During all my years covering politics for The Jerusalem Post, many parties proudly contacted me to tell me that they had published new platforms for voters.
When they would send them to me, I would surprise them by responding that it was not news for my readers if the platform was in Hebrew.
The party spokesmen would then tell me to translate them for my readers, which was even more offensive if they had them translated into Russian.
I had to explain to the parties that if Post readers were a priority for them, they should not only write English platforms themselves but also research what English speakers in Israel cared about, put it in the platforms, and implement it.
The election beginning now is no exception.
If you count the children and grandchildren of immigrants to Israel, there are hundreds of thousands of native English-speaking voters in Israel. It’s not enough people to form a party like Russian speakers did, and I doubt that many parties will bother putting a native English speaker on their list to woo such voters.
After all, native English speakers in Israel are very diverse, and they seldom speak in one voice. The native English speakers who have been elected to the Knesset have represented many different parties.
But there is one issue that I dare suggest they can all agree on: Israel needs to make more of an effort to improve its international image, in what is perhaps the most frightening time for Diaspora Jews since the Holocaust.
This issue will not become a priority in this election if the readers of the Post who live in Israel and vote do not earnestly demand it.
Donations from American and British Jewish philanthropists who live abroad used to give them the ear of Israeli leaders.
But that ended in January 2018, when Likud MK David Amsalem – who does not speak English and resented that his colleagues who did raised money he could not – passed the Primaries Law, which facilitates state funding for party primaries and bans candidates from receiving contributions.
So that leaves the voters here in Israel. I am sure Post readers will be activists and volunteers in many parties in this election and have influence. They will go to parlor meetings and debates, ask important questions, and make their voices heard.
Americans change how they view Israel post-war
Ask the candidates what they will do about the antisemitism that has skyrocketed around the world since Oct. 7, and how much of a priority they will make addressing this threat if they play a key role in the next government.
Remind them of the numbers:
Back in 2022, before the war, 55% of Americans viewed Israel positively, and 42% negatively, according to a Pew Research study.
The latest Pew poll, published April 7, found that the numbers have flipped. Sixty percent of Americans now view Israel negatively, and only 37% positively. Eighty percent of Democrats see Israel negatively, and 41% of Republicans.
Among those aged 18-49, some 70% of Americans say they see Israel negatively – 84% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans. The shift among Republicans aged 18-29 has been the starkest: In 2022, some 61% saw Israel positively, and 26% negatively. Now only 35% said positive, and 64% negative.
The survey was conducted on March 23-29, 2026, among 3,507 US adults representing a statistical sample of the adult American population. It was fielded about a month into the very unpopular American and Israeli-led war in Iran, which, it could be argued, makes the results somewhat unfair. But no one is denying that this is a very serious problem that must be fixed immediately.
In his interview two weeks ago on 60 Minutes with Major Garrett, chief Washington correspondent for CBS News, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the resurgence of antisemitism on the jealousy of Israel’s success and “a concerted effort by several states to vilify Israel primarily on social media and the standard media, too, and we have not fought back yet.”
This admission that Israel had “not fought back yet” against the international effort to besmirch the Jewish state did not make news because it was overshadowed by plenty of other headlines in Netanyahu’s 78-minute interview.
Asked if Israel’s own mistakes had contributed to the negative impression of Israel, Netanyahu said that in every war, mistakes are made; and that despite its unprecedented efforts at precision in targeting terrorists to avoid civilian casualties, Israel had made mistakes.
Picking up Garrett’s cellular phone, Netanyahu said that thanks to the power of the device, “I can paint you as a monster, and if I say it often enough, enough people will believe it.
“Israel is besieged on the media front, on the propaganda front,” he said. “We have not done well in the propaganda war. We have to fight back against these lies, this propaganda, with the only weapon we have, which is the truth. I am trying to do that now, and we will try to do that with much greater effort because we have left the battlefield to our enemies and, boy, do they lie – all the time.”
Part of “trying to do that now” is the defamation lawsuit Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced last week against The New York Times for Nicholas Kristof’s column “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.”
One could say that the damage has already been done by the column’s obviously false allegations and pathetic sourcing, which were revealed in impressive investigations by HonestReporting’s Rachel O’Donoghue and others.
When you Google “Rape Silence Israel Palestinians,” the column appears at the top, not “Silenced No More: Sexual Terror Unveiled,” Prof. Cochav Elkayam-Levy’s comprehensive 300-page study of 430 witnesses of the Palestinians’ rapes of Israelis on and since Oct. 7. The wording of the headline for the Times piece ended up making it harder for the Israeli study to be found online.
The Times has denied the Foreign Ministry’s charge that the newspaper was given the study and rejected it. But all top foreign journalists in Israel were sent the study on Sunday, May 10, at 6:42 a.m. ET with a note that it was embargoed until Tuesday, May 12, at 1:30 a.m. ET. Kristof’s column was published on Monday.
The lawsuit was denounced as a frivolous publicity stunt ahead of the election and was mocked because the case would likely be dismissed for jurisdiction reasons, whether it was filed in Israel or in New York. But nonpolitical ministry officials said legal authorities had been consulted and the lawsuit would proceed seriously, with no regard to any political timetable.
“The strategic value of Israel’s Times lawsuit has nothing to do with winning,” research analyst Eitan Fischberger explained on X. “It’s about discovery, if they can somehow get to that point – the Times’ internal emails about how this piece was vetted, what they knew about Euro-Med’s Hamas ties, and what doubts existed internally. All of that becomes potentially public. The lawsuit is just how you get there.”
In other words, Israel is fighting back, and the Times has been on the defensive, uncharacteristically issuing clarification after clarification justifying Kristof and his report and denying Israel’s statements about the timing of its publication.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein also published a letter to the Times asking for the Israel Prisons Service’s response to Kristof to be published and the response by a Times opinion editor turning down the request.
The ministry’s efforts resulted in the discourse being changed to the poor journalistic standards of the Times and not the false charges against Israel in America’s newspaper of record.
Regardless of whether such efforts are too little or too late, whichever parties form the government after this election must continue them.
Every party must be compelled to make this fight a top priority. That means not only taking action when the damage is already done but also starting to take into account public diplomacy and the fate of Diaspora Jewish communities whenever important security decisions are made.
Whether they finally start taking these important steps could depend on you.
The writer served as chief political correspondent and analyst of The Jerusalem Post, and has lectured about Israel in all 50 US states.