Ask anyone you want under 40 on an Israeli street and they'll know exactly who he is. Yoseph Haddad, 41, second on the list of the fledgling far-right party Amcha Yisrael - People of Israel.
But that's not what he's known for.
- You should try going out with him sometime, he's like Madonna. Wherever he goes, 70 people want to take selfies with him and give him praise, says Fleur Hassan, whom we meet at the party's campaign headquarters.
I have actually followed Yoseph Haddad on a street, by pure chance. His press secretary canceled our meeting twenty minutes before it was due to take place, claiming he was "somewhere up north". While photographer Linus Sundahl Djerf and I stood pondering how to deal with this disappearance, I happened to see him a few meters away, on a street in Tel Aviv.
When we called after him, he turned in a way that you might imagine someone who is used to being stopped for pleasant reasons does - smiling.
- Well, oh, the Swedish team, tell me, what happened to the Swedish team? Haddad asked his four employees on the street when I caught up and pointed out that we should have been sitting in an interview.
They looked uncomfortable before one of them answered something in Hebrew. Yoseph Haddad apologized for the misunderstanding, but promised to return.
- Wait with Fleur up in the office for that long.
Fleur Hassan has a firm handshake and a piercing gaze.
She is candidate number five on the party's list for the Knesset, as the Israeli parliament is called. Previously, she was deputy mayor of Jerusalem and an expert in Israel's work with the so-called Abraham Accords, Israel's peace agreement with Arab countries. Born in the hot British self-government of Gibraltar and immigrated to Israel as an adult, she speaks English with a strong British accent. She feels like a person you could wake up in the middle of the night and still be able to answer any question on the spur of the moment. Now she sits in a chair in the party's "social media" room and explains why the newly started Amcha Yisrael party is needed.
- What the voters will get is the best defense minister this country has ever experienced, who understands the enemy and that you cannot appease an enemy. It's Ofer Winter.
Party leader Ofer Winter is a former general who has worked under Israeli defense ministers, but never reached the top of the defense. This is because he is extremely controversial, even in Israel. He has been accused of leaking information, wanting to create a "religious military" and of war crimes during an operation in Gaza in 2014.
- I think the biggest misconception about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that it is territorial. It is not that, it is ideological. Otherwise, they would have already accepted the two-state solution they have been offered five times.
What Fleur Hassan is saying is nothing that the Israeli right has not been saying for decades. It's not a fact either, the problems with the two-state solution exist and have existed on both sides (even if few on either side agree).
Amcha Yisrael's campaign is very much about the need for "new" politicians. All who operated during October 7 have exhausted their chance.
Yet you want Benjamin Netanyahu to be prime minister, how does that work out?
- We are right-wing. The whole country felt on October 8, 2023 that Netanyahu could never rule again, but we live in reality. Not in lala land. In reality, there are still many parties. We are the only brand new party without people who were in any way complicit or responsible for the course of events up to and including October 7th.
At the same time, you are a small party. How can your voters be sure that you will have any influence at all?
- Because we become the tongue on the scales, says Fleur Hassan and smiles.
Benjamin Netanyahu is not happy that Amcha Yisrael has closed up behind him. On the contrary. In recent times, he and his party colleagues have done everything to smear the party - which they consider a threat to the victory of the right.
It was after October 7, 2023 that Yoseph Haddad's career took off in earnest. He worked before that for an Israeli channel and was a media personality who appeared on various television couches, but now he became a hundred percent pro-Israel megaphone.
Some would say that he became the perfect alibi: "Look, Israel is not an apartheid state as the left says, Yoseph Haddad is actually Arab and he doesn't feel the least bit discriminated against!"
Equipped with a camera, he traveled around Israel, Europe and the United States, propagating the war in Gaza, lecturing on the Hamas massacres and defending Israel. Everything was documented in his social media, where he has a total of over two million followers.
Arab citizens of Israel do not have to do military service in Israel. Yoseph Haddad did it anyway. He was the commander of the Golan Brigade during the 2006 Lebanon War and was injured so badly that he almost lost one of his legs.
He did it for his country. This is how he wants all citizens of Israel to think - that they have a duty to their country. However, he does not believe that all citizens have the same rights – it is the Arabs who must adapt. Not the Jewish Israelis.
The Israeli election is in many ways similar to the Swedish one. There is a right-wing bloc united behind Netanyahu and a right-center-left bloc, which mostly have in common that they are anti-Netanyahu. The anti-bloc has led the pro-bloc in the polls all the way until last summer, when it evened out. Now the blocks are equal.
In the Knesset there are 120 seats and a majority requires 61. Neither of the two large blocs gathers that many votes, currently they are around 50 each. The Arab parties seem to get the rest - and none of the blocs want to cooperate with them.
Thus, Amcha Yisrael will not become the wave master that public opinion looks like right now, but Fleur Hassan believes that their voters will be required in order for the pro-Netanyahu bloc to become the largest.
- And then we will be able to influence them in our direction.
A key issue for the party is that even the ultra-Orthodox should do military service, which most of Netanyahu's bloc opposes. Another is that the Palestinians should leave Gaza.
"Winter is coming", it says on the purple campaign shirts for the new party Amcha Yisrael.
The party leader is called Ofer Winter. On the other hand, the quote probably makes many think of the TV series "Game of thrones", where it refers to a very difficult and challenging time ahead.
Winter passes us at party headquarters, shakes hands and immediately runs away when he realizes we are journalists. I don't have time to ask the question about his campaign message. Yoseph Haddad, who has returned as promised, on the other hand, immediately puts on a shirt and starts dancing around the room.
– Winter is coming BACK! he sings.
So maybe it has nothing to do with "Game of thrones" at all.
It's hard to get an awl in the air when Yoseph Haddad is in the room. He doesn't have time to sit down. However, he is happy to give a speech about his time in the IDF. He jokes that his brigade wore the same colors as Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim militia group in Lebanon.
- But there is a difference between us and them. You will never find a bullet in the back of an Israeli soldier. But you find bullets in their backs as they run from us. They always run away! he shouts.
Fleur Hassan laughs. She stands beside him like a sidekick, interjecting praise after every sentence he utters.
Haddad's favorite story is about his grandfather, who comes from the city of Jish. It is located as far north as you can get in Israel, right on the border with Lebanon. In 1948, when Israel had declared its state and the neighboring Arab countries attacked, the grandfather decided not to fight.
- Arab leaders told him to evacuate, but he refused. When the IDF came he said "I will not fight you and I will not run away". My family still owns land in Jish, says Yoseph Haddad.
He has repeated this story in many interviews. His point is that the Israeli military has high morale and that if everyone had done as his grandfather did, no one would have been displaced or killed during what Palestinians call the "nakba" - the catastrophe. The majority of Jish are still Christian Arabs. However, a large part of the population fled there from surrounding Christian towns, several of which were completely destroyed by Israeli forces.
Did your grandfather call himself Palestinian?
- Yes, of course. Everyone did back then.
But you don't call yourself that?
- Of course not. I was born in 1985, I am Israeli. If the Arabs had won in 1948 there would have been total destruction.
The Ministry of Information in Israel was shut down in 2023. There was no money for it when the war started. Yoseph Haddad thinks it was a wrong decision and wants to reopen it - with himself as information minister. In Israel it is called "hasbara", to spread positive information about the country and counteract foreign criticism.
- But honestly, my goal is to become president. It's a ceremonial role in Israel, but what if I were to become Israel's first Arab president. That would be something! laughs Yoseph Haddad.
Fleur Hassan, who has spent a large part of her political career trying to get women more involved in politics, smiles coolly.
- I dare to bet money on Israel getting its first Arab president before we get the first female one, she says.
Yoseph Haddad wants to integrate the Arab citizens in Israel. He wants to be a bridge builder, see peace with the Lebanese and build community.
He also wants to empty Gaza of Palestinians, "retake" the West Bank and "cut off the arm of anyone who considers raising a hand to harm us". He thinks the question of where the Palestinians should go is stupid - it is not his problem.
One thing he doesn't want to talk about is that he is accused of firing a gun at a man on a street in Tel Aviv last year. He claims it was in self-defense, but as long as the charges hang over him, he cannot become a minister. He is convinced that it will work out. It can do that. Israel currently has an indicted prime minister.
The question is whether he can do it regardless. In recent weeks, a drive has formed against him in Israel. It comes from the right and is about things Haddad has previously said.
Five years ago, for example, he wanted to see a Palestinian state, it has been revealed in an old clip. Three years ago, he advocated that Palestinians should be allowed to stay in Gaza, it is shown in another.
Now he is accused of being a terrorist hugger. A Trojan horse that wants to destroy Israel from within.
"The controversy surrounding Haddad exposes a deeper contradiction in how Israel defines the position of its Arab citizens: They can defend the country, defend its policies to the outside world, serve in its armed forces and are highlighted as proof that Arab citizens can be integrated into Israeli society. But the moment they want a say in who will rule the country, their Arab identity suddenly becomes a problem," writes Haaretz commentator Jack Khoury.
How can Yoseph Haddad, who believes that Israel does not discriminate against Arab citizens, defend himself? After the "reveal" that he has previously advocated for a Palestinian state, the party fell in the polls, despite Amcha Yisrael going out of its way to emphasize that its runner-up on the list has changed its mind on the issue.
- We will be the election's biggest surprise, you will see, says Yoseph Haddad himself.
He currently spends all his waking hours dealing with what he calls "spin" on his social media.
- Those who attack me on social media are activists and healers. On the street, it's completely different. Not everyone who loves me will vote for me, because politics is like football: you have your favorite team. But I will enter the Knesset and I will be Israel's next Minister of Information.
