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Max Blumenthal: Who Will Rule Israel and How? (Transcript) 

In this episode of Judging Freedom, Judge Andrew Napolitano and Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone break down Israel’s deadlocked election, why Gadi Eisenkot’s Change Bloc couldn’t get past Netanyahu, and why Max thinks a third round of war with Iran is close to inevitable after the US midterms. They also cover Maria Corina Machado’s return to Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez’s turn to campaigning, life in Tehran under the US naval blockade, and whether Jair Bolsonaro is now a US intelligence asset. Read the full transcript of this interview below:

Who Will Rule Israel After the Election?

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: (00:01:04 – 00:01:30) Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, October 29th, 2026. Max Blumenthal joins us now. Max, thank you very much. A lot to ask you about, especially your exclusive interview with the mayor of Tehran. But before we get there, what is your take on the Israeli elections and who do you think will be ruling Israel?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: (00:01:31 – 00:08:15) Yeah, just to clarify, I just spoke to the international affairs director and spokesman for the office of the Tehran municipality because I wanted to talk about the impact of the US naval blockade on Iran and what comes next. And so we’ll talk about that.

But your question on the Israeli election, it’s one of the more difficult election results to unpack. The 2009 election in Israel sort of inspired me to begin work on my book, Goliath, which you can see behind me. And because it represented a permanent transition in Israeli society to the right, to a messianic form of Zionism, and Netanyahu was sort of occupying the center. And since then, my theory has been proven correct.

Netanyahu is the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history, and he still is at the helm after an election in which many outside observers, pollsters, thought that the Change Bloc represented by former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot would actually overtake Netanyahu. But there was never any real clear path to victory for them. Because of the Zionism at the core of Eisenkot’s plank and the coalition partners that he had.

Avigdor Lieberman, who is an extreme anti-Palestinian racist who represents the extremely secular Russian community, which also won’t coalition with any Arab parties and won’t coalition with any Haredi or ultra-Orthodox parties. Then you have Naftali Bennett, who is also a man of the right, more of a religious nationalist, and both Lieberman and Bennett come out of Likud.

Netanyahu’s base of support within the Knesset has shrunk. He’s down to 52 seats. He was at something like 63. It’s shrunk even as he incorporated someone who was once thought of as a potential successor from within Likud, Gideon Sa’ar, into his party. So in some ways, this is sort of a setback for the right. Another right-wing party that represents the Mizrahi population of Israel, Shas, lost 100,000 votes.

Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the real hardcore messianic fascists in Netanyahu’s coalition, They lost a little bit of ground. They didn’t do as well as expected, and the right sort of consolidated around Likud, but then Eisenkot didn’t do as well as expected either, or the Change Bloc.

Who did very well? It’s the Arab parties. Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are 1/5 of the population, came out in large numbers to try to oust Netanyahu and his bloc because they are so viciously anti-Arab and have been seeking to strip them of public benefits.

And now Netanyahu is trying to do 2 things. He’s trying to delegitimize the vote by declaring that these Arab parties are actually instruments of foreign interference and that there was all sorts of fraud at the polls. He sent out Likud thugs to intimidate them at the polls and it didn’t work. They have, I think, a combined 19 seats, which is enormous.

He’s trying to do that. He’s also trying to encourage Lieberman and Bennett, and this is sort of the message I took away from his election night speech, which came very late, trying to convince them to unite with him against the Arab parties and against the Arab bloc.

And at the same time, You have Gadi Eisenkot, who will not, under any circumstance, work with any of the Arab parties because he has this condition that you must be Zionist and you must call Hamas a terrorist group. And in Israel, if you officially call Hamas a terrorist group, you are giving the green light for the Israeli military to totally destroy Gaza. That’s what it actually means in practice. So even the more conservative Arab parties like Ra’am won’t do this. And so everything is sort of at a stalemate.

So where do we go from here? You have Netanyahu activating his Shin Bet director, David Zini, who is himself a Zionist religious nationalist figure who’s very political, very ideological, who supported, reportedly supported attacking Iran in order to influence election results, which Netanyahu may have been considering. He’s actually trying to investigate the Arab parties and prove that the vote was illegitimate.

So Netanyahu is activating the security chiefs. He could next try to activate the military in a very political decision. In order to attack Iran, and this would be more likely, I think, if he just has this caretaker government and there’s this uncertainty and imbalance.

It is exactly what I said last week in our last conversation, Judge, which is that Netanyahu would use an attack on Iran in order to force unity among all of the figures who came out of Likud and possibly even Gadi Eisenkot himself, who served momentarily for a couple months in a unity kind of war room style emergency government with Netanyahu after October 7th, which gave Netanyahu a life raft after this humiliating security failure and attack.

So I think we’re in a very dangerous time. Trump doesn’t want this attack now because midterms are coming up and it will hurt the Republicans to have an attack before the midterms.