The Australians flying 14,000km to cast a ballot

Sydney tech entrepreneur Ayal Steiner booked his flights to Israel “the minute the election was called”. So did his brother and two of his friends, all of them heading back to vote in the poll on October 27.

“It’s the first time that I’m making the special effort to visit Israel while the election was there,” said Steiner, who was born in Israel 50 years ago and moved to Australia 17 years ago. “It was important for me to participate in the democratic process.”

He is not alone. Among Israelis in Australia, this election has generated a pull strong enough to justify the expense and the 20-odd hours in the air — and Steiner says the diaspora vote could end up being worth one or two Knesset seats.

What makes this election different, he said, is the sense that Israel is at a hinge point.

“Everyone understands that the country is in a very different situation than it was three years ago, both in terms of its internal challenges, national challenges, and global perception,” he said. “The discussion amongst Israelis is that these are the most critical elections since the country was founded, and I tend to agree.”

He traced his own concern to a long drift. “Over the past 30 years, we’ve seen the Likud party gradually moving further and further into the right. I have nothing against parties like the Likud, but in order to form a coalition and to stay in power, they have partnered with extreme radical right voices within Israeli society, which have really taken the country, in my view and the view of many others, down the wrong path.”

Steiner thought hard about whether he had the standing to vote at all, after 17 years away.

“I definitely see myself staying in Australia,” he said. “So what’s my moral right to go and vote over there, outside the fact that I have the right by law? The decisions they make over there impact our lives here as well. If you’re impacting my life, I need to have a say about how you’re conducting Israeli policies.”

He feels that impact most sharply in how the word Israeli now lands in a room.

“The brand of Israel was an innovative, dynamic, exciting place to be. We used to take customers from all over the world to Israel, and they immediately became in love with it,” he said. “Post October 7, there was a moment of sympathy, but we all know how quickly that turned around. Now when I say I’m Israeli — and I’m not ashamed to say it, I always make sure everyone knows — immediately you can see that it’s a radioactive term.”

He believes that can be reversed, “with a different type of leadership and a different type of tonality around our very complex environment and neighbourhood”.

Tamar Pross is flying in too, and bringing as many of her workforce as she can with her. Her company, Citizen Cafe Tel Aviv, teaches Hebrew to the Jewish world, employs only Israeli teachers and has about 40 per cent of them living outside Israel. She has scheduled a global company retreat for election week so that staff who want to vote can.

“Everyone that works in my company sees it as a mission to represent the Israel that we love,” said Pross, who is Israeli-born and Australian, and has lived here for the past two-and-a-half years.

“This feels like such a pivotal point where it will define the existence of the Israel that we want to take part in. I hope to go back to live in Israel, and it just feels like we have to ensure that there is a change. It’s not critical to talk about who specifically we vote for, but we need a change.

“Not just looking at the geopolitical conversation, whether we deal with the Iranian threat — a lot of Israelis like myself are worried about Israel internally, society, a lot of things that we need to fix and organise,” she said. “Otherwise there won’t be an Israel that we can live in peacefully internally, before we deal with the external threat.”

Both agreed Haredi enlistment is one of the issues that has to be settled. For Steiner it is a question of fairness, with friends whose children have had their release from the army delayed again and again.

“Everyone should contribute from all sectors of society, regardless of what they are,” he said. “It’s all hands on deck.”

Pross called it “part of the crumbling internally of what we need to start fixing. This is probably one of our biggest problems.”

She is also uneasy about the incumbent government’s efforts to overhaul Israel’s judiciary and the tenor of public life. “A lot of what we feel has happened with the current government is really polarising Israelis, bringing a lot of hate, separation. We have to start being more unified, and then we can build a better infrastructure. We’ve got to protect democratic Israel.”

On Israel’s standing abroad, she was blunt about why it has slipped. “Israelis are still finding it hard to cope with the trauma and everything they have to deal with, and looking outward hasn’t been a priority enough. It was not only not managed, it was really neglected, and we’re seeing the price for it now.

“We won’t be able to fix it unless we organise within.”

For Melbourne’s Naomi Briggs, already in Israel visiting family, the decision has a different texture. She will vote, but hasn’t settled on whom, having narrowed it down to Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar or Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu.

“My priorities are Israel’s security, strong leadership, protecting Israel’s sovereignty and ensuring a secure future for the Jewish people,” Briggs said. “I’m opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state and believe strongly in Israel’s right to maintain a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria.”

She has voted for Naftali Bennett before. What she wants now is someone “decisive, experienced and capable of putting Israel’s long-term interests first” — and, she is clear, someone other than the incumbent.

“I’m looking for a change in leadership, as [Benjamin] Netanyahu is not someone I would consider voting for,” she said. “I’m still listening, learning and weighing up which one best represents my views.”