

You'd lose your mind.

I would too.

Every flag-waving American from Maine to San Diego would be on the phone to their congressman before lunch, demanding to know who invited a foreign leader into our count.

Now flip it around.

Because that's exactly what happened this week, and most of the folks who'd be screaming in my scenario are clapping.

The Count Isn't Even Done

Israel voted on Tuesday, October 27.

Nearly 78 percent of eligible voters turned out, according to The Independent, the highest since 1999.

That's not a tired democracy.

That's a country that showed up.

Here's what they produced.

With most votes counted, the Central Elections Committee has Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc on 53 seats.

Gadi Eisenkot's opposition bloc sits on 48.

Arab parties are on a record 19.

You need 61 of the 120 seats in the Knesset to govern.

Nobody has 61.

Not even close.

Axios notes Netanyahu's bloc is on pace for 11 fewer seats than he holds now.

Eisenkot can't get there without the Arab parties, and plenty of his own partners have ruled that out.

Close to half a million absentee ballots from soldiers, diplomats and others still haven't been tallied.

That's a hung parliament.

It's messy, it's frustrating, and it belongs entirely to the people of Israel.

President Isaac Herzog says he expects the official results next week.

Then he starts consultations with every faction.

“We must do everything we can, certainly after yesterday, to avoid another round of elections,” Herzog said.

That's how it's supposed to work.

Israelis vote.

Israelis count.

Israelis negotiate.

The head of state, an Israeli, calls the parties in one by one.

Nowhere in that process is there a chair for the White House.

Nine Days and a Letter

Let's walk back the tape.

On October 18, nine days before the vote, President Trump posted what he called a “Letter” on Truth Social, addressed “To the Great People of Israel.”

He called Netanyahu a “Great Warrior Prime Minister.”

He gave him his “Complete and Total Endorsement.”

And then came the line that should have stopped every patriot cold.

“If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so.”

Read that again.

Anyone other than Bibi is the wrong leader.

Not “I prefer him.”

Not “he's been a strong partner.”

Anyone else, by definition, is wrong.

That's not an endorsement.

As I see it, that's a warning shot fired over the heads of Israeli voters.

Pick my guy, or the most powerful ally you've got starts reconsidering the deal.

Days earlier, Trump said he hadn't even thought about endorsing anyone.

In the final days of the campaign, he was back again: “Vote for Bibi Netanyahu for Prime Minister, we have to finish the job that we started!”

Netanyahu went on television and leaned all the way in.

“He has another two years, and he says he is calling on you to vote for me,” he said.

So now an Israeli prime minister is campaigning on an American president's calendar.

Who Signed for This?

Then the votes came in.

Wednesday, Trump posted a statement written entirely in quotation marks.

Reports credited it to someone named Irving C.

Schwartz.

The Times of Israel said it was unclear whether Trump was quoting an analyst or talking about himself in the third person.

Either way, he put it out there.

“When President Trump endorsed Bibi Netanyahu, the whole tide turned,” it said, calling the result “a big come-from-behind stalemate, or even a WIN for Netanyahu.”

On the tarmac after a Texas rally, he told reporters, “When the endorsement went out, it helped him a lot.”

Then he gave Axios the line that made my blood run hot.

He said he'd had “horror reports” at first, but Netanyahu was “in pretty good shape now.”

He said, “I heard my endorsement made a big difference for Bibi.”

And when Axios asked whether he'd get involved in forming a Netanyahu-led unity government, he said he hadn't thought about it.

“I will take a look,” he said.

I spent my Army years in logistics.

Every piece of gear you touch comes with a hand receipt.

You sign for it, you own it, you answer for it.

You do not walk into another unit's motor pool and start signing for their trucks.

Israel's coalition is not American property.

No American signed for it.

No American president gets to sign for it now.

The Oath Goes Overseas

Here's what really gets me, and I'll own this as my opinion all day long.

We spent the last few years watching American politics turn into one long loyalty test.

Are you with him or against him?

Did you say the right thing fast enough?

Did you clap hard enough?

If not, you're out.

Friendships, families, whole congregations got split down the middle over it.

I walked away from that circus.

I'm a man without a party, and I like it that way.

Now that same test is being shipped abroad, like surplus gear nobody here wants anymore.

Look at how the October 18 letter was built.

One man is the right leader.

Everyone else is the wrong leader.

America's help is tied to picking the right one.

That's not foreign policy.

In my view, that's a loyalty oath with an Israeli flag taped on the front.

And it lands on a country that just buried its dead from the worst attack in its history and the wars that followed.

Israelis don't need a pep talk on who to trust.

They've earned the right to decide that for themselves.

Gadi Eisenkot is a former military chief who lost a son and two nephews in the Gaza war.

Whatever you think of his politics, that man has paid a price most of us will never understand.

According to Reuters, he isn't known to have ever even met Trump.

So the message to Israeli voters, as I hear it, is this.

The general who buried his own boy doesn't count, because he isn't on our team.

That should make every American who says they love Israel furious.

What Israelis Actually Said

Let's be honest about the numbers, because I'm not here to spin them either.

Netanyahu outperformed the exit polls.

He won an unexpectedly clear majority of Jewish Israeli voters, according to The Independent.

He's the leader of the biggest bloc.

That's real, and his supporters have every right to celebrate it.

But 53 isn't 61.

His bloc shrank.

And Eisenkot has said no to serving under him, including in a rotation deal.

Bennett, Golan and Liberman ruled out partnering with him during the campaign.

Democrats leader Yair Golan put his own spin on it.

“Netanyahu lost.

I know how to count to 120,” he said.

You don't have to agree with Golan, and I don't on plenty.

But he's an Israeli making an Israeli argument about an Israeli count.

That's democracy doing its job.

Same goes for the hardest question on the table, whether any Jewish-led bloc should lean on Arab parties to govern.

Netanyahu calls the idea treasonous.

Eisenkot has floated conditions, including recognizing Israel as a Jewish state and calling Hamas an extremist group.

I've got strong views on Islamism, and I won't hide them.

But that's Israel's fight to have, in Israel's Knesset, under Israel's laws.

Not in a Washington interview.

My Stake in This

I'm going to tell you why I care, and it isn't because I've gone soft on Israel.

I stand with Israel's right to exist and defend itself, period.

I want Hamas finished as a fighting force.

I believe the Muslim Brotherhood's long game is real and dangerous.

None of that has changed.

I also hate what has been done in Gaza, and I believe the Netanyahu machine has treated the Jewish state like a family business for far too long.

That's my view, and it's about a political operation, not the Jewish people or the Jewish faith.

Here's the thing.

You can't claim to love a democracy and then treat its ballot box like a suggestion box.

If Israel is our closest friend in the region, then treat it like a friend.

Friends don't rig the guest list.

Friends don't threaten to walk out of the room if you don't pick their favorite.

Friends say, “We'll work with whoever you choose,” and then they mean it.

That's what strength looks like.

Not a Truth Social victory lap over someone else's election.

Let Israel Count

So here's my ask, friend.

To the White House: step back.

Let Herzog do his job.

Let the parties fight it out.

Let the absentee ballots get counted.

If Israel lands on Netanyahu, fine.

If it lands on Eisenkot, fine.

If it ends in a fresh election, that's on them too.

To my fellow Americans who call themselves pro-Israel: prove it.

Respect the people, not just the man you like.

If you'd be outraged by a foreign leader meddling in our count next week, be outraged now.

And to the Israelis who stood in those lines on Tuesday, nearly four in five of you: I see you.

You did your part.

Nobody in Washington gets to finish it for you.

Hands off their vote.

And Remember:

Trust no Single Source

Trust Your Gut

and Stay Curious

Alex Knight

For media enquiries, please contact:

UK - 020 3404 2295

USA - 0650 702 7445

AUS - 02 9072 9499

info@anonymouspublishing.com

Help Support Alex Knight and the rest of our Authors by visiting the store to get your copy of the latest Anonymous Author Novel or Anything Anonymous.

Visit the store

Image credits: Trump and Netanyahu at the White House and Trump at Air Force One, The White House (public domain); Knesset elections, PikiWiki Israel (public domain); Knesset Hall by בית השלום (attribution); ballot box by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (CC BY-SA 2.0). All via Wikimedia Commons.