How Israel lost four elections in less than two weeks - analysis

ByHERB KEINONNOVEMBER 4, 2026 20:14Updated: NOVEMBER 4, 2026 20:24

Israel lost four elections in 10 days. One of them was its own. The last was Tuesday’s US midterms.

The losing streak began on October 25 in Serbia.

Aleksandar Vučić, a strong ally of Israel, resigned as president a month earlier and sought to retain power as prime minister. Instead, his alliance lost the snap parliamentary election to a student-backed list that grew out of an anti-corruption protest movement.

Unlike in Tuesday’s US midterms, where Israel was an issue in several races, the Serbian election turned on domestic grievances. Vučić did not lose because of his close ties with Israel, but those ties could suffer because he lost. And after the October 7 massacre, they became strategically crucial.

At a time when some of Israel’s Western allies were restricting sales of arms or weapons components, Serbia stepped up. Israel reportedly contacted Serbia as early as October 8, 2023, with a request for ammunition. Vučić agreed, and 155-mm artillery shells were soon being flown to Israel.

Netanyahu called Vučić 'true friend to Israel'

In February 2024, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, following a phone call with the Serbian leader, praised the country’s “unwavering support, both in word and deed,” and called Vučić a “true friend of Israel.”

Now that this “true friend” is out of power, what happens to the defense ties?

The arms trade went both ways. In August 2025, Serbia signed a $1.6 billion deal for Israeli drones, long-range missiles, electronic warfare systems, and other military equipment. This past April, the two countries launched a strategic dialogue, and on September 17, Vučić inaugurated a factory in Belgrade to assemble Israeli-designed drones.

The winning Student List has pledged to halt arms exports to war zones, a commitment discussed publicly in connection with Ukraine. Whether that pledge will also apply to Israel, and what will become of the drone venture, remain open questions.

But the list’s pre-election manifesto took an explicit position on Gaza: “We will not be complicit in the systematic attempt to destroy the Palestinian people that Israel is carrying out in the Gaza Strip.”

On the same Sunday that Vučić’s alliance was trounced in Serbia, Brazil’s left-wing, anti-Israel president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, defeated right-wing, pro-Israel Flávio Bolsonaro. That dashed hopes in Jerusalem that Brazil would follow Colombia, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and other Latin American countries by electing right-wing governments friendlier to Israel.

After Bolsonaro finished ahead of Lula in the first round earlier in October, Netanyahu called to congratulate him. The Prime Minister’s Office said: “The two intend to renew the deep friendship between the two countries, as part of the transformation taking place in Israel’s relations with South American countries…”

Now there’s a statement that didn’t age well.

A Flávio Bolsonaro victory was expected to bring a return to policies of his father, Jair Bolsonaro. The elder Bolsonaro opened a trade office in Jerusalem in 2019, deepened defense and intelligence cooperation with Israel, and shifted Brazil’s voting patterns at the UN.

When Lula defeated the elder Bolsonaro in 2022, he took Brazil in the opposite direction. Brazil backed South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

Israel's election results in deadlock 

Lula likened Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust and recalled Brazil’s ambassador to Israel. His reelection slammed the door on an opening Jerusalem had hoped to gain.

And then there was Israel’s own election.

How did Israel lose that one? By ending up, once again, in a deadlock that each side could call a victory.

Netanyahu could point to Likud’s standing as the largest party and to his bloc’s lead over the change bloc. The change bloc could point to the fact that parties outside Netanyahu’s camp, including the Arab parties, won a clear majority of Knesset seats. Neither side emerged with a majority it could govern with on its own.

With considerable challenges abroad and the wounds of October 7 still raw at home, Israel badly needed an election that would give it a strong, stable government able to govern. Instead, it got a familiar result from the five-election cycle of 2019 to 2022: no clear winner on election night and the prospect of months of coalition talks that may or may not produce a government.

And the government that it may produce will – because of the compromises it must necessarily make – have its legitimacy questioned at every turn. Why does it include the haredim, when the pre-election promises were a government without the haredi parties? Why is it relying on support from the Arab parties, when the pre-election promises were that they would never allow such a thing?

Israel is facing monumental challenges. Many hoped the elections would quickly produce a leadership able to maneuver them. It hasn’t, at least not yet, and in that sense the country lost.

Anti-Israel Democrats gain seats in US midterms

Which brings us to Tuesday’s US midterms. Democrats took both chambers of Congress, and among those headed to Washington in January is anti-Israel Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed. It is already tempting to pine for the days when the anti-Israel Squad numbered only four.

The more consequential question is how far mainstream Democrats will move in El-Sayed’s direction. A small, vocal faction within a party can set the tone of a debate even when it lacks the votes to decide it, and that matters when Congress turns to issues such as arms sales, military aid, and oversight of US policy toward Israel.

The Bernie Sanders, anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party got considerable reinforcements on Tuesday.

But the problem for Israel is not only on the Democratic side of the aisle. Among the Republicans, there are already voices blaming Israel for Tuesday’s shellacking.

Consider this New York Post headline: “Trump allies blame Iran war for GOP’s devastating midterm losses: ‘Hope Schumer calls Netanyahu and thanks him.’”

That was the headline in the morning. By the afternoon, Vice President JD Vance removed any doubt in a post on X/Twitter, quoting a pollster as saying that some voters who supported President Donald Trump in 2024 voted for Democrats on Tuesday for four primary reasons: to end the war in Iran, to focus on cost-of-living issues, to put America first, and to change America’s relationship with Israel.

The argument goes like this. Republicans lost because gas prices were high. Gas prices were high because of the Iran war. Netanyahu dragged Trump into that war. So, blame Israel.

As Republicans look for someone to hold responsible for Tuesday’s defeat, expect to hear much more of that argument.

Trump will still be in the White House for the next two years. But Israel will have to make its case to a Democratic Congress while some of the president’s closest allies are blaming it for the Republican defeat.

The new Congress will be sworn in on January 3, whether or not Israel has formed a government by then.

That’s the risk of Israel’s own inconclusive election. By the time Jerusalem settles who will govern, a very different Washington may already be debating what kind of relationship it wants with Israel.

If Israel’s politicians want the next government to have a say in that debate from the start, they have good reason to form one quickly.

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