Who is Ofer Winter and could he upset Netanyahu’s election?

After months of speculation, retired Brigadier General Ofer Winter has formally entered Israeli politics, launching a new party, Amcha Israel, ahead of the election.

The party’s slate includes Arab-Israeli advocacy activist Yoseph Haddad, television journalist Netali Shem Tov, representatives of bereaved families and several military, civic and religious-nationalist figures.

Winter presents himself as a political outsider whose 34 years of military service prepared him for a new “battle over the future of the country”. Yet his emergence is about more than another former general entering the Knesset. He represents an uncompromising religious right that regards the war in Gaza as part of a broader national and theological struggle.

Winter first came to widespread public attention in 2014, while commanding the Givati Brigade during Operation Protective Edge. In a message to his soldiers, he described Hamas as an enemy that “defies, curses and reviles the God of Israel’s armies” and invoked the Shema, one of Judaism’s central prayers.

The message provoked a fierce debate over the place of religion in the Israel Defence Forces. Critics argued that Winter had presented a military campaign conducted by the State of Israel as a religious war fought in God’s name.

Professor Avi Sagi, one of the authors of the IDF’s ethical code, argued that Winter had failed to recognise that his authority came from the state rather than from a religious mission. His criticism captured the concern that has followed Winter throughout his career: that he does not simply combine religious faith with military service, but sees national security through an explicitly theological lens.