From the Liveblog of
Saturday, May 23, 2026
Ex-general, now in Bennett’s party, says election will be about Oct. 7, draft exemption law
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Speaking to some 500 anti-government protesters at Tel Aviv’s Habima Square, Maj. Gen. (res.) Noam Tibon, a candidate for the Knesset, says the coming elections will be “about the October 7 debacle, and not anything else.”
In November, Tibon joined Opposition Leader Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party, which is now a faction in right-wing former premier Naftali Bennett’s Together party. He adds, somewhat paradoxically, “The elections will be about the despicable draft evasion law,” a reference to the coalition’s bill to codify blanket exemptions from military service for yeshiva students.
The former general touts his opposition bona fides, recounting to the audience his participation in protests for a hostage deal and against the government’s judicial overhaul, which he says “paved the way to the October 7 debacle.”
While efforts are underway to unite opposition parties so that votes don’t go to waste, “the most important thing is to raise the voting rate” of the bloc’s supporters, Tibon says.
He urges supporters that, when the date of Election Day is announced, they cancel trips abroad that clash with the date and make sure their children are all in the country to vote.
Referring to far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, Tibon adds that parents of first-time voters must “look them in the eye and tell them a single sentence: Ben Gvir will not enter this house.”
Maayan Sherman, whose son Ron, an IDF soldier, was killed in captivity in Gaza after being abducted in the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, takes Netanyahu to task for refusing to establish a state commission of inquiry into the failure to prevent the onslaught.
“Whoever has nothing to hide has no reason to fear an investigation,” she says, adding that the refusal to form such a commission “spits in my face and on Ron’s grave.”
The government is “not just abandoning the dead” by failing to probe the onslaught that led to their death, says Sherman: “It’s abandoning the living, and the future of our beloved State of Israel.”
The Times of Israel Community.