A House Divided: Why Netanyahu Is Both Israel's Most Loved and Most Loathed Politician

Few political figures anywhere provoke a reaction as sharply split as Benjamin Netanyahu does inside his own country. As Israel heads toward national elections on October 27 the Knesset having completed its first full four-year term in decades before dissolving the man who has dominated Israeli politics for the better part of three decades finds himself simultaneously irreplaceable to some and unforgivable to others. Understanding why requires separating what his supporter’s credit him with from what his critics hold against him.

The Case His Supporters Make
To his base, Netanyahu remains the indispensable statesman: the leader who has kept Israel's security establishment oriented against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran through years of overlapping wars, and whose longevity in office now spanning multiple non-consecutive terms since the 1990s is itself treated as evidence of competence rather than mere political survival. Supporters point to his role in negotiating the release of the remaining living hostages held in Gaza, an outcome that briefly lifted his standing in some polling last year.

Even critics within Israel's security establishment often concede that, whatever their objections to his political conduct, Netanyahu is a formidable communicator and tactician who out-manoeuvres rivals more often than not. In head-to-head leadership surveys, he still tends to outperform any single opposition figure individually, even as his coalition as a whole struggles.

His government's supporters also frame the ultra-Orthodox political alliance, and the broader push to curb the power of the judiciary and the attorney general's office, as a necessary rebalancing of power between elected officials and what they see as an overreaching, unelected legal establishment an argument that resonates strongly on Israel's political right, even if it commands little sympathy elsewhere.

The Case His Critics Make
The critics' list, and it is a long one, starts with October 7, 2023. The Hamas-led attack that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians is widely regarded, including by segments of Netanyahu's traditional base, as the worst intelligence and security failure in the country's history and his refusal to establish a formal state commission of inquiry into it has become a lasting grievance.

Layered on top of that is his ongoing corruption trial, on charges of fraud, bribery, and breach of trust, which he denies and has called a politically motivated prosecution.

His government's efforts to weaken judicial oversight including a July law abolishing Israel's broadcast regulator after the government declared it would not recognize the regulator's rulings, and legislation curbing the attorney general's authority have drawn accusations that Netanyahu is using his parliamentary majority to insulate himself from the very institutions overseeing his trial.

A New Republic analysis characterized the pattern as one where, whenever an institution moves to judge him, the response is to put that institution on trial instead. Public opinion on the coalition's other legislative priorities is similarly unfavorable: a Channel 12 survey this month found roughly two-thirds of Israelis opposed to a law expanding ultra-Orthodox exemptions from military service, with a similar majority preferring the next government exclude ultra-Orthodox parties altogether.

Internationally, the picture is starker still. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu in November 2024 over alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes tied to the conduct of the Gaza war, allegations he and his government reject.

Polling of American opinion by Pew Research Center found confidence in Netanyahu has declined sharply even among traditionally sympathetic groups, with roughly half of Democrats now expressing no confidence in him at all, up sharply from the year before, and Republican opinion increasingly divided as well.

A Nation Still Deciding
What makes Netanyahu's position genuinely paradoxical, rather than simply unpopular, is that both things are true at once: polling this year has shown support for his premiership falling from roughly 40% in early March to under 30% by June, and most surveys put his coalition short of the parliamentary majority it would need to govern outright yet he remains, by a wide margin, the single most consequential figure in Israeli politics, still capable of shaping the terms of the national conversation even from a weakened position.

Analysts covering the upcoming vote describe him as entering the campaign "weakened politically, yet still Israel's single most dominant political figure," a formulation that captures the contradiction better than any single poll number can.

Whether Israeli voters choose continuity or rupture on October 27 will say as much about the durability of Netanyahu's political method using each institutional confrontation to reinforce his own indispensability as it does about any single policy question on the ballot.

Mustapha Bature Sallama.
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal investigation and Intelligence Analysis.

International Conflict Management and Peace Building.USIP

mustysallama@gmail.com
+233-555-275-880
Sources
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"Can Benjamin Netanyahu Be Stopped?", The New Republic: https://newrepublic.com/article/213271/benjamin-netanyahu-election-knesset-october

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"Public confidence in PM Netanyahu in Israel 2026," Statista: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1661366/public-confidence-rating-of-netanyahu-israel/

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