The ultra-divisive Netanyahu and the consequences for an Israel fighting for survival
Again and again the questions are asked, mainly by people abroad who love Israel: Don’t Israelis realize how extraordinary a leader he is? And why are so many so mistrustful and critical of him?
David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He is the author of "Still Life with Bombers" (2004) and "A Little Too Close to God" (2000), and co-author of "Shalom Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin" (1996). He previously edited The Jerusalem Post (2004-2011) and The Jerusalem Report (1998-2004).
This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.
People constantly ask me — almost all of them lovers of Israel living overseas, some of them politely, many of them not — why many Israelis so mistrust and, yes, loathe, our Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He exudes such confidence and competence, they note, accurately. He’s so plainly intelligent, sharp and worldly. He’s Israel’s most successful politician, manifestly its most popular, a giant among rival political nobodies. And, most of all, he’s so stunningly articulate in English, the supreme advocate for Israel on the world public stage and doubtless behind closed doors with world leaders, too. Again and again, the questions are asked: Don’t Israelis realize how extraordinary a leader he is? And why are so many so critical of him?
I think it’s important to explain, taking no pleasure in doing so, and at the risk of prompting more opprobrium and accusations of disloyalty. I should stress that domestic opposition and mistrust vastly predates October 7, 2023, and indeed has risen and fallen throughout Netanyahu’s three decades at the top of Israeli politics, most of which he has spent as the electorate’s chosen prime minister. Partial list:
1. Because he has refused to take personal responsibility for the greatest disaster to have befallen modern Israel, when Hamas invaded the south and massacred some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and abducted 251 — even though he was the prime minister that day and had been for almost all of the preceding 16 years in which Hamas ran Gaza and built up its war machine. Because he had presided over a policy that allowed Qatari funding to help Hamas maintain its hold. Because he had accepted the defense establishment’s unfathomable assessment that Hamas was not single-mindedly bent on harming and ultimately destroying Israel. And because he did not heed the alarms sounded by some in the intelligence community in the final years, months, days and even hours before 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists burst through a flimsy high-tech border fence unprotected by actual troops.
2. Because they don’t quite understand what the IDF is doing in Gaza right now, under his direction, when Hamas has been defeated as an organized army, and soldiers’ lives are being lost to Hamas’s guerrilla attacks; when a ceasefire could enable the release of the 101 hostages held there, more of whom are dying as the weeks go by; and when a hostage-ceasefire deal will yield either an opportunity for the creation of the deradicalized Gaza all Israelis and the world seek, or, more likely, sooner or later see Hamas provide deadly reasons to necessitate, justify and legitimize a resumption of IDF operations against it.
3. Because they fear for Israeli democracy, given that Netanyahu spent the first nine months of this government’s lifespan attempting to bulldoze legislation through the Knesset that would turn Israel’s independent judiciary into a politicized tool of the governing majority, plowed ahead with that effort even as it bitterly divided Israel, has never indicated that this goal has been abandoned, and is now challenging the authority and legitimacy of the government’s chief legal adviser, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.
4. Because he just fired his principled, experienced and straight-talking defense minister, Yoav Gallant, in the middle of a multifront war. Netanyahu says this was for words and deeds that contradicted government decisions and benefited the enemy. Gallant says it was for the triple crimes of prioritizing efforts to free the hostages, demanding that ultra-Orthodox males do military service, and insisting on the state commission of inquiry Netanyahu resolutely opposes to probe the October 7 failures and thus help ensure there can be no repeat. And Netanyahu then replaced that defense minister with an inexperienced yes-man.
5. Because while he is assured, polished and fluent in his numerous English-language appearances and interviews, in Hebrew he seems incapable of exuding a sense of empathy; he almost never speaks at length to Hebrew media, least of all to non-sycophantic Hebrew media; and his Hebrew press conferences are marked by hostility to provocative questions and derision for those who pose them.
6. Because under his watch, the plight of the hostages is not a cause of national unanimity but a divisive issue. Families and ordinary Israelis pleading publicly for greater efforts for their release are implied by him and his loyalists to be dupes of Hamas and even enemies of the state — a designation he even intimated could be applied to Gallant. Families of the hostages spoke at both the US Republican and Democratic national conventions and were unanimously applauded and supported by the tens of thousands at both those events. By contrast, in the divisive climate engendered at home by Netanyahu, and also by the overt affiliation of some of the families and their supporters with anti-government protests, there is almost no sizable gathering in support of the hostages that passes off without heckling and confrontation by opponents, not to mention the heavy-handed intervention of a police force that is becoming increasingly brutalized under hoodlum minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
7. Because he insists on maintaining the unjustifiable exemption from military and national service of army-age ultra-Orthodox males — at the height of a multifront war, with the standing army under immense strain, and even the heroic reservist forces starting to wilt, although he knows full well the consequences for the national psyche, economy and basic resilience of this abiding inequality — rather than risk destabilizing his coalition.
8. Because he has refused to visit some of the communities most devastated on October 7 — notably including Kibbutz Nir Oz, where even his deeply divisive Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had the guts to make a lengthy and emotive visit on Tuesday; selects convenient representatives of the hostage and bereaved families with whom to meet; reliably speaks to the nation when there are military successes to highlight and doesn’t when things go wrong.
9. Because amid a welter of new allegations concerning the theft and leaking of IDF materials to and through the Prime Minister’s Office, and regarding efforts to rewrite the minutes of key meetings to reflect his stewardship of the war in a better light, his PMO on Tuesday implicitly turned on both the police and Shin Bet for daring to investigate, accusing them of “destroying the lives of young men with baseless claims in order to harm right-wing governance,” including by detaining suspects “for 20 days in a basement… in order to extract from them false claims against the prime minister.”
10. Because he mainstreamed the far-right Jewish supremacists Smotrich and Ben Gvir, and gave them central ministerial responsibilities. And because many Israelis worry that he will now capitulate to pressure from those two far-right leaders and their parties for ongoing Israeli control of Gaza and the resumption of Jewish settlement there — a demand that would place untenable strain on the army and require Israel to provide for two million hostile Palestinians, with unsustainable demographic and economic consequences. And that he might also now seek to dramatically expand West Bank settlement, including into areas that the previous Trump administration earmarked for limited Palestinian independence, further reducing any future potential for viable separation from the almost three million Palestinians there.
11. Because people they do trust to some extent, and who have been with him at key moments behind closed doors — including the likes of Gallant and opposition MK Gadi Eisenkot, an ex-IDF chief, bereaved father, and former war cabinet observer — accuse him of putting personal political interests above the good of the country.
12. Because he seems to believe that he and he alone can and should advocate for Israel on the international stage, and has failed to establish a competent government public diplomacy organization capable of responding to events in real-time and strategically disseminating Israel’s broader narrative to traditional international media and via social media, and to other shapers of world public opinion.
I am going on about all this in part because it also goes to explain the debilitating dichotomy that Israel faces in this era of unprecedented national crisis, with its resonant implications for Jews around the world.
Coordinated by Iran — which has now twice directly attacked Israel and is advancing a nuclear weapons program — terrorist armies and other proxies are targeting Israel from every point of the compass, with devastating effect. Antisemites worldwide are pitching in. Israel is also the victim of abysmal media misrepresentation.
And at the same time, Israel has a bloated, largely dysfunctional, partly anti-Zionist government under Netanyahu that is tearing the country apart from within, radicalizing parts of the public, failing to effectively convey to the world what’s going on, and exacerbating that global hostility.
How many Israelis share all or some of those highly negative views of Netanyahu, his character, leadership and policies that I’ve cited above? Many, maybe most, though I’d say the number is dwindling the further October 7, 2023, recedes, and in the absence of any remotely convincing political opposition. Many, many Israelis love, even revere him. As I noted near the top, the fact is that, when push came to shove, the Israeli electorate has empowered Netanyahu to lead Israel for 17 of the past 28 years and 14 of the last 16.
And were Netanyahu, no longer a young man, to be incapacitated, it is highly likely that he would be succeeded by somebody less restrained, less competent and still more divisive and threatening to Israeli democracy, internal harmony and resilience.
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It starts with the Israelis
The violence against Israelis in Amsterdam last week was not Kristallnacht 2024 — not an open display of murderous thuggery by the governmental power in the Netherlands. And neither, at the other extreme of misrepresentation, was it a familiar if unusually violent eruption of soccer hooliganism.
It was rather, organized, widespread violence by Arab and Muslim gangs targeting Israelis because they are Israelis. And it was achieved because the Dutch authorities failed to effectively protect the Israeli visitors — some of whose behavior before the soccer match was unacceptable — to their capital.
It means Israelis, already wary about advertising their nationality in much of Europe and the rest of the world, will be even more fearful and defensive. It deepens abiding concerns for the Jewish communities in Holland and other countries in Europe and beyond for their wellbeing amid the antisemitism — led by local Muslim and Arab extremists, but certainly not limited to them — that has surged worldwide since Israel was invaded by Hamas 404 days ago.
And it presents an immense, historic test for the government and law enforcement authorities of the Netherlands and every other country where Israelis and Jews are targeted for being Israelis and Jews: Are these nations going to be cowed, intimidated and ultimately prove impotent in the face of violent extremism, or are they going to face down and defeat the racist thugs?
The initial indications in Amsterdam are not encouraging. As of this writing, few if any of the alleged perpetrators of Thursday night’s concerted attacks have been arrested. And lower-level violence has been continuing — a case of Israelis being targeted even when they are no longer there.
The hatred continues to erupt, and will simply focus on new targets, unless or until its inciters and perpetrators are deterred.
It starts with the Israelis. But those who are tempted to indulge it should know that it doesn’t end there.
