You would think so, but redemption availability on the route is appalling.
While the route is busy, I have been out on plenty of flights where J was half full (if that), yet no redemption seats were available.
I was so annoyed about this once when trying to get a redemption seat on a Friday morning flight, and revenue management totally refused to open up a seat.
The crazy thing was I was already booked on the Thursday night which is the busiest flight on the week (for any airline on the route) and I knew for a fact the flight was oversold, while the Friday flight was empty, so even though I was willing to free up a seat on a flight that was oversold, and move to an empty one they wouldn’t do it. (Whoever the route manager is for TLV should be moved on to a different job...)
When I boarded the flight I had a word with the CSD, and about 10 minutes after take off he came looking for me (it was a long walk down the back...) and moved me to J.
There was myself and 2 others passengers in the cabin on a 777.

While you will often find that on the NYC route seats often tend to become available closer to the time (and other routes as well) TLV is terrible from that point of view.
I have very very rarely seen this happen if at all.
In fact I had to cancel redemption in J last week and despite the flight looking very wide open, the seat did not go back into the redemption bucket.


Since you are BD Gold, I would suggest you just use some of your Diamond club miles for a one way Miles & Cash.
You will pay Economy miles and cash, but get Business as a gold card holder.
And if the seats are not available, just ask them to send a request down to revenue management.
I will eat my hat if you don't get confirmed from waitlist within a few hours.