From the Western Wall to Tel Aviv bars, candidates give last push ahead of election

With just hours to go before voting booths opened for national elections, candidates spent Monday in a last-minute round of campaigning, visiting towns across the country, as well as the Western Wall and the bars of Tel Aviv.

Many candidates took time to rally voters, either by touring locations or making phone calls to encourage support.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir all made separate visits to the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, which has become a tradition for many Jewish candidates in the run-up to elections.

Their chief rivals, Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot and B’Yachad leader Naftali Bennett, ended their day sharing drinks with supporters in Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu spent the early part of the day recording campaign video clips that he plans to publish throughout Tuesday on social media during voting, the Ynet outlet reported.

He also gave interviews with pro-government media outlets and podcasts, as well as a chat with the IETV channel, which caters to the country’s Ethiopian community. During the talk, footage of which was released on social media, Netanyahu was asked why there is no representative from the Ethiopian community in a realistic place on the Likud slate.

Listing efforts he claimed to have made on behalf of the community during his time in office, Netanyahu declared, “There is an Ethiopian Likud candidate. His name is Benjamin Netanyahu.”

During his visit to the Western Wall, made together with his wife Sara, Netanyahu left a note between the massive stones of the wall, a traditional way of appealing for divine intervention. The note had a drawing of an Israeli flag and the message “To the lives of IDF soldiers, our heroes, to victory over enemies, to the success of our people — the eternity of Israel will not lie!”

Netanyahu was expected to vote at a ballot station close to his home in Jerusalem. After that, he was set to make campaign visits to population centers based on voter turnout, Ynet said.

Netanyahu’s chief rival Eisenkot, who leads by a small margin in polls, published a video dedicated to IDF soldiers that also recalled his son Gal, and nephews Maor Cohen Eisenkot and Yogev Pazy, who were killed in separate incidents while serving in the IDF during fighting in the Gaza Strip over the past three years.

“I meet some of you staring at me from stickers, I meet some of you on the streets and in the home circles where you tell me about the past and the future,” Eisenkot said. “I look into your eyes and see people who in recent years have gone through what others have not gone through in their entire lives. The pain of war will never be erased, but this time there is a different way.”

Eisenkot, a former head of the IDF,  also met with some old army buddies, then visited some bars in Tel Aviv to raise support.

Bennett filmed some campaign clips and made calls to undecided voters. He toured Beersheba in the south, and then moved on to Givatayim to meet residents on the streets.

He also attended a campaign event in Herzliya, before winding up the evening with drinks at bars in Tel Aviv, though not with his ally Eisenkot.

Bennett began election day in his hometown of Ra’anana and will also do some last-minute campaigning in various locations, Ynet said.

Opposition Democrats leader Yair Golan also headed to Tel Aviv, where he walked the streets with some of his party’s incumbent and potential lawmakers in an effort to persuade voters to back his movement.

“The campaigns we led on the streets over the last four years must be expressed in the government and the Knesset,” Golan said in a statement, referring to regular anti-government rallies and protests. “We didn’t struggle for so many years to stand at the side.”

Far-right Otzma Yehudit, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, visited the Western Wall, as well as ascending the Temple Mount.

However, unlike previous such visits to the flashpoint holy site, he did not make much fanfare about the Mount visit, Ynet reported, apparently so as not to turn off potential ultra-Orthodox voters who frown on such pilgrimages. Ben Gvir also campaigned in southern cities. He is expected to tour cities across the country on election day.

Allied far-right Religious Zionism party leader Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich likewise visited the Western Wall, and then held a summit in Rishon Lezion.

The ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties focused last-day efforts on encouraging their voter base to vote, including via mass messaging sent to cellphones.

Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman met activists at the party headquarters in Modiin and made phone calls to voters.

“We are fighting for every vote until the last moment,” Liberman said in the Ynet report. “Israelis need to go out and vote.”

The party also claimed that false notifications in Russian were being sent on WhatsApp saying the party would not clear the threshold to make it into the Knesset. It called for an immediate probe of the matter.

The mostly Arab-representative Joint List alliance spent the last day before the election encouraging community members to go out and vote. A bus decked out with party slogans drove through Tel Aviv and will tour the country on Tuesday.

Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. and voting will continue throughout the day until 10 p.m.