Main Line Residents Fly to Israel to Vote

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacts after filling out his ballot in Jerusalem on on the day of Israel’s legislative election. / Photograph by Yonatan Sindel/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

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Millions of eligible American citizens don’t vote, despite the fact that voting in the United States is, in general, a quick and easy process. Here in Philadelphia, a “good” voter turnout means that 66 percent of eligible Philadelphians did not vote. Now imagine that you’re an Israeli citizen living in the Philadelphia area, and there’s no way for you to cast a vote unless you fly to the other side of the world to do it.

That’s just what Bala Cynwyd’s Ari Charlestein did. The owner of the travel company Competitours, Charlestein didn’t have time for a vacation in Israel. He went there only to vote. He arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv in the later afternoon on Tuesday and is flying out on Friday. There’s no way for a person holding Israeli citizenship (Charlestein is actually a citizen of three countries: Canada, Israel, and the United States) to vote without being on the ground there.

“It’s very frustrating,” Charlestein says. “Unless you are working in a consulate or in consular affairs and currently on a mission, you are not eligible to vote abroad. Even Israeli pilots and flight crews: If they happen to be scheduled to be overseas on Election Day, they cannot vote.”

For Charlestein, the two most important issues were Israel’s security and the 2024 government order mandating ultra-Orthodox participation in the military, which he said meant he cast his vote for the Yashar party headed by former Israeli Defense Force chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot.

In Israel’s parliamentary system, citizens vote for one of more than 30 parties rather than an individual candidate. “If your party winds up being the ruling party, you do know the name of the person who will be prime minister, but short of that, you don’t know anything,” Charlestein explains. “Essentially what happens is that the parties with the most seats try to form a coalition. There’s 120 seats in the Knesset [Israel’s parliament], and to have a ruling government, your coalition needs at least 61.”

This means that, even after all the votes are tallied, there will be months of negotiations before a full Israeli government is established.

Charlestein says he couldn’t bring himself to vote for Netanyahu‘s Likud party: “He wants to be in control and keep his power and potentially stay out of prison. And in the pre-October 7th world, he and I just on an individual basis could probably see eye to eye on like 80 percent of political things. But after 15 years in power, it’s all about greed and selfishness. And he has surrounded himself with people who are really, really, really to the right — I truly believe far too right of what he’s comfortable with.”

“Everybody I know who has traveled [to Israel] to vote is voting against Bibi,” says a Main Line woman who we’ll call Susan. “It’s time for his greed and corruption and unchecked power to end.”

Susan is a retired school psychologist who spends half the year in Israel, where she was born, and the other half at her home in Bala Cynwyd. She voted for the Democrats, another Israeli political party unaffiliated with Netanyahu.

“He doesn’t take responsibility for October 7th, when everybody else did and resigned,” she says. “He puts his interest and his family’s interest ahead of the country. He just wants to stay in power so that he doesn’t go to jail.”

“It’s really just time for a change,” Charlestein told us. He feels the same way about the United States. “Things need to be different.”

Of course, not every voter from the Philly area is casting their vote against Bibi.

“Everyone wants to destroy Israel,” says a Gladwyne homeowner we’ll call John, who’s in Jerusalem for the next month. “No one can protect us like Netanyahu. He’s a true statesman, a real leader. I’m happy with my vote.”