November 4, 2024 Yisraeli special Knesset elections
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The November 4, 2024 Yisraeli special Knesset elections was a concurrent series of special elections held in every Member of Knesset constituency on the same day in all 142 Knesset seats by order of King Josiah IV in reaction to the Broken Knesset and May 6 Knesset riot. The entire Knesset, in effect, was up for election. Most incumbent MKs ran for re-election, although some did not. Pointedly, Knesset Majority Leader Oren Saddi (NLP) was deposed from public office categorically by royal order of His Majesty, losing both his Knesset officer and Member of Knesset positions simultaneously. The November 4, 2024, elections are just the second complete Knesset-wide special elections since the reconstitution of the body in March 1952 after the fall of the Autocracy of Yisrael and the Year of Blood.
The special Knesset elections reordered the remainder of the 51st session of Knesset, changing its majority status as well as some of the parties who had won election to the body in the Yisraeli January 2024 general election.
Origins
After the January 2024 general election for the presidency and the Knesset, an uneasy center-left "Spring Coalition" emerged, led by the mainstream-left National Liberals, which was joined by the far left Party of the Left and the centrist United Center Bloc parties of Action Yisrael and Alternative for Yisrael and their allied sole center-right Independent MK, struggled to govern and fought internally (and externally) over policy and personnel decisions from the onset.
These ideologically-opposed clashes within the ruling coalition majority eventually lead to the May 6 Knesset riot, which caused the King Josiah IV to intervene, ousting then-Knesset Majority Leader Oren Saddi, dissolving the Knesset, and ordering new elections for November 4, 2024.
Campaign
Political left
The the political left was in turmoil after the May 6 riot. Divvying themselves up in an endless array of factions and breakaways, relating to the conduct of the Spring Coalition, the nature of allying with right-leaning moderates to clinch political power, and fights over the aftermath of the May 6 Knesset riot, any sense of unity among the professional political left was gone. The far-left Party of the Left collapsed by July 2024, unable to conciliate their "pragmatist" and "radical" factions.
The National Liberals were listless after the ousting and deposition of Oren Saddi, seen both as a leader and failure of left-wing policy in the dissolved Knesset. Although the Nat-Libs elected new leadership after the May 6 riot, Saddi's supporters cling to power in the party's senior roles and double-downed on the path they had taken since the January 2024 elections to achieve political power for the left. Many of the more radicalized and left-most of the Nat-Libs simply quit the party, frustrated with the course of events.
Other liberal-left activists, unaffiliated with any political party but galvanized by the Saddi-led push for leftist policy in the Knesset and, many perhaps participating or sympathizing with the May 6 riot itself, looked to form a new political movement. By July 2024, many of these activists, based in the left-leaning stronghold of Dervaylik, joined arms with other jaded populist and radicalized self-identified "leftists" to form a left-wing version of the Alternative for Yisrael, creating the Democratic Left Alternative. This new upstart party was unapologetically left-wing, favored global left causes, and preferred purity to pragmatism (unlike the Nat-Libs). Savvy with social media, especially using video-sharing services and podcasts, the "Dem Left Alt" or DLA quickly "went viral" and gained a strong foothold in Yisraeli left-wing politics through polling, political rallies, and online posting.
Political center
In the aftermath of the May 6 riot, many in the centrist world were split. They were horrified about the Knesset riot and widespread left-wing violence. Some centrist politicians and factions repudiated working with the left electorally at all despite needing the left parties to gain any real political power; other figures and groups justified the use of the left to accomplish moderate political ends and deny the Conservatives full political power at the federal level.
The so-called "Golani clique", a center-right faction led by MK Yaniv Golani of the Action Yisrael, had opposed working with the left since the organization of the 51st session of Knesset to begin with. Golani distrusted the left more than the right, and ideologically found the left to be barely above acting as "traitors" from time to time considering certain Yisraeli national security and foreign policy matters, goals, and bills. Golani had fought the left in committee and on votes during the Knesset, and after the May 6 riot, called for "a complete severance" from forming political working partnerships with left-leaning parties going forward; a stance rebuked by the Alternative for Yisrael's hardened center-left leader Reuven Goldschmidt.
Goldschmidt, an institutionalist and pragmatist, argued in meetings of centrist leaders and activists that the center needed the political left as without the left, the center would have no power as the right was determined to govern clearly right of center with its relevant allies. He defended the Broken Knesset as a "necessary evil." Golani, much more eloquent and fiery, lambasted the left as effectively traitors and radicals in the aftermath of the May 6 riot. The centrist establishment was much more in disgust and frustrated with the left, both from the events of the Broken Knesset as well as the actions of the May 6 riot, and many in the center's rank started to lean toward Golani's view. Polling conducted in early fall 2024 by centrist groups suggested that Golani's Action Yisrael was trending upward and even overtaking some of the center-left AfY's own MK seats if a candidate was put forward. Breaking the United Center Bloc's non-compete pact, the Action Yisrael starting running its own candidates in the most opportune pickup MK seats held by AfY incumbents in August 2024, causing an uproar in AfY and some centrist circles, while other moderates supported the move.
