With Israel’s general election slated for October 27 and the American midterms on the horizon, a new commentary in American Thinker argues that the two contests are bound together by more than timing. Writing for the outlet, Max Dublin contends that both countries face the same underlying question: how much of what he calls the achievements of Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump could be undone if the left returns to power.
Dublin frames the piece around an attempted hijacking that, had it succeeded, would have reshaped the Israeli campaign. According to interrogations cited in the article, the co-pilot of the Flydubai flight intended to crash the plane into a terminal at Ben Gurion airport — a plan Dublin describes as a 9/11 copycat that could have killed thousands beyond those aboard.
Unity, Then Division
The article draws a parallel between the aftermath of 9/11 in the United States and the aftermath of October 7 in Israel. Dublin notes that pundits have described October 7, given Israel’s small population, as the equivalent of roughly a dozen 9/11s for the country, and that it briefly united the state. As in America, he writes, that unity fractured — and the fracture is now front and center in the campaign.
Much of the piece is devoted to the opposition. Dublin identifies Gadi Eisenkot, founder of the Yashar party, as the main opposition leader and concedes his strengths: a retired general and former IDF chief of staff, a father who lost a son early in the war, and a politician of Mizrachi descent from Moroccan parents in a country where the majority claims eastern descent. Eisenkot entered politics only in 2022, winning a seat with Benny Ganz’s National Unity Party, and later served briefly as a non-voting observer in Netanyahu’s emergency war cabinet. Dublin calls him a strong opponent despite leaning left in a country he says has tilted right during the war.
The sharper criticism is reserved for the newly formed Democrat Party, a merger of the old Labor Party and the far-left Meretz — two factions Dublin says had fallen so low in popularity that they would have been disqualified under Israel’s electoral threshold. Its leader, Yair Golan, a former deputy chief of staff, is quoted making inflammatory remarks, including the claim that “the IDF kills babies as a hobby” and an assertion that killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was a mistake because his son Mojtaba and others now in power are more radical.
The Case for the Incumbent
Dublin argues that the opposition’s campaign rests largely on blaming Netanyahu for October 7 despite well-documented intelligence failures. He points to female soldiers at Gaza border listening posts who warned superiors for months about invasion preparations and were told to stay silent or face court-martial — many of whom were later killed when terrorists overran those posts at the start of the October 7 attack.
Against that, he sets what he calls the war’s overlooked successes. Both Hamas and Hezb’allah, he writes, have been badly degraded and are shadows of their former selves. More significantly, he argues, Israel has shown that Iran itself is no longer out of reach and that the Israeli Air Force can reach and dominate Iranian airspace at will, with the Houthis also within range.
The article also makes an economic case that Dublin says is seldom discussed. When Netanyahu first took power in 1996, he writes, Israel’s per capita GDP was $17,500; it has since grown roughly fourfold to around $70,000, now higher than that of Japan, Germany, France, and England. He adds a jab at the prime minister’s Tel Aviv critics, suggesting they could not afford their lifestyle without that economy.
Polling, Predictions, and a 58-Day Window
Dublin is openly skeptical of Israeli polling, arguing it is even more corrupt than its American counterpart because polling organizations will not allow tabs to be examined on their websites. Left-leaning pollsters show the left winning, he writes, while Channel 14, which he calls the sole right-wing pollster, shows Likud winning. His prediction is a stalemate like the four elections held in the two years before Likud’s current coalition majority — which would leave President Herzog tasked with assembling a majority and Netanyahu remaining prime minister for up to 58 days.
That figure becomes the article’s most concrete claim. Dublin cites Gregg Roman of the Middle East Forum noting that the 58-day interval aligns with the period between the American midterms and the seating of the new Congress on January 2, 2027. Should Democrats win the House or Senate, Dublin writes, they would theoretically have to wait until that date to take effective action against Trump’s Middle East war efforts.
Citing General Amir Avivi of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, Dublin argues that more kinetic action by the coalition will be necessary to finish the war with Iran and its proxies. He observes that both Trump and Netanyahu have signaled they do not want to resume kinetic action before their respective elections, and that Iran — however much it seeks revenge — is unlikely to attack soon, because, as Avivi has said, the Iranian leadership fears only two things: Israel and its own people. The logical conclusion, in Dublin’s telling, is that any resumption of fighting would likely fall within that 58-day interregnum.
What remains unresolved, by the author’s own admission, is how much of the two leaders’ gains would be reversed if the left wins. He calls the answer imponderable.
A Closing Invocation
The piece ends on a broader note, citing the Department of Justice’s figure that 49 Americans were killed alongside Israelis on October 7, 2023, and noting others murdered, maimed, or taken hostage since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Neither country chose this war, Dublin writes, but both are the only powers capable of winning it — for their own people and, in his framing, for Western civilization. He closes by calling for silence on the voices that have for half a century shouted “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”
It is, unmistakably, an argument written from the right and aimed at persuading voters in two countries at once. But its central observation is not partisan: two elections, separated by an ocean, will be decided within weeks of each other, and the window between them may matter as much as the results themselves.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/10/two-nations-two-elections-one-fate/