Israel Votes: Behind the Headlines
- Pacific Time Virtual Program
$18.00
Course Summary for Search and Accessibility
This course, Israel Votes: Behind the Headlines, is an Educational Program offered by New Lehrhaus. It is scheduled for October 1, 2026. The session is held on a Thursday from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM Pacific Time.
The total registration fee is $18.00. The course is conducted Online and focuses on the 2026 Israeli Knesset election, Israeli coalition politics, and the relationship between Israel and American Jews.
On October 27, Israelis go to the polls for the first time since October 7, 2023 and the wars that followed in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. It is also the first election in nearly four decades to follow a Knesset that served out its full term. Polls, party lists, and coalition math will fill the news for the next several weeks. This program asks what the headlines leave out.
Four weeks before the vote, journalist Dina Kraft joins Hadar Susskind of New Jewish Narrative for a conversation about the election as it looks from Tel Aviv and from Washington. They will take up:
- The contenders · Who is running, how the party lists came together, and where the blocs stand as the campaign enters its final month.
- The voters · How the war, the hostages, the draft exemption fight, and the cost of living are shaping decisions in Jewish and Arab communities across the country.
- The coalition question · Why the election night count is only the beginning, and what the paths to a governing majority look like.
- The view from here · What the outcome may mean for the relationship between Israel and American Jews, and how communities in the diaspora can follow the results with clarity.
The conversation will leave ample time for questions from participants.
Who this is for:
- Anyone trying to follow the Israeli election with more context than a news alert provides
- Readers of Israeli and Middle East news who want to understand the electoral system and the coalition process
- Members of Bay Area Jewish communities thinking about what the results will mean closer to home
What you’ll leave with:
- A clear picture of the parties, leaders, and blocs contesting the 26th Knesset
- A working understanding of how Israeli elections translate votes into governments
- A sense of the issues driving voters in this cycle and how they differ from past elections
- Perspectives from a reporter on the ground and an American Jewish organizational leader on what to watch for on October 27 and after
About the speakersDina Kraft covers Israel and the Palestinian territories for The Christian Science Monitor. A longtime foreign correspondent, she began her overseas career in the Jerusalem bureau of the Associated Press and has reported from southern Africa, the Middle East, Russia, and Ukraine. She is the former opinion editor of Haaretz English, a 2012 Nieman Fellow at Harvard, and the co-author, with Hannah Pick-Goslar, of My Friend Anne Frank. She hosts The Branch, a podcast produced by Hadassah about friendships between Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, and she has taught journalism at Northeastern University, Harvard, and Boston University. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.
Hadar Susskind is president and CEO of New Jewish Narrative, a national organization formed from the merger of Americans for Peace Now and Ameinu. He has spent his career in Jewish communal and public policy work, holding senior roles at the Council on Foundations, Bend the Arc Jewish Action, the Tides Foundation, J Street, and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. He writes regularly on Israeli politics and American Jewish life and has taught at New Lehrhaus in the Critical Perspectives on Israel and Palestine series.
Thursday, October 1 at 6–7:30pm Pacific Time
IMPORTANT NOTE: Zoom link/details will be emailed to you once you complete registration, one week before your program AND the day before. Please keep this information in a location easy to find.
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