Sneak Peek: Nadav Eyal on Israel's draft controversy, party loyalty, vigilantes, and more...

**Dan Senor** (0:00)
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**Nadav Eyal** (0:46)
You are listening to an Ark Media Podcast.

**Dan Senor** (0:58)
Welcome to Inside Call Me Back, our members-only edition where we open the door and let you shape the conversation. Today in the hot seat, addressing your questions and personal dilemmas is Ark Media contributor, Nadav Eyal. Nadav, welcome back to the inside.

**Nadav Eyal** (1:13)
Thank you for having me again, Dan.

**Dan Senor** (1:14)
Nadav, it's been kind of a sleepy week or two in Israel. Like, there's not much for us to talk about. It's been not much going on, huh?

**Nadav Eyal** (1:22)
Yeah, as usual in Israel, right?

**Dan Senor** (1:24)
As usual, right.
I often say, I'm always amused that my Israeli friends come to New York City to relax. I'm always like, guys, yeah, this is vacation for you in New York City, which most Americans think is the most intense, stressful city in America. But for Israelis, it's like wind down.

**Nadav Eyal** (1:41)
What you just said, as an Israeli, it never occurred to me that it's an intensive place. I don't want to visit in my vacation, right?

**Dan Senor** (1:48)
Right. Ask anyone from any other part of America. They may want to visit New York City because it's an interesting place, there's a lot of cultural things to do, but they don't see it as like downtime. They don't see it as like a place to unwind and take a break from the stress.
Anyways, it's going to somewhere kind of tranquil. Okay, we have a lot of questions from our community, so I'm just going to jump right into them. The first one is Maggie from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Maggie asks, last week, a new right-wing party in Israel was formed by Hili Trooper and Yoaz Hendel. Who are they and how does it change the political dynamics, if at all? So we are in the season of a elections have been called. So Israeli elections will take place on October 27th. And now is usually the time in an Israeli election season, where if there are new upstart parties that are going to start appearing, and one of them in particular, this one that Maggie just cited is getting a lot of attention. Why?

**Nadav Eyal** (2:43)
Because Hili Trooper and Yoaz Hendel are two younger generation politicians in Israel. Both of them come from religious Zionism, what we call religious Zionism, what could be translated in American Jewish community spheres into modern Orthodox. They grew up with the right-wing religious Zionism, but now they're considered quite liberal. I use this expression, I don't mean like lefties, not in the way that it's used in the US political sphere. Yoaz Hendel served hundreds of days in a reserve service. He's a previous minister. He used to work with Benjamin Netanyahu, and this ended very badly.
And Hili Tropper really is one of the most consensual, one of the most popular politicians in Israel. In every kind of poll, he gets really very significant numbers. He has devoted much of his time to helping people who've been injured during the war and traveling between bereaved families as a result of the war. Both of them served in combat units. They are the type of the relatively new generation of Israelis. They're younger than Naftali Bennett, who's young himself, and they seem to be the people who might represent the reserve soldiers. And this initially came from a reservist soldiers party that was formed by Yoaz Hendel, and Hili Tropper that used to be a minister together with Benny Gantz, he came from Benny Gantz party, also a centrist party, has joined him, and this is getting some media.
Now they didn't pass the threshold in initial polls, now they're passing the thresholds.

**Dan Senor** (4:29)
Meaning they're polling high enough that if those poll numbers are reflective of what the actual votes they get on election day, they were, at least before, polling lower than, meaning the minimum threshold to actually get any seats in the Knesset. And you're saying now they've actually, in the polling, moved past that threshold.