A Request: Please Pray for Israel's Election

I don't often write to ask you to pray about Israeli politics. But I believe this election, set for October 27, 2026, may be one of the most consequential in Israel's history — and I want to explain why and ask you to bring it before the Lord with me.

I know many of you love Israel deeply, and that love has often meant unreserved support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who you may see as a strong friend of the Christian world. I understand why. He speaks our language well; he has stood before Congress; he has been a fixture of Israeli leadership for as long as many of you have been paying attention. I am not writing to tell you who to root for, and I'm certainly not asking you to pray for a particular outcome or party. I'm asking you to pray for God's will — for justice, for wisdom, for the people of this land. In order for us to pray from a place of understanding, let me try to explain what's actually happening here, as someone who lives it.

An unusual amount of power, for a very long time

PM Netanyahu has now led Israel for close to twenty years combined, counting his first term in the late 1990s. No one — not a president, not a prime minister, not a CEO — is meant to hold that much power for that long. Scripture doesn't tell us political systems should provide unlimited terms for good reason: even good men start to believe their own press when the applause (and the deference) never stops. I say this not as a personal attack, but as a simple observation about human nature under prolonged, concentrated power. It should concern us when a leader has held power so long that people around him and his own decisions no longer receive the checks that ordinary accountability usually provides. That is not uniquely an Israeli problem, but it is very much an Israeli reality right now.

The alliance with the extreme right

Our government is currently filled with a meaningful number of ministers who are answering to agendas that 70–90% of the country, depending on the issue, does not actually support. That is not a healthy way to lead a democracy, and it is not a reflection of the Israeli people's heart — it is a reflection of what it took to assemble 61 (out of 120) seats, which is needed to form a governing coalition.

To stay in power, Netanyahu built his current coalition with partners most Israelis — and I mean the large majority, across the political spectrum — consider dangerous. Itamar Ben-Gvir leads a party, Otzma Yehudit, whose founding tradition traces back to a banned racist movement against Palestinians; several of its past leaders were formally disqualified by Israel's Supreme Court for incitement to racism, and Ben-Gvir himself seems to carry old convictions from his younger years for incitement and support of a terrorist organization.

For years, he was a fringe figure most of the country wanted nothing to do with (if they even knew who he was). Netanyahu brought him into the mainstream and made him Minister of National Security — in charge of the police — because he needed his party’s support and coalition votes to form a government. Ben-Gvir has since pushed to build his own private enforcement force outside the normal police chain of command. Bezalel Smotrich, his governing partner, was once arrested for having 700 liters of fuel in his car, assumed to be for nefarious purposes. Neither man reflects where most Israelis actually stand. They hold power because coalition arithmetic rewarded them. Unlike in the US, a very small group of people can wield an extremely high amount of power if their participation is needed to form a government.

Alongside this, ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) parties have long refused, as a bloc, to send their young men into the army that the rest of the country's sons and daughters serve in, sometimes at the cost of their lives. Most Israelis — religious and secular alike — find this deeply unfair, especially after nearly three years of war. But because Prime Minister Netanyahu needs Haredi votes to govern, his coalition has repeatedly protected this exemption instead of resolving it.

The Supreme Court said several years ago that the Knesset (Parliament) needed to pass a law that would deal with this issue. To appease his coalition partners, Netanyahu has been unwilling to introduce a fair law that would require their children to serve alongside ours. Ultra-Orthodox opposition to compulsory IDF service is mainly rooted in the belief that full-time Torah study is a vital religious duty and a form of spiritual protection for Israel. Of course, one could ask, are they more spiritual than David, who led the armies of Israel? Many also fear that military service—through its secular culture, mixed-gender environment, and authority structure—could weaken Haredi religious identity and community life. I’m more sympathetic to this second issue as we have seen more than a few Messianic Jews come out of the army without their faith. Still, it is not fair or righteous or godly to expect others to go to battle while you study.

Family Connections

One other place the loss of perspective shows up is in how Netanyahu’s family functions in proximity to decades of power. His wife, Sara Netanyahu, holds no elected office, yet for years has been widely reported — by journalists and even critics on the political right — to play a significant role in senior political and security appointments. She has previously been fined for misusing state funds. His son, Yair, has spent much of the past two years living in Miami, at a high cost to Israeli taxpayers for his security detail. He is known mainly for inflammatory social media attacks on Israel's own military and judicial leadership rather than for any public service. While the country was fighting and burying its sons and daughters in Gaza and the north, the prime minister's son was living in a high-rise in South Florida. And at the same time, a Netanyahu crony, Miki Zohar, recommended him for a high political post—as the leader of the Jewish Agency. ‏ The younger Netanyahu has never had a real job and is untrained. Except for his last name, no one would have ever considered him to be a political appointee.

I don't say this to shame their family — families are complicated, and I don't envy anyone raised in that kind of spotlight. I say it because when a nation's first family behaves as though normal rules and normal scrutiny don't apply to them, we have to call that out.

October 7, and the war's unfinished business

Many Israelis, across the political spectrum, still have hard questions about how the government and military failed to see October 7th coming, and whether the war's conduct since then has been shaped as much by political survival as by strategy. There has still not been a full accounting — a state commission of inquiry that Netanyahu has resisted. Whatever comes next in negotiating the war's aftermath with Hamas — Gaza's future governance most importantly — will shape this region for a generation, and it deserves leadership working from wisdom and courage rather than from fear of losing a coalition partner.

Settler violence

I also need to be honest about something happening in the West Bank that gets far too little attention in parts of the pro-Israel Christian world: a small, radicalized minority of settlers has grown increasingly violent toward Palestinian civilians, and the current government has been reluctant to enforce the law against them — in part, many believe, because it doesn't want to lose their political support before this election. Reports say they are privately seething with anger at the settlers, but publicly slow to act because of the political ramifications.

I want to be careful here, because this is where nuance really matters. Most settlers live in the territories for ordinary reasons — housing is cheaper, not because they're ideologically driven to displace anyone. But a violent fringe exists, and it is doing real damage — to Palestinian families, to Israel's standing before the nations, and I believe, before God. Just this past week, in the village of Qusra, settlers surrounded several Palestinian homes for days, cutting off water and electricity, while the family inside — including children — could not safely leave. It took days and international pressure, including a rebuke from the U.S. ambassador himself (who rightly referred to these people as terrorists — not in the sense that they were murdering people, but that they were terrorizing their Arabs neighbors), before the army finally intervened.

Please hear me: the vast majority of Israelis are appalled by this kind of behavior. One of the top leaders in the settler movement has condemned the radicals. Israelis are patriotic people, but most are not lying awake scheming about how to expand borders or harm Arabs — they want the same thing most people everywhere want: to live in peace, raise their families, and get on with life. And most Palestinians, whatever they think of Israel or of Jews, aren't plotting our destruction either — they want to survive, work, and raise their own children in peace. When our government fails to restrain the violent fringe among us, it feeds the very narrative — that this conflict is about domination rather than survival — that most Israelis reject and that damages Israel's witness to the world.

Would the alternative be better?

The opposition that would replace the current government is not a left-wing alternative waiting in the wings. Most of its leading figures are former Netanyahu allies and even former ministers of his own governments who left over broken promises or policy disputes — not over ideology. A viable opposition government would likely still lean right on many issues; it would need to build a coalition with a small center-left party and several center-right ones. As of now, current polling suggests the opposition bloc is close to the 61 seats needed to govern, while Mr. Netanyahu's coalition sits well short of it. But it's entirely possible neither side reaches a majority, and Israel is forced back to the polls yet again — something we have already lived through more than once in recent years.

I raise this not to tell you which side to hope for, but so you understand: this isn't a simple story of "godly leader vs. secular opposition," or "friend of Christians vs. enemy of Israel." It's a story about what twenty-five years of concentrated power, and the compromises required to hold onto it, have done to Israeli governance — regardless of who ends up leading next.

Destroying the Supreme Court

Before October 7, 2023, the issue dividing the nation was Netanyahu’s coalition’s desire to strip the Supreme Court of much of its power — mostly its ability to overturn laws that go against our “Constitution” (which we call the Basic Law). The divisions were incredibly intense. The only check against the ruling coalition is the Supreme Court. It appeared to many that they wanted to get rid of anything that would threaten their agenda. People spoke of civil war. Now coalition members are talking about it again.

What I'm asking you to pray

I'm not asking you to pray for Mr. Netanyahu's defeat or for his victory. I'm asking you to pray for God's will — for a government, whoever leads it, that will:

• Pursue real justice and accountability for October 7th and its failures

• Restrain and prosecute violence committed in Israel's name against the innocent, whoever the perpetrators are

• Resist the temptation to trade justice for political survival

• Lead Israel toward genuine security and toward peace with its neighbors, including the ordinary Palestinians who simply want to live—without compromising our security.

• Resist the temptation to curtail the Supreme Court.

• Pass a law requiring orthodox young men to serve in the army

• Govern in a way that reflects the actual heart of the Israeli people, not the narrow demands of whichever faction happens to hold the balance of power

Scripture is not silent about nations governed unjustly, or about leaders who love power more than righteousness. Many of you may remember that I shared that on September 8, 2023, I had a harrowing experience. I felt like the Spirit of God rose up in me in an alarming way. The words I heard were, “judgment is already on Israel.” And I knew it was connected to the fact that "righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people" (Proverbs 14:34). I believe God cares about how Israel treats the vulnerable within her borders — Jewish and Palestinian alike — as much as He cares about Israel's security and survival. Those things are not in tension; they are the same call to righteousness.

Honestly, the entire country is exhausted. Many Israelis are leaving the country. According to a recent article in All Israel News, the number of Israelis leaving the country FAR outweighs the number of Jewish people immigrating to the land.  Thank you for loving Israel enough to want to understand her, not just cheer for her. Please pray with me — not for a party, but for God's will to be done here.