On October 27, 2026, Israelis will vote in national elections widely seen as perhaps the most consequential in the country's modern history. Why do Israelis view the 2026 elections in such dramatic, even existential, terms? Who are the main contenders and what are the main issues on which Israel will vote in the first national elections since the October 7, 2023 attack and subsequent wars? And what are the possible scenarios for the outcome of the elections? Join Amichai Magen and Masua Sagiv in conversation about these questions.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Dr. Masua Sagiv is a Senior Faculty member of the Shalom Hartman Institute and the academic advisor of its Center for Shared Society, as well as a senior fellow at the Helen Diller Institute, U.C. Berkeley. Masua’s work addresses the fundamental challenges facing both Israeli society and North American Jewish communities, from rising antisemitism and campus tensions to Jewish peoplehood and the complex relationship between Israel and world Jewry. Masua’s scholarly work focuses on the development of contemporary Judaism in Israel, as a culture, religion, nationality, and as part of Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state. Her research explores the role of law, state actors, and civil society organizations in promoting social change across diverse issues: shared society, religion and gender, religion and state, and Jewish peoplehood.

Masua recently returned to Israel after four years in Berkeley, California, where she was a senior faculty member for the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and the Koret Visiting Assistant Professor at the Helen Diller Institute at UC Berkeley. Prior to her tenure in the Bay Area, Masua was the Academic Director of the Menomadin Center for Jewish and Democratic Law at Bar-Ilan University and taught at the Schools of Law at Bar-Ilan University and Tel-Aviv University. She co-led a leadership program for high-school students, for which she received the Israeli Hope in Academia Prize from former Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, and was awarded the Gorney Prize for Young Scholar in Public Law. Her book, Radical Conservativism (in Hebrew), on the Halachic Feminist struggle in Israel, was published by Carmel Publishing House in 2024.

The Arab world is experiencing a period of profound change. Wars, geopolitical rivalries, and overlapping crises are challenging the foundations of political stability and reconfiguring longstanding patterns of state–society relations.

How should we make sense of the historical significance of this moment? How might it shape the future of political change and stability in the region?

To explore these questions, join CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Development (ARD) for a wide-ranging conversation with renowned historian and leading Middle East scholar Joel Beinin, in dialogue with ARD Associate Director Hesham Sallam. Drawing on decades of scholarship, Beinin will reflect on how the region’s current crises fit within broader historical patterns, and what they may signal for future trajectories.

Named a Best History Book of the Year by The Times (London), The Dark Side of the Earth offers a provocative rethinking of the end of the Cold War. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with key political actors — including Mikhail Gorbachev and leaders of post-Soviet states — Mikhail Zygar argues that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not a definitive victory for liberal democracy, but an incomplete and fragile transformation.

Blending political analysis with personal narratives, the book traces how moments of resistance — from figures such as Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn — shaped the late Soviet period, even as underlying structures of power endured. Zygar contends that the perceived “end” of the Cold War set the stage for the resurgence of authoritarianism, culminating in contemporary Russia’s expansionist ambitions and its confrontation with the West.

The talk reframes the post-1991 world, inviting audiences to reconsider the Cold War not as a concluded conflict, but as an unfinished historical process.

The Jan Koum Israel Studies Program at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law invites you to a seminar with Yossi Melman, one of Israel's most prominent intelligence journalists and a New York Times bestselling author, for a conversation on the lessons emerging from Israel's recent intelligence challenges. Melman will draw on decades of reporting on Mossad, Shin Bet, and Military Intelligence while exploring the failures, adaptations, and ongoing dilemmas facing Israel's intelligence community in the wake of the Gaza war, the confrontation with Iran, and the conflict in Lebanon.

The structured conversation — led by Or Rabinowitz and introduced by Amichai Magen — will be followed by a Q&A, offering participants the opportunity to engage directly with one of the foremost analysts of Israeli security.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Yossi Melman is one of his country's leading investigative reporters, as well as a security and intelligence commentator for the daily newspaper Haaretz.

He has written 10 books on his subject matters. One of them, Every Spy a Prince, was a New York Times bestseller. His book Spies Against Armageddon, a history of Israel's intelligence community, was published in the US in 2012. (Read his tips for writing about espionage and military intelligence in How To Write a History of Something Secret).

He is the recipient of the Sokolov Award, Israel's most prestigious journalism gong, and a few other Jewish American awards. He has also created and written Hebrew and English scripts for film documentaries. One of them, Inside the Mossad, is a four-part Netflix series.

Roberta Metsola was elected President of the European Parliament in January 2022, becoming the youngest ever person to occupy this role. In July 2024, she was re-elected to lead the institution for another term, as only the second person and first woman to serve as President for two terms.
 

Leading the only directly elected European institution, President Metsola has been very vocal and firm in Europe’s support to Ukraine, following Russia’s brutal invasion. On 1st April 2022, she became the first President of an institution of the European Union to visit Ukraine since the start of the war. As President of the European Parliament, she has led reforms towards a Parliament, which is more modern, efficient and accountable.
 
Since the start of her mandate, President Metsola has also made it a priority to reach beyond Brussels and Strasbourg, by visiting European Union Member States and candidate countries, meeting with people, visiting schools and taking the message of Europe to the various cities, towns and villages. She has also invited EU Heads of State or Government to the European Parliament to discuss current challenges and opportunities for the Union, under the “This is Europe” debates. 

She was first elected to the European Parliament in 2013, becoming one of Malta's first female Members of the European Parliament. President Metsola was re-elected in 2014 and then again in 2019 and 2024.


In 2020, she was elected as the First Vice-President of the European Parliament, becoming the first Maltese national to hold the post. She was responsible for the European Parliament's relations with national parliaments and for the Parliament's participation in the interreligious and non-confessional dialogue (Article 17 TFEU).

Within the European Parliament, President Metsola was the European People’s Party Group's Coordinator in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, between January 2017 and 2020. President Metsola was the Parliament's rapporteur on the European Border and Coastguard Regulation (FRONTEX) in 2019. She also co-authored the Parliament's own-initiative report on the need to protect journalists in the European Union from Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation (SLAPP).


Prior to her election as a Member of the European Parliament, President Metsola served within the Permanent Representation of Malta to the European Union and later as the legal advisor to the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. In her student years, she campaigned actively for Malta's European Union membership, and was active in various organisations, acting as the Secretary-General for the European Democrat Student organisation between 2002 and 2003. President Metsola credits the referendum on Malta’s accession to the European Union as the catalyst for her political career at such a young age.


Professionally she is a lawyer who has specialised in European law and politics. She completed an Erasmus exchange in France and graduated from the University of Malta and the College of Europe in Bruges.


Born in 1979, Roberta Metsola is married to Ukko Metsola and is the mother of four boys.