Drums pounded and chants rang out Sunday night as dozens of young activists in matching blue shirts packed B’Yachad’s unveiling of its final Knesset slate, giving the event the atmosphere of a pep rally as Naftali Bennett presented the candidates he says are ready to begin “fixing” Israel from their first day in government.
The slate unveiled ahead of Tuesday’s deadline for the October 27 election is heavy on experience: two former prime ministers, lawmakers and former ministers, senior civil servants and military officers, alongside reservist activists and figures impacted by the October 7 attacks. Bennett repeatedly described them as “doers” — professionals equipped to repair what the party calls years of incompetent governance.
But the event also offered perhaps the clearest picture yet of what B’Yachad has become politically. Months after Bennett returned to politics with ambitions of assembling a broad coalition stretching deep into the disaffected right, his alliance with Yair Lapid and the subsequent rise of Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar have dramatically reshaped that project.
Sunday’s event suggested B’Yachad is no longer organizing itself around winning right-leaning voters back, but is embracing the constituency it actually has: liberal-Zionist, largely centrist Israelis animated by military and national service, competent government, a state commission of inquiry into October 7 and an end to sweeping Haredi draft exemptions.
