Israel Elections 2026 goes through what every party running in Israel's October 27, 2026 Knesset election has published, one party per episode, for English speaking voters. It describes what each party says it will do. It never grades it.
What counts as a policy
A policy is a concrete position on what the government should do: a law to pass or repeal, a budget priority, a program to create or cut, a rule to change. "We will lower the cost of living" is a goal. "We will cancel import tariffs on dairy" is a policy. Episodes report both and say which is which.
Politics is left out: polling, coalition math, who is feuding with whom, candidate biographies, scandals and predictions. A leader's background comes up only in the one-line introduction of the party.
What counts as a source
Only material the party itself made public counts.
- The party's official website, including platform pages and downloadable documents.
- Official platform documents published for the 26th Knesset election.
- The official, verified social media accounts of the party and its leader, when a post states a policy.
- Official press releases and campaign materials published by the party.
- Public, on-the-record statements by the party leader or official spokespeople in interviews. These are quoted, attributed, dated, and labeled as interviews so they can be told apart from a written platform.
Journalists' characterizations, analyst summaries and Wikipedia can help locate a primary source, and then only the primary source is cited. Voting records from past Knessets are real, but they are not what a party published as its platform for this election, so they are not used. Nobody is contacted, and nothing obtained privately is used.
If a position cannot be traced to one of those sources, it is not in the episode.
The same twelve topics for every party
- Security and foreign policy
- October 7 accountability
- Economy and cost of living
- Housing
- Religion and state
- Judiciary and governance
- Education
- Health
- Social welfare, pensions, and the elderly
- Arab citizens and minorities
- Immigration, absorption, and diaspora relations
- Environment, energy, and transportation
Then anything else the party put front and center. For every topic the episode reports the published position or says that no published position was found. The gaps are information too.
Neutrality
No adjectives that judge a policy. Where a party's own wording is charged, it is quoted, attributed and left to stand. Parties that published little get a shorter episode, not a harsher one. The order of the series is the Central Elections Committee's list numbering, which has nothing to do with size or polling.
Checking
Every factual line in a script carries a marker pointing to its source. Before recording, each line is checked against a saved copy of that source, and quotes and translations are checked against the original Hebrew or Arabic. On this site those markers are the small numbered links, and each episode lists its sources with the date they were published and accessed.
Translation
Most sources are in Hebrew and some in Arabic. Translations aim for plain meaning over literal word order. Where a word carries a loaded or disputed meaning, the original term is kept beside the translation.
Who makes it
Close Read is made by Ben Greenberg, who reads political questions with a rabbi's training in interpreting contested texts and arguing in good faith, and a technologist's eye for incentives, from an American and Israeli vantage.
Corrections
If something in an episode does not match its source, write to ben@yalladevrel.com with the episode and the line. Corrections are made on the episode page.
