Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi's Anti-Zionist Remarks Ignite Political Firestorm Ahead of Israeli Election

A political storm has erupted in Israel after comments from one of the country's most senior ultra-Orthodox rabbis suggested that Jewish people might have fared better without a state of their own, remarks that have landed with unusual force just three weeks before the nation heads to the polls on October 27.

The controversy centers on Rabbi Dov Lando, the 96-year-old spiritual leader of the Degel HaTorah party, whose closed-door remarks at his home in Bnei Brak were broadcast by Channel 12 on Monday. In the footage, Lando argued that soldiers who follow "Religious Zionism" and are killed in Israel's wars die because of what their rabbis have taught them.

"They are killed because their rabbis teach them a distorted Torah," Lando is heard saying, adding that many military operations are conducted "not for saving lives, but for the honour of the state."

The rabbi went further, suggesting that "it is possible to live well with the Arabs without a state," and describing international or Palestinian rule as having been "the best situation." He contended that Zionism "caused the Arabs to hate us" and inflicted both physical and spiritual harm on the Jewish people, while characterizing secular Israelis as having constructed "a state of apostasy and heresy."

While the comments themselves are not new—having first been published in February 2025—their reemergence this week has thrust them into the center of an election campaign in which ultra-Orthodox military service has become one of the most divisive issues in Israeli politics.

The timing is hardly accidental, according to observers. "The question is not what he said, but why this discourse has been placed at the heart of the Israeli debate three weeks before the election," Ehab Jabareen, a researcher on Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera.

The underlying dispute traces back to a 2024 Israeli Supreme Court ruling that found no legal basis for ultra-Orthodox seminary students to receive exemptions from military service. Since then, the government has been unable to pass legislation restoring those exemptions, and the issue has sparked large protests on both sides of the divide.

The conscription question carries significant political weight because of the ultra-Orthodox parties' role in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition. Lando's Degel HaTorah is one of two factions within the United Torah Judaism alliance, which secured seven seats in the 2022 election and had been part of Netanyahu's government before its ministers resigned last year. The bloc has continued to support the coalition intermittently, and Netanyahu has reportedly been cautious about ending the military exemption—despite broad public opposition—for fear that UTJ and similar parties would withdraw their support entirely.

Lando's influence extends well beyond his own party. Alongside his role in Degel HaTorah, he is considered one of the spiritual leaders of Israel's Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox community, which accounts for roughly one-third of the country's estimated 1.45 million ultra-Orthodox Jews, also known as Haredim. In May, he publicly stated that he no longer trusted Netanyahu and called for parliament to be dissolved.

The remarks reflect non-Zionist and anti-Zionist positions that were once dominant within ultra-Orthodox Judaism, but they take on added significance by explicitly raising the possibility of living within a non-Zionist state—a notion that remains deeply controversial in Israel.

Ibrahim Khatib, a conflict studies scholar at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, said Lando's comments draw a line between Zionism and Judaism "from inside the Jewish community itself," at a moment when the official Israeli establishment "tries to bind them together." Khatib added that the remarks also challenge the narrative that Jewish communities in Arab societies faced danger and that the Zionist movement came to "save them" at Israel's founding in 1948. He was careful to note, however, that Israel's ultra-Orthodox polity "is right-wing, its leaders hold right-wing positions, and some of them have made clearly offensive statements about Arabs and Palestinians."

Opposition leaders moved swiftly to exploit the footage. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, one of Netanyahu's main challengers in the upcoming vote, denounced the comments as "anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist and anti-[Israeli military]." But rather than directing his criticism solely at Lando, Bennett aimed his fire at Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, seeking to tie the prime minister to a figure within his own electoral bloc.

The episode encapsulates the broader tension running through Israeli politics: the collision between a historically exemption-based ultra-Orthodox community and a state that has increasingly demanded universal military service, particularly since the war with Hamas. With the election approaching, the controversy over Lando's words seems certain to remain a flashpoint, forcing voters to confront questions about religion, statehood, and sacrifice that cut to the heart of Israel's identity.