It was December 7, 2023, the first day of Hanukkah. Israel was in the midst of its war in Gaza, and Gadi Eisenkot, the former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and a minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, was visiting a military base in southern Israel.
When Eisenkot entered the command center, he noticed a screen displaying the locations of Israeli troops in Gaza, and recognized the position of the division in which his son, Gal, was serving. Just a few hours later, during that same visit, he would receive an update: A serious incident had occurred, and Israeli forces had suffered casualties. Less than an hour later, a senior commander entered the room and delivered the devastating news: Gal was among them.
Gal, 25, was a soldier in Maglan, an elite Israeli commando unit. He had been gravely wounded by a Hamas explosive device near a tunnel in Jabalia, in northern Gaza. Hours later, he died in the hospital.
For years, Eisenkot had been responsible for visiting the families of soldiers killed in battle. Now, he was on the other side of it. He called one of his other sons to break the news but told him not to share it with the rest of the family. He wanted to be the one to tell Hanna, his wife, what had happened to their fifth and youngest child. Later on in the war, two of his nephews, Yogev Pazy and Maor Cohen Eisenkot, would also be killed on the battlefield.
Eisenkot, and those closest to him, point to his son’s death as the moment he decided to run for prime minister. Indeed, nearly three years after that day, Eisenkot is now the most formidable political rival of his former boss, Benjamin Netanyahu—and perhaps the only candidate capable of beating him when Israelis head to the ballot box on Tuesday.