Rabbi's Anti-Zionist Remarks Ignite Political Firestorm Ahead of Israeli Election

A closed-door meeting at a private home in Bnei Brak has erupted into a national controversy, after footage surfaced of one of Israel's most influential ultra-Orthodox rabbis questioning whether the Jewish people would have been better off without a state of their own. The comments, broadcast by Channel 12 on Monday, have injected a volatile new element into an election campaign already defined by bitter divisions over military conscription and the role of religion in public life.

Rabbi Dov Lando, the 96-year-old spiritual leader of the Degel HaTorah party, was recorded telling those gathered that Jews could have lived well under Arab or international rule, and that Zionism had provoked Arab hostility while bringing both physical and spiritual ruin upon the Jewish people. He further described secular Israelis as having constructed "a state of apostasy and heresy." The remarks were originally made in February 2025 but only resurfaced this week, three weeks before Israelis head to the polls on October 27.

Lando's comments are not confined to theological abstractions. In the same footage, he addressed a question about the admiration some ultra-Orthodox men feel toward religious Zionists who combine Torah study with military service. Lando said soldiers who adhere to "Religious Zionism" and are killed in Israel's wars die because of what their rabbis have taught them, asserting that "they are killed because their rabbis teach them a distorted Torah." He added that many military operations are conducted "not for saving lives, but for the honour of the state."

The timing of the disclosure has proven explosive. Lando leads one of the two factions within the United Torah Judaism alliance, which secured seven seats in the 2022 election and was a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition before its ministers resigned last year. Although the party formally left the government, it has continued to offer intermittent support to the coalition, giving it outsized leverage over legislation.

That leverage has centered on the fiercely contested question of military exemptions for ultra-Orthodox seminary students. Israel's Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that no legal basis existed for maintaining those exemptions, and the government has since failed to pass legislation restoring them. The resulting vacuum has triggered large-scale protests on both sides of the divide, with draft opponents gathering outside military bases and secular Israelis demanding an end to what they see as an unjust burden-sharing arrangement.

Netanyahu has been reluctant to impose the draft on the ultra-Orthodox community, wary that the United Torah Judaism alliance and similar parties might withdraw their support entirely and bring down his government. The issue has become one of the sharpest fault lines in Israeli politics, cutting across religious, social, and electoral lines.

Ehab Jabareen, a researcher on Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the significance of the controversy lay less in the content of the rabbi's remarks than in their sudden prominence. "The question is not what he said, but why this discourse has been placed at the heart of the Israeli debate three weeks before the election," he said, suggesting the resurfacing was itself a political act.

Lando's positions, while controversial in mainstream Israeli discourse, reflect a current of non-Zionist and anti-Zionist thought that once dominated ultra-Orthodox Judaism. His language, however, goes further than traditional Haredi ambivalence toward the state, explicitly entertaining the idea that Jews could have lived well under non-Jewish rule. Such a formulation is especially inflammatory in a country where the connection between Zionism and Jewish identity is treated as axiomatic by much of the political establishment.

Ibrahim Khatib, a conflict studies scholar at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, told Al Jazeera that Lando's remarks drew a line between Zionism and Judaism "from inside the Jewish community itself," at a moment when the official Israeli establishment "tries to bind them together." He added that the comments also challenge the narrative that Jewish communities in Arab societies were in danger and needed the Zionist movement to "save them" at the formation of the state in 1948.

Khatib cautioned, however, that the ultra-Orthodox polity in Israel "is right-wing, its leaders hold right-wing positions, and some of them have made clearly offensive statements about Arabs and Palestinians." His warning underscores the complexity of the episode: Lando's anti-Zionist theology does not translate into sympathy for Palestinians, and his community's political representatives have often aligned with the Israeli right on matters of security and territory.

Opposition leaders seized on the footage immediately. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, one of Netanyahu's main challengers in the upcoming election, denounced the remarks as "anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist and anti-[Israeli military]," but directed his political fire at Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich rather than at Lando alone. The strategy reflects a broader opposition effort to frame the controversy as a symptom of the prime minister's dependence on ultra-Orthodox partners.

Lando has already shown a willingness to confront Netanyahu directly. In May, he said he no longer trusted the prime minister and called for parliament to be dissolved, signaling a deepening rift between the ultra-Orthodox leadership and the government it has long propped up. His latest remarks, whether intended or not, add fuel to a campaign in which conscription, religious authority, and the character of the Jewish state are all being contested simultaneously.

With less than a month remaining before the vote, the episode has handed opposition parties a potent line of attack while forcing Netanyahu to defend an alliance that many Israelis view as enabling draft evasion. Whether the controversy shifts voter behavior remains uncertain, but it has ensured that the relationship between Zionism, military service, and ultra-Orthodox autonomy will remain at the center of the national conversation through election day and beyond.