Yair Golan

And the response, eventually, was consolidation.

In 2024, Labor and Merits merged into the Democrats under Yair Golan, first time the Zionist left has run under one banner.

Which is the logical

move.

Well, you see, I'm from the left, uh, Zionism wing.

You know, the Democrats, Yair Golan, all this.

Now, um, Mr., uh, Lieberman, who is far right wing.

But we all-- So if we have, if there will be a new government, uh, it won't solve many pr- problems because there will be many disputes there.

He's left.

Wow, what a left.

And when you come to Yair Golan, Zionist Left, he's far, far left.

He's like, uh, out of the, out of discussion.

They have a v- pretty good track record of overturning these very political bans and actually reinstating, uh, the political parties that the m- you know, the, the governing or dominant parties would like to exclude.

There is, though, this time a question mark over one individual in particular, and this may not just go on party lines, and that's partly because, and I, I, you know, you can fill us in on who he is, but just worth saying, instead of it just being that the predictable parties of the right want this one individual banned and everyone else is in a different place, the, the petition to r- exclude this particular politician is being backed even by some parties at the center left, including the most left of the mainstream as, you, you know, Zionist parties, Yair Golan's Democrats.

They too have s- said this person should be banned.

So tell us who he is and why, uh, the mainstream politicians of right and left in Israel want him off the ballot.

That's my own view.

I can see that it's against the grain in, in the way I- I- Israel politics is divided.

Some, your own network, Channel 12, reported fascinatingly a debate that had gone on within the Democrats, where actually, I think it was a member of Knesset, Gilad Kariv, was opposing the leader, Yair Golan, arguing actually on similar lines to the ones I'm arguing, which is it's against, you know, the democratic nor- norms, uh, to start cherry-picking, in essence, this one.

And also, there would be a particular downside for the, for this party, which wants Jewish-Arab joint participation, to be excluding a, a- an Arab politician.

Whereas in recent years, espec- the last 15 years of Netanyahu, it's been taken as given that the Haredi parties, you can put those down on the, you know, first names on the team sheet when you're drawing up his future coalition, you can assume.

Uh, putting aside, l- let's say there is a resolution of this number one issue for you, other things being equal, is your party and the, and the other ultra-Orthodox parties genuinely open to sitting with others, uh, as they were back in the 1990s when they were ready to sit with parties that would today be defined as very broadly, very broadly the left, meaning anti-Netanyahu? Or has something fundamental changed? In other words, if you were able to get resolution on this draft issue we've been talking about, are there any other reasons why you could not sit with a Gadi Eisenkot, a Yair Golan, a Naftali Bennett? Are these people who you just could never sit with?

Uh, first of all, uh, Gadi Eisenkot's party, I, I don't know what their policies are going to be.

I don't think they know, and I don't think anyone in Israel knows.

Yeah, Avigdor Lieberman meet today after trading public barbs.

Bennett and Golan are not included in the meeting.

Columnist Ari Shavit, he's back after a long hiatus, columnist Ari Shavit wrote that the liberals did it again, choosing a candidate that the right can brand as left wing, that's Eisenkot, instead of uniting behind a shared right of center alternative.

So Ari Shavit is saying that what you said was going to happen is happening.

So the issue is heated, and Gadi Eisenkot stepped right into the fire with this meeting of the Arab municipal leaders and the Likud election.

propaganda.

He relies heavily on saying, you vote for Eisenkot, you get Yair Golan from the radical leftist progressives called the Democrats and the Arab parties.

So if you look at the...