How a military record and personal grief made Netanyahu's biggest rival

Eisenkot was born on May 19, 1960, in Tiberias to Meir and Esther Eisenkot, Moroccan immigrants who had arrived in Israel in the 1950s. He is married with five children and currently resides in Herzliya.

Despite being born in the North, he was raised in Eilat, Israel’s southern periphery, and far from the country’s political and military establishment. He attended Goldwater High School, where he studied maritime subjects before enlisting in the military.

Unlike many of Israel’s senior commanders, Eisenkot did not emerge from the country’s most established social or military circles. His path to the top of the IDF began without an obvious indication that he would one day become chief of staff, let alone one of the country’s leading political challengers.

This was Eisenkot’s first position that really placed him at the intersection of the military and political scene.

During the time he served as head of the Operations Directorate and then Northern Command, Eisenkot quickly became associated with the “Dahiya Doctrine,” a method of warfare that relies on widespread, intentional destruction of civilian infrastructure that is used to hide terrorist infrastructure.

In addition to his military career, Eisenkot also holds a BA in history from Tel Aviv University. He later earned a graduate degree in political science from the University of Haifa, along with a master’s from the US Army War College.

Eisenkot’s term as chief of staff lasted four years and is largely regarded as one of the quietest in Israel’s history.

But quiet for Israel isn’t necessarily quiet elsewhere, with Eisenkot leading the IDF through several operations against Israel’s enemies. These included Operation Northern Shield in 2018-19, launched to dismantle Hezbollah terror tunnels along the northern border; and Operation House of Cards, which targeted Iranian infrastructure in Syria in May 2018 after rockets were fired toward the Golan Heights.

A few years after retiring from the military, Eisenkot’s rise in the political world came in several stages.

Initially, he joined Gantz’s National Unity alliance ahead of the 2022 Knesset election, and was one of its senior figures.

After the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 massacres in Israel, Eisenkot and four other members of the party – Gantz, Gideon Sa’ar, Chili Tropper, and Yifat Shasha-Biton – joined Israel’s emergency government as ministers without portfolio.

The government was established five days after the Israel-Hamas War began, bringing the National Unity into Netanyahu’s government to create a broader political front and secure the support that the country needed for the war.

Eisenkot’s role as an observer in the wartime cabinet, which he held through 2024, meant that he was privy to some of the most consequential military decisions of the war, including his opposition to preemptively widening the conflict by striking Hezbollah in Lebanon while the war in Gaza was still going strong.

But from the early days of the wars, Eisenkot had more than just his years of military experience to influence his decisions and recommendations. On December 7, 2023, Eisenkot’s son, M.-Sgt. (res.) Gal Eisenkot, 25, was killed in the northern Gaza Strip during a military operation that recovered the bodies of the hostages Eden Zakaria and Chief M.-Sgt. Ziv Dado.

Eisenkot’s personal loss has become an inseparable part of his identity and beliefs, as he gained new understanding about the war’s costs that few other political figures can claim.

The loss of his son also became entwined in the party he founded in September 2025, Yashar – Hebrew for “straight” or “honest” – as he has publicly called for a state commission of inquiry into the events of October 7.

Marking two years since Gal’s death, Eisenkot spoke at the inauguration of a new innovation center at the Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, named for Gal and a second soldier who fell on the same day.

At the event, he stated that the loss of his son has fueled his determination to work toward repairing the country.

“I want to channel the loss into something positive, into a place of being worthy, to carry forward their path, to give proper and good meaning for my children and grandchildren, and for everyone in this country who wants to live in an exemplary state,” he said.

Today, nearly a year since its founding, Yashar has drawn a mix of security-establishment figures and public personalities. It has climbed steadily in the polls throughout 2026, sometimes running ahead of both Netanyahu’s Likud and the rival opposition alliance led by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.

Eisenkot has positioned his party around the themes of healing and hope, with his slogan being “Israel must win.”

Although it was Netanyahu who had appointed Eisenkot chief of staff, the Yashar leader nevertheless has been notably willing to criticize Netanyahu directly, including warnings against politicizing the military.

In June, Netanyahu adviser Yonatan Urich posted on X/Twitter a clip from an ad for The Jerusalem Post in which a woman in a bathtub discusses learning English. It was followed by a snippet of Eisenkot fumbling in English while speaking on a Washington Institute panel, with the Netanyahu operation’s clip sarcastically calling him “Mr. Hasbara (Public Diplomacy).”

Eisenkot, who grew up in Israel and spent his entire adulthood in the security establishment, has a professional grasp on the English language – he earned a Master of Science in Strategic Studies at the United States Army War College in Pennsylvania – and speaks English with a heavy accent. While Netanyahu’s supporters mocked him for this, it has never been a formal requirement for Israeli politicians to speak fluent, accent-less English.

In response to Urich’s barb, Eisenkot shared a video of Netanyahu endorsing the two-state solution as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat applauded, praising his English in the address, and writing that “all the present progressives in the world cannot erase history.”

He also posted images of English words that he said he understood much better than Netanyahu: Responsibility, service for all, Kiryat Shmona, and victory.

With Israel’s national election set for October 27, Eisenkot has emerged as Netanyahu’s most serious challenger – something that is all but unheard of for a newcomer barely a year into running his own party.

Whether Yashar’s momentum translates into governing power will depend on coalition arithmetic that is still up in the air this close to the vote. Nevertheless, Eisenkot’s rise itself marks a notable shift: a former chief of staff, defined publicly as much by personal grief as by military record, is now positioned as a central figure in deciding who leads Israel next.■