Main image: People of Israel party chairman and former Israeli army general Ofer Winter speaks during a party support rally in Jerusalem, two days ahead of Israel’s general elections, October 25, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

By Ben Birnbaum

Today, 4:55 am

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On a balmy evening in early October — three weeks before Israel’s national elections — dozens of young, English-speaking immigrants packed into downtown Tel Aviv’s ZOA House to hear Ofer Winter, the iconoclastic former IDF general whose newly founded nationalist People of Israel party has upended the race. At a table outside the event hall, attendees helped themselves to a stack of purple T-shirts emblazoned with the text “Winter is Coming.”

In the entrenched battle between Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the left-to-right bloc of parties seeking to topple it, Winter has defied neat categorization.…