Four decades ago, Rabbi Meir Kahane's single Knesset seat was treated as a political disease — legislators passed a law to bar him, walked out when he spoke, and united to quarantine his ethnonationalist proposals. This month, his political heirs in Itamar Ben-Gvir's Jewish Strength party are polling at nine seats, one more than the Democrats, the successor to the Labor party of Rabin, Peres, and Meir. The inversion is not subtle. The structural driver is demographic and generational. More than 500,000 Israelis have reached voting age since the 2022 election. A Channel 12 poll — which notably did not survey Palestinian citizens of Israel — found three-quarters of first-time Jewish voters define themselves as right or centre-right. This generation came of age after Oslo collapsed and were teenagers during the October 7 attacks that killed roughly 1,200 people and triggered a two-year hostage crisis. Political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin notes these voters have been "socialised into" an environment where "the general terms of debate are really populist and ultra-nationalist. That's all they know." The rightward shift is not confined to the far right's base. The man leading polls to replace Netanyahu, Gadi Eisenkot, formulated the Dahiya doctrine of disproportionate force. Naftali Bennett supports annexing much of the West Bank. Avigdor Lieberman wants to dismantle the Palestinian Authority and replace it with an Israeli-Jordanian confederation he apparently did not discuss with Jordan. Eisenkot's Yashar party pledged to strengthen and expand settlements. No Jewish-led party backs a future Palestinian state. Only the Democrats oppose settlement expansion. The Democrats, led by former general Yair Golan, reject a two-state solution and campaign on a platform that would be centrist in much of Europe. Yet their campaigners are repeatedly attacked — physically assaulted at Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market by rightwing thugs while police watched. The party now trains volunteers in non-violent direct action. The political space for what was once Israel's mainstream left has contracted to the point where holding a campaign stall requires self-defence preparation. Ben-Gvir is particularly effective on social media, where a recent AI video laying out ethnic cleansing plans generated more engagement with young voters than any Israeli politician except Netanyahu. At an election rally this week, he mixed calls for ethnic cleansing with jokes about starving Palestinian prisoners and a proud recounting of his 1998 conviction over "Rabbi Kahane was right" bumper stickers. Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich recently called to "wipe out Gaza" and vowed to "bury" a future Palestinian state. The opposition has a mathematical path to power through coalition with parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, but most Jewish-led parties have ruled this out — a structural concession to the electorate's rightward drift that effectively narrows the governing options. The peace deals with Egypt and Jordan that secured Israel's borders, once seen as existential gambles, have vanished from political debate as a model for conflict resolution. Comedian-activist Lior Schleien has been posting footage of conversations with young Israelis, including one exchange where a young man responds to a question about Palestinian citizens with "Kill them… give me a knife and I'll murder them." Erez Uzan, vice-chair of the Young Democrats, frames it plainly: "There's a lot of racism, a lot of hatred, but most of all, there's fear." The Young Democrats claim several thousand active members and are attempting grassroots education about the Egypt and Jordan peace deals — but they are swimming against a generational current that has made ethnonationalism the default political vocabulary.
