Making Sense of Israel’s 2026 Election: Keren Yarhi-Milo, Nadav Eyal, Tom Nides, and Suleiman Maswadeh

Keren Yarhi-Milo is the Dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Relations. A renowned expert and leading authority on international security, foreign policy decision-making, and political psychology, she is the author of the award-winning books Who Fights for Reputation? The Psychology of Leaders in International Conflict and Knowing the Adversary: Leaders, Intelligence Organizations, and Assessments of Intentions in International Relations. She has published widely in top academic journals, as well as in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. In 2023, she co-founded the Institute of Global Politics at Columbia with Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, creating a hub for bold, interdisciplinary engagement with global challenges. A volume co-edited by Yarhi-Milo and Secretary Clinton, inspired by the class they co-teach, Inside the Situation Room, was published in September 2025 by Oxford University Press.

Nadav Eyal is one of Israel's most prominent journalists and a winner of the Sokolov Award—Israel's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. He writes columns for Yediot Ahronot and Ynet, Israel's most widely circulated newspaper and news website, respectively. He also serves as a contributor to Channel 12 programs, one of Israel's two commercial channels.

Beginning on October 7, 2023, he has focused his work on stories and analyses related to the Hamas attack and the subsequent war in Gaza and the northern border of Israel, including reporting multiple times from the field and writing the accounts of victims.

Eyal authored the bestseller Revolt: The Worldwide Uprising Against Globalization, which was published in 2021 by Ecco HarperCollins (USA) and Picador (UK), and has been translated into multiple languages. Revolt challenges prevailing views on nationalism and populism and argues that modern globalization is unsustainable, not only due to technological and social imbalances or the decline of liberal democracy, but because of a sentiment, a drive to dismantle hollow, corrupt, and unresponsive power structures. Yuval Noah Harari praised the book as “a well-written and thought-provoking account of the current crisis of globalization.” Ehud Barak, former Prime Minister of Israel, lauded it as a “compelling and penetrating epic on the crisis of globalization and the liberal order, showcasing Eyal’s depth of thought, superb storytelling, and absolute integrity.” President Clinton highlighted its global perspective, noting, “With dispatches from around the globe, Nadav Eyal explores why so many people are rejecting interdependence, even when we need each other more than ever.”

In 2023, Eyal published How Democracy Wins (If It Does) in Hebrew. Haaretz described the book as “one of the most interesting books ever written on democracy in Hebrew,” noting the author's skill in “weaving local and global narratives, enriching them with historical anecdotes, and grounding them in solid intellectual thinking.”

Throughout his journalistic career, Eyal has extensively covered Middle East affairs, Israel's role in a globalized world, and Washington-Jerusalem relations. His writings have appeared occasionally in Haaretz, The Daily Telegraph, Der Spiegel, The Washington Post, and The Daily Beast. He has held senior positions in major Israeli media organizations and has interviewed four Israeli prime ministers as well as numerous foreign heads of state.

In July 2016, several months before the U.S. presidential elections, Eyal aired Trumpland, a series of short documentaries focusing on the grievances of America's Rust Belt, which highlighted the serious prospect of a Trump victory well before it was considered likely. A year earlier, he documented the journey of Syrian refugees in Europe, from their landing in rafts on a Greek beach to their first job interviews in Germany. In 2014, he aired Hate, which explored rising anti-Semitism in conversations with neo-Nazis and nationalist leaders across Europe.

Eyal has been a leading political reporter in Israel, covering the country’s turbulent political scene, three general elections, and four U.S. presidential elections (2008, 2012, 2016, 2020). He also reported, from the field, on the Second Lebanon War (2006) and Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip (2005). In 2008, he was appointed Ma'ariv’s daily chief correspondent in Europe, based in London. During that period, he covered significant events such as the Mumbai terror attacks and the Greek and EU financial crises, as well as the IAEA monitoring of Iran's nuclear program.

Thomas R. Nides is a Vice Chairman, Strategy and Client Relations at Blackstone. He supports a variety of strategic firmwide initiatives, special projects and focus on senior client relationships globally.

Before joining Blackstone, Mr. Nides served as the United States’ Ambassador to Israel from 2021 to 2023. Prior to that, he spent over a decade at Morgan Stanley in various capacities including Chief Operating Officer and Vice Chairman. Nides was appointed Deputy Secretary of State and Chief Operating Officer of the U.S. State Department by President Barack Obama and was awarded the nation’s highest diplomatic honor by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for his service. He has also previously been a senior leader at Credit Suisse, Fannie Mae, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and on Capitol Hill.

Nides currently serves on the boards of the Partnership for Public Service, the International Rescue Committee, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He formerly served as chairman of the board of the Woodrow Wilson Center. He received his B.A. from the University of Minnesota.

Suleiman Maswadeh is a Palestinian-Israeli journalist and the U.S. Correspondent for Israel’s Channel 13 News, based in Washington, D.C. He grew up in the Old City of Jerusalem and didn’t start learning Hebrew until he was 20. He went on to build a career at the center of Israel’s mainstream media, spending almost a decade at KAN, Israel’s public broadcaster. For his last three years there he was Senior Diplomatic Correspondent, covering Israel’s cabinet, October 7th war, and negotiations between Israel and Hamas. He now reports on American politics and U.S. policy in the Middle East for Israeli audiences. He works in Arabic, Hebrew and English.