There is a specific type of Israeli politician who is always portrayed as “the future.” They deliver speeches, craft images, align with factions, and patiently wait for the system to reward them. Sharren Haskel never waited. While others learned to navigate the system, she learned how to work – relentlessly, unglamorously, and often without praise – for Israel and the Jewish people. Her career is defined not by sudden rises or carefully timed alliances but by accumulation: of experience, trust, institutional knowledge, and scars. If leadership is built rather than given, then Haskel has already paid her dues. The tragedy is not that Israel lacks leaders like her – it’s that the system is designed to wear them down.
Haskell’s rise has been anything but easy, but comfort was never the goal. She has spent years doing the work most politicians quietly avoid: battling on committees, fighting regulations, enforcing environmental laws, giving foreign briefings, and laying diplomatic groundwork whose importance only becomes clear years later. She doesn’t ask if the work will be popular; she asks if it is necessary. She makes decisions by weighing the long-term national cost against short-term political pain and acts accordingly. While others save energy for the next headline, she uses it where it counts. That kind of stamina cannot be taught, outsourced, or staged.
And when moments arose that demanded character rather than convenience, she did not hesitate. She left Benjamin Netanyahu when he reneged on the unity agreement with Benny Gantz, not because it was popular, but because broken agreements weaken the state itself. She publicly opposed draft exemptions when silence would have protected her career, and she did something almost unthinkable in modern Israeli politics: she walked nearly 80 kilometers to protest a draft bill she believed violated the moral contract of shared sacrifice. These were not symbolic gestures. They carried real political costs in a system that punishes dissent. Again and again, Haskel chose obligation over advancement, fully aware it could slow or derail her future – and she did so anyway.
Her seriousness extends beyond protest into doctrine. Long before it was convenient, Haskel introduced a detailed plan affirming Israeli sovereignty in the Jordan Valley, framing it not as provocation but as responsibility – covering borders, water, terrain, and long-term security. She understood that the Jordan Valley isn’t just an ideological slogan but Israel’s strategic depth, where sovereignty depends on logistics, continuity, and time. She explicitly warned against sacrificing sovereignty for short-term diplomatic gains, including during the Abraham Accords. At the time, this stance was seen as inconvenient. Later, parts of that framework influenced government policy. This pattern – early clarity, resistance, eventual validation – has repeatedly followed her.
Disciplined over performative: Shaaren Haskel's ideological stream in Israeli politics
That clarity is rooted in ideology, not impulse. Sharren Haskel comes from a lineage in Israeli politics that much of the current discourse has moved away from: the liberal-democratic revisionism of Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin. Like them, she believes sovereignty and liberty are connected, that Jewish power must be disciplined rather than performative, and that moral seriousness – hadar – is vital for national survival. She rejects both the apologetic attitude of the post-Zionist Left and the empty populism of a right that has forgotten its intellectual roots. Others hint at this tradition, but among her generation, no one embodies it as consistently or fully as she does. She is not using Jabotinsky and Begin just for rhetorical effect; she genuinely promotes their ideas under pressure.
What sets her apart most, however, is fluency – strategic, human, and historical. She understands Israel instinctively, but she also recognizes the vulnerability and fragmentation of the Diaspora. She knows how Jewish identity frays outside Israel, how antisemitism evolves within liberal democracies, and how young Jews drift away not out of hatred but due to disconnection. She has seen how international institutions fail Jews in times of crisis and how performing replaces protection. Unlike many Israeli politicians who speak to world Jewry, Haskel speaks with it because she has done the work of listening. That understanding is no longer optional; it is vital.
In foreign policy, Haskel has expanded Israel’s diplomatic outlook without sacrificing its core principles. While others remained trapped in familiar Western echo chambers, she built alliances in Africa, strengthened faith-based coalitions, and continued the approach of the Abraham Accords – while emphasizing that normalization should never come at the expense of sovereignty. She tackled institutional antisemitism long before October 7 made denial impossible, advocated for UNRWA before it became popular, and maintained that Israel’s legitimacy must be backed by facts rather than slogans. This wasn’t ideological theatrics; it was precise, strategic statecraft. After October 7, when rhetoric collapsed under reality, this groundwork shifted from admirable to essential.
And yet, despite all of this, Haskel remains constrained by a political system that favors opposing traits. Israeli politics today is driven more by incentive structures – such as patronage, loyalty tests, procedural gatekeeping, and career preservation – than by vision. Competence threatens these systems, and independence destabilizes them. Leaders who do not need permission are seen as liabilities. In such a culture, corruption often appears not as criminality but as normalized mediocrity. The result is a country that recycles caution while sidelining seriousness. That is not merely unjust – it’s dangerous. Israel does not need another symbolic leader, another tactician of survival, or another figure optimized for coalition math. It needs leaders who can think historically, act globally, and make decisions under pressure without losing clarity. It requires people who have already proven they can carry weight without succumbing to ego, exhaustion, or fear.
Sharren Haskel is not the future merely because she is young or impressive; she is the future because she has already demonstrated leadership, whereas others have only rehearsed it. Nations seldom fail because they lack talent – they fail because they refuse to develop it. Herzl warned us to beware of small men with small aims, because they confuse personal advancement with national destiny. Israel is now living within that warning. The question is no longer whether Sharren Haskel could be a great leader of this country – the record already shows that. The real question is whether Israel will repair a system so corrupted that it views courage as a threat and integrity as an inconvenience. Because history is unforgiving, and it will record, without mercy, that Israel had the leader it needed – disciplined in power, grounded in sovereignty, relentless in duty – and still chose comfort over survival.
In power, grounded in sovereignty, relentless in duty, and chose comfort over survival.
Adam Scott Bellos is the founder and CEO of The Israel Innovation Fund and the author of Never Again Is Not Enough: Why Hebraization Is the Only Way to Save the Diaspora.