LGBTQ+ ally tapped to form new Israeli government

Gadi Eisenkot (Screen capture via Al Jazeera English/YouTube)

Gadi Eisenkot was Benjamin Netanyahu’s main rival in Oct. 27 elections.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has tapped Gadi Eisenkot to try and form a government after the country’s Oct. 27 elections.

Eisenkot was the Israel Defense Forces’ chief of staff from 2015-2019. He was a minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks — Eisenkot’s son, IDF Master Sgt. Gal Meir Eisenkot, died in combat in the Gaza Strip roughly two months after Hamas militants attacked Israel.

The International Criminal Court in 2024 issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu; former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant; former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar; Mohamed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, the head of Hamas’s military wing known as the Qassam Brigades; and Ismail Haniyeh, chair of the Hamas Political Bureau, after it accused them of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and Israel.

The Israeli government has strongly denied it has committed genocide in Gaza.

An Israeli airstrike on a compound in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza, on July 13, 2024, killed killed Deif, one of the alleged Oct. 7 masterminds. Israel less than three weeks later assassinated Haniyah in Tehran, the Iranian capital. IDF soldiers on Oct. 16, 2024, killed Sinwar in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza.

Gadi Eisenkot resigned in 2024. He founded Yashar!, a centrist party that means “Straight!” in Hebrew, in 2025.

Gadi Eisenkot was the main opposition candidate in the Oct. 27 elections.

Netanyahu, who chairs the right-wing Likud party, and his allies lost their majority in the 120-member Knesset.

The Likud bloc has 53 seats in the Knesset, compared to the 48 seats the Yashar! coalition has. Arab-led parties that could prove pivotal to Gadi Eisenkot’s efforts to form a government have 19 seats.

The new Knesset was sworn in on Tuesday.

Three MKs —Amir Ohana of Likud, Eitan Ginzburg of the center-right Beyachad party, and former Ramat Gan Mayor Israel Zari, a Yashad! member who is a former spokesperson for the Aguda, an Israeli LGBTQ rights group — are openly gay.

Ohana in 2022 became the Knesset’s first openly gay speaker and is the country’s first out Cabinet minister. The Knesset on Nov. 17 is scheduled to vote on who will will succeed Ohana in the post.

Gadi Eisenkot has six weeks to form a government. Herzog will then tap Netanyahu, who remains Israel’s caretaker prime minister, if Gadi Eisenkot fails. Another election could take place if neither man can form a new government.

Gadi Eisenkot’s party supports LGBTQ legislative package

Yashar!’s website states the “LGBT community is an integral part of Israeli society.”

“Its members bear the burden and are full partners in civic duties; but are not equal in rights and are exposed to violence, hatred, and incitement,” it reads.

The Yashar! website further states “the right to security is the right of every person,” but notes “those who serve, donate, and pay taxes feel threatened or discriminated against due to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity” and it “is a reality that cannot be accepted.” The party also says it “advocates for the right of every person to choose their lifestyle and to have equal rights as a citizen of the country, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

“We will ensure that members of the LGBT community are safe in the public sphere, enjoy equal rights under the law, and receive all the social services that every citizen is entitled to by law,” it says.

Yashar! also supports the Sagi Laws for Equality, a package 10 legislative proposals that would expand rights to LGBTQ Israelis. They are named in honor of Sagi Golan, an IDF major who Hamas militants killed on Oct. 7 in Be’eri, a kibbutz that is near the Israel-Gaza border.

His fiancé, Omer Ohana, with the support of Israeli advocacy groups, successfully lobbied Israeli lawmakers to amend the country’s Bereaved Families Law to recognize LGBTQ widows and widowers of fallen servicemembers. A ban on so-called conversion therapy, stronger hate crimes and nondiscrimination laws, and civil marriage equality are among the other proposals in the Sagi Laws for Equality package.

The Aguda promoted it ahead of the Oct. 27 elections.

“Yashar! is committed to promoting equal rights for members of the LGBT community,” says Yashar! on its website, while reiterating its support of the legislative package to “restore the personal security of members of the LGBT community, to end existing discrimination in legislation, and to provide the necessary government responses in education, health, welfare, and all areas of life.”

Omer Ohana looks a pictures of his fiancé, Sagi Golan, a gay Israel Defense Forces major who died fighting Hamas militants in Be’eri, Israel, on Oct. 7, 2023, A memorial service for Golan took place in Herzliya, Israel, on Oct. 8, 2024. Gadi Eisenkot and his party support a legislative package named in Golan’s honor. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

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