Maj. Gen. (res.) Yossi Bachar joins Smotrich's Religious Zionism party

Maj. Gen. (res.) Yossi Bachar, a senior Israeli reserve officer, is joining the Religious Zionism party led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, according to reporting published by the Israeli news site Ynet, which described the move as an unexpected boost for the party. The same development was reported by the Hebrew-language outlet News.co.il, which said Bachar was joining Smotrich and Religious Zionism.

Ynet reported that it is not yet clear whether Bachar will be placed in a realistic slot on the party's list of candidates for the Knesset, Israel's parliament. No announcement of a position, portfolio or campaign role has been reported alongside his entry into politics.

Who Yossi Bachar is

Bachar holds the rank of aluf, translated in English as major general, the second-highest rank in the Israel Defense Forces and the level at which officers command regional fronts and service branches. He is described in the reports as a reserve officer, meaning he has completed his regular service and remains available for call-up.

The political commentator Amit Segal wrote that Bachar fought alone at Kibbutz Be'eri against dozens of terrorists, that his mother was murdered along with two of his other relatives, and that he subsequently served in the Southern Command during the war. Ynet gave the same account of his role at Be'eri and said he served as deputy commander of Southern Command during the war.

Be'eri and the events of that day

Kibbutz Be'eri is a communal settlement in the western Negev, close to the boundary with the Gaza Strip. It was among the communities overrun in the cross-border attack of October 7, when armed men entered Israeli towns, kibbutzim and an outdoor music festival near the Gaza perimeter. Be'eri became one of the most heavily damaged of those communities, and accounts of residents and off-duty or retired security personnel fighting to hold off attackers before military reinforcements arrived have been a recurring element of testimony from that day.

The reports do not describe the circumstances of the killing of Bachar's mother and his two relatives beyond the fact of it, and they do not say how long he fought or what happened afterwards at the kibbutz.

Southern Command

Southern Command is one of the IDF's regional commands, responsible for the Negev, the Gaza sector and Israel's frontier with Egypt. It carried the operational burden of the war that followed the October 7 attack, and its senior officers have been at the centre of both the fighting and the internal military reviews of the failures that preceded it. A deputy commander of the command sits immediately below its head, an officer of major general rank.

There is a small variation between the reports on how Bachar's wartime post is phrased. Segal's own post referred to him as sgan aluf pikud darom, while N12, quoting Segal, rendered the same claim as deputy commander of Southern Command, which is also the formulation used by Ynet. The reports do not otherwise disagree on the substance of his service.

The party he is joining

Religious Zionism, in Hebrew HaTzionut HaDatit, is the party headed by Bezalel Smotrich, who serves as finance minister and as a minister in the Defense Ministry. It sits on the right of the Israeli political spectrum and draws much of its support from the religious-nationalist public and from communities in the West Bank. Israeli parties run on closed national lists, so a candidate's position on the list determines whether he enters the Knesset at all: seats are allocated in order from the top down according to the party's share of the vote. That is why the question Ynet flagged, whether Bachar will be given a realistic slot, is the operative one rather than the announcement itself.

Recruiting recently retired senior officers is a familiar pattern in Israeli politics, where military seniority is often presented to voters as security credentials. Several generals have moved directly from uniform into party lists in past election cycles.

What the reports do not say

The material does not include a statement from Bachar himself, nor from Smotrich or the party, and no quotation from either side has been published in the reports reviewed here. There is no date given for a formal signing or presentation, no indication of what slot on the list is under discussion, and no explanation of what drew Bachar to this particular party rather than another.

The reports also do not say when Bachar left active service, whether he holds any other public position, or when the next Knesset election is scheduled. The account of his conduct at Be'eri and of the deaths in his family rests, in the material available, on Segal's post and on Ynet's report; it has not been independently confirmed here.