The Media Line: Netanyahu’s Ultra-Orthodox Bloc Cracks, Bennett and Lapid Launch ‘Together’ With One Clear Leader   

Netanyahu’s Ultra-Orthodox Bloc Cracks, Bennett and Lapid Launch ‘Together’ With One Clear Leader   

At a Tel Aviv campaign event, Lapid handed Bennett the stage just as Rabbi Dov Lando’s letter pushed Israel closer to early elections 
 
By Gabriel Colodro/The Media Line   

The launch of “Beyachad,” the Together party, was planned as a campaign event. By the time the doors opened in Tel Aviv, it had become something closer to the first night of an election season. More than 2,000 people filled a large event hall Tuesday evening for the first major public gathering of the new joint political framework between former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and former Prime Minister and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid.  

Outside, activists and lawmakers moved between picnic tables, campaign signs, cameras, and security barriers. Inside, blue light washed over the stage, Together signs filled the screens, and the crowd stood for long stretches, clapping and chanting Bennett’s name.  

Only hours earlier, Rabbi Dov Lando, the senior spiritual authority behind Degel HaTorah, had instructed the party’s lawmakers to move toward dissolving the Knesset over the stalled military conscription exemption law. His message, circulated in a handwritten letter and reported across Israeli media, was blunt: “We no longer have trust in Netanyahu.” He added that talk of a political “bloc” no longer existed.  

The timing changed the entire meaning of the evening. Together was no longer launching into a distant 2026 campaign calendar. It was presenting itself just as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing bloc appeared to be cracking from within, and as opposition factions moved to bring dissolution bills to a vote.  

The stagecraft in Tel Aviv left little doubt about the internal hierarchy of the new alliance. Yesh Atid brings the sitting lawmakers, the parliamentary infrastructure, and the nationwide volunteer machine. Bennett, who is not currently a member of Knesset, brings the leadership brand, the premiership experience, and the promise of reaching voters beyond the traditional center-left camp. At the event, that bargain was made visible.  

Lapid spoke for roughly 10 minutes. Bennett spoke for close to an hour. The message was polite, carefully choreographed, and unmistakable: Lapid was handing Bennett the center of the stage.  

“Before we made this union, I had to ask myself only one question,” Lapid told the crowd. “Am I ready to tell you that Naftali Bennett can lead the country in the coming years? The answer is ‘yes.’”  

Moments later, Lapid introduced Bennett as “the former prime minister and the prime minister in the near future of the State of Israel.” The crowd stood, applauded, and chanted. Lapid framed the arrangement not as a concession, but as an act of responsibility after years of political fragmentation.  

“I did not put my ego aside,” he said. “I put my heart in the right place.”  

He described Together as a joining of “the Israeli center with the liberal right,” saying the aim was not only to merge parties but to reconnect Israeli society after years of rupture. Bennett, he said, was “a right-wing man” while he was “a man of the center,” but the disagreement was part of the point.  

“We do not pretend that we agree on everything,” Lapid said. “There are disagreements between us, and that is good. We are saying to Israeli society: look, people who do not agree on everything know how to work together.”  

That line captured the political offer Together is trying to make. After the failures and resentments that followed October 7, and after years of coalition politics built around vetoes, sectoral demands, and personal loyalty to Netanyahu, Bennett, and Lapid are presenting their alliance as a return to functioning government.  

But Together is not yet structurally balanced. Bennett’s emerging political framework still lacks the kind of party apparatus Yesh Atid has built over 14 years. Bennett has so far publicly presented only three figures for his future list: Jonathan Shalev of Katef el Katef, former Transportation Ministry director-general Keren Turner, and former Communications Ministry director-general Liran Avisar Ben Horin. Yesh Atid, by contrast, has sitting lawmakers, municipal networks, activist groups, and local branches across the country, including language-based communities for Spanish, English, Russian, and French speakers, as well as Arab and Druze citizens, LGBTQ Israelis, people with disabilities, senior citizens, self-employed workers, young adults, and teenagers.  

That machine now gives Bennett something his own new list could not have built in time: a campaign army.  

Shalev, one of the first public faces of Bennett’s new team, made the leadership formula explicit from the stage: “The most suitable person to lead this historic move, to rehabilitate, unite and rebuild the state, is none other than Naftali Bennett.” He praised Lapid for “putting ego aside” and said there were leaders who saw “only the good of the people and the good of the State of Israel.”  

Bennett, when he took the stage, leaned directly into the contrast between the new alliance and Netanyahu’s coalition. “Yair Lapid and I came here tonight together precisely because we are different,” Bennett said. “Lapid has his beliefs, which he absorbed in his parents’ home, in secular Tel Aviv. I have my beliefs, which I absorbed in my parents’ home, on the Carmel, in Haifa, in a religious-Zionist community. We are not hiding the differences between us. We are proud of them.” He added, “We are proud of them because we are proving that what we have in common is infinitely greater than what separates us.”  

Bennett’s speech moved between national trauma, political indictment, and policy ambition. He argued that Israel’s darkest hour after October 7 had also exposed its social strength. “The government did not save the country,” he said. “The people of Israel saved the country.”  

He praised civilians who rushed south on the morning of October 7, reservists, volunteers, bereaved families, hostage families, and soldiers still fighting in Lebanon. But he accused the current government of behaving as though the massacre had not happened.  

“They are trying to deny the past, and they are abandoning the future,” Bennett said. Then he connected the Together launch to the immediate coalition crisis.  

“They are talking now about dissolving the Knesset,” he said, referring to the effort to bring forward elections. “Now they are trying to set it in September, before the memorial day for the massacre, because then what? The people of Israel will forget?”  

He then delivered one of the sharpest political lines of the night. “This alliance of draft dodgers is collapsing before our eyes,” Bennett said.  

The phrase landed in a hall already aware of the day’s developments. Rabbi Lando’s letter had fturned the Haredi draft crisis from a long-running legislative dispute into a possible trigger for elections. The opposition had already begun moving bills to dissolve the Knesset. Reports said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted more time, while Haredi parties were weighing an earlier date.  

For the Together party, the issue is more than a campaign weapon. It sits at the heart of the alliance’s attempt to redefine responsibility after October 7. Bennett, who said that before the massacre, he did not feel the same urgency around Haredi military service, told the audience that the war was pivotal.   

“October 7 changed everything,” he said during a question-and-answer exchange with a young man preparing for combat service. Bennett argued that the Israel Defense Forces now lacked tens of thousands of combat soldiers and said the burden was falling too heavily on soldiers and reservists already serving.  

“Draft evasion is killing our soldiers,” he said, adding that he was not accusing individual Haredi young men, but the political system that had trapped them outside the framework of service.  

His proposed solution combined pressure and integration. Those who do not serve, he said, should not receive economic benefits from the state. At the same time, he spoke of creating frameworks that would allow ultra-Orthodox men to serve in ways adapted to their community, including border-defense models that combine Torah study and military duty.  

Bennett also used the stage to make a direct promise to the families of October 7 victims: the first act of a government he leads would be to establish a state commission of inquiry.  

He told the story of Menashe and Sigal, whose daughters were murdered at the Nova festival, and said they had asked only for answers.  

“I promise you that the first action we take in the new government we form will be to establish a state commission of inquiry,” Bennett said. He then added, “I apologize in the name of the state that this has not happened until now.”  

Lapid, in his speech, hit a similar theme. He said Israelis wanted a government that sees them and cares about them, not one that describes the October 7 massacre as merely a tactical failure. “They want a normal government of people who work for them,” Lapid said. “And we will give them exactly that.”  

The event’s emotional language extended beyond the stage. Several Yesh Atid lawmakers and activists used the same words repeatedly in interviews with The Media Line: hope, responsibility, healing, and elections.  

Yesh Atid lawmaker Vladimir Beliak described the atmosphere as unusually charged. “There is a very, very special atmosphere here,” Beliak told The Media Line. “This is the first conference of Together, Bennett, and Lapid tonight in the same place, on the same stage. I think there are at least 2,000 people here. I have to say, I have not felt an atmosphere like this for a long time, an atmosphere of change, of hope, especially hope, in light of the news of the last few hours. I think we are going to do something big here.”  

Member of the Knesset Naor Shiri also tied the event directly to Rabbi Lando’s intervention. “This event is, first of all, super moving,” Shiri told The Media Line. “I think we are on a day when maybe we will receive the news that we are going to elections. More than anything, this event symbolizes the maturity, the leadership, and the responsibility of Bennett and certainly of Lapid. They knew how to put ego and disagreement aside, and now we are in an event that has to win.”  

Asked about surprises, Shiri laughed and pointed to the political crisis unfolding outside the hall. “There are always surprises,” he said. “Look what a surprise we arranged for you with Rabbi Lando. You didn’t expect it. Nobody knew.”  

Former deputy Mossad director and a Yesh Atid lawmaker Ram Ben-Barak put it more simply. “We are here together to change this country,” Ben-Barak told The Media Line. “Together to bring hope, together to return to what we were: a high-tech, liberal, democratic state, one that cares about farmers, one that cares about the weak, and not a state that thinks and worries only about itself and its associates. We will change that.” Asked whether there would be surprises, Ben-Barak said, “The surprise, I hope, is that the Knesset disperses.”  

Speaking with The Media Line, Yesh Atid lawmaker Debby Bitton gave the alliance a more social reading. She described it as a meeting point between Yesh Atid’s existing base and Bennett’s appeal to voters who might not have joined Lapid alone. “We gathered for our wonderful unity, together with Bennett,” Bitton said. “We are creating Yesh Atid together with Bennett’s party, Lapid and Bennett, and you can see how much the public wants this clean thing: two decent, honest people, without indictments, who know themselves in the Knesset and will lead this country.”  

Bitton said the Bennett-Lapid partnership created room for people with different views to stand together. “There is a vibe,” she said. “You know, there is Yesh Atid, there is Lapid, and suddenly there is really the possibility of a few more opinions. Yes, there are things we do not agree on, but one thing is clear to us: the state comes before everything, the economy comes before everything, and security comes before everything.”  

She recalled meeting a local activist who, affectionately, told her he preferred Bennett. After the alliance was announced, she joked to him that the dilemma between them had ended. “That only shows that in the end, in my opinion, the public will vote with its feet,” she said.  

Bitton also said the public needed healing after years of war and division. “Lapid and Bennett are really brothers,” she said, pointing to their previous experience in government and to the peaceful rotation between them in 2022. “They conducted themselves respectfully. When Lapid had to replace him, Bennett left with nobility.”  

She added that Israelis were tired of a politics that had entered family life. “People tell me that brothers cannot sit together at Friday night dinner,” Bitton said. “That is what we need to repair.”  

Former Transportation Ministry Director-General Keren Turner, one of the few figures publicly associated with Bennett’s future list so far, told The Media Line that the event showed the kind of team Together wanted to present. “It is fun,” Turner said. “Anyone who is here feels it well. There is hope here, and we have a dream team: professional people and talented parliamentarians who come to work for the State of Israel and its citizens. Our amazing citizens deserve a different government, and I hope that very soon the government we have will disperse. Our people deserve something else.”  

Matti Sarfati Harkavi, a Yesh Atid lawmaker, gave the evening a similar frame. “We are at the launch conference of Together,” she told The Media Line. “There is a smell of elections here, a lot of hope, and that is what unites all of us here. A lot of love, a lot of joy, because we will make the change very soon. And we will repair, repair everything that needs to be repaired. There will be a good society here, one where we will want to raise children and grandchildren.”  

That optimism was matched by a hard electoral calculation. Bennett repeatedly attacked Netanyahu’s coalition as exhausted, morally compromised, and dependent on parties that had avoided shared national service. Lapid told Yesh Atid activists that they were now “the largest party in the State of Israel” and would be the foundation of the next government. Shalev told the crowd, “We are going to win big.”  

The night also revealed the practical logic behind the alliance. Bennett is the declared leader, while Yesh Atid brings much of the existing field operation. Bennett gives Together its candidate for prime minister and its ability to speak to voters beyond Lapid’s traditional base; Lapid’s party provides the sitting Israeli lawmakers, the activists, and the organizational memory of a movement built over 14 years.  

The crowd did not appear to see that arrangement as a weakness. It was closer to the message of the evening: Lapid’s supporters came to hear why he was giving Bennett the lead, and Bennett’s supporters came to see whether Yesh Atid would fully embrace him as the candidate to replace Netanyahu. By the end of the event, the answer from the stage and from the hall was clear.  

The Netanyahu bloc was being challenged from two directions at once. From inside the coalition, Rabbi Lando’s letter signaled that the Haredi partnership with Netanyahu could no longer be assumed. From outside, Bennett and Lapid used Together’s first major rally to present a ready-made alternative.  

Whether elections come in August, September, October, or later, the campaign now has its first defining image: Lapid standing before his own party’s national machine and inviting Bennett to lead it. As Lapid put it, “What you are feeling now, and have not felt for a long time, is called hope.”  

For Together, the question after Tuesday night is whether that feeling can be turned into votes fast enough.  

Photo Credit: Gabriel Colodro/The Media Line