After Al Qaeda’s Sept. 11 attacks, then-President George W. Bush saw a huge surge in popularity. As a new kind of fear flooded American society, Bush pledged to shepherd the U.S. through a “Global War on Terror” that received sweeping bipartisan support in Congress and across mainstream media (and unfortunately engendered catastrophic groupthink). Bush’s post-9/11 ratings are often held up as a textbook example of the “rally around the flag” effect — the way political leaders experience a boost in political capital in times of war and crisis.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be experiencing the opposite phenomenon. After Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, which Netanyahu has described as the equivalent of “20 9/11s,” polls indicate that Netanyahu’s popularity isn’t just failing to rise, but that it’s plummeting. Across the political spectrum, the press in Israel has excoriated him, and former security officials and activists against Netanyahu’s judicial reform agenda have called for him to resign. Given the the theoretical possibility that Netanyahu could be forced out of office if his popularity continues to drop, his political crisis raises the question of whether he could view prolonged military intervention as a way to cling to political survival.
A major challenge Netanyahu faces is the belief shared by many Israelis that he’s at least partially at fault for the security lapses that allowed Hamas to kill so many.
Netanyahu, the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history, was beleaguered before the Oct. 7 attacks. He had been facing bribery and fraud charges, and his attempts to pass judicial reform, intended to weakened the Israeli Supreme Court and made it harder to remove him from power, sparked some of the biggest public demonstrations in Israeli history. The latter also prompted a failed no-confidence vote against his government. His judicial reform agenda was so controversial that it inspired some military reservists to vow never to serve again.
Hamas’ killing of more than 1,400 Israelis, most of them civilians, according to official estimates, appears to have changed the minds of many of those reservists, but it hasn’t improved Netanyahu’s reputation. A major challenge Netanyahu faces is the belief shared by many Israelis that he’s at least partially at fault for the security lapses that allowed Hamas to kill so many and seize more than 200 hostages. Depending on where Israelis stand on the political spectrum, those perceived lapses include Netanyahu’s support for expansionism in the West Bank, his focus on protecting the West Bank settlements over protecting Israel’s border with Gaza, his failure to heed intelligence warnings, and his longer-term strategy of propping up Hamas and containing it with limited military interventions.
“Hamas became stronger and used the auspices of peace that Israelis so longed for as cover for its training, and hundreds of Israelis have paid with their lives for this massive omission,” wrote Tal Schneider in Times of Israel. Since the attacks, some Israelis have also criticized Netanyahu for what they see as insufficient support to internally displaced Israelis due to Hamas’ attacks.
Netanyahu has pointedly refused to take any accountability for what happened the day of the attacks — in contrast to many of Israel’s leaders who have. The Israeli Defense Forces’ chief of staff, the director of the Shin Bet intelligence agency, Netanyahu’s defense minister and the defense minister’s predecessor have all said that they bear some responsibility for the security failures that led to the attacks. Netanyahu has not only dodged reporters’ questions about whether he deserves a share of the blame, but he has also cast blame on others. Last weekend he posted on the social media platform X: Contrary to the lying claims: under no circumstances and at no stage was prime minister Netanyahu warned about Hamas’ intention to go to war. Every defense official, including the heads of military intelligence and the Shin Bet security service, believed Hamas was deterred and sought accommodations. This was the assessment that was presented time and time again to the prime minister and the cabinet by all defense officials and the intelligence community, up to the outbreak of war.
Netanyahu received so much backlash for the incendiary message that a day later he deleted it. The message was widely panned as a classic example of Netanyahu’s obsession with clinging to power. Netanyahu is right to be anxious. Recent polls show that 70%-80% of Israelis expect Netanyahu to step down after the war. And a Reichman University Institute for Liberty and Responsibility poll 10 days after the attack found that 76% of Israelis were dissatisfied with the government’s performance in its aftermath. Netanyahu’s attempts to shift blame to others likely adds to Israelis’ dissatisfaction. Does any of this matter? Netanyahu has brushed away questions about whether he’d resign. But as members of his own party publicly question his mental fitness for office, there’s a chance his political predicament could worsen. If, for example, top ministers resign from his government, or if his opposition wins over defectors from the ruling coalition to support a no-confidence vote against him in the Knesset, that could lead to the rise of a centrist government, expert observers say. And a centrist government could potentially shift Israel’s strategic approach to the operation in Gaza, as well as on the question of how to find a fair solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Netanyahu said in 2016 that he’d like to be remembered as a “protector of Israel.” Currently he’s on track for being remembered in Israel as someone who not only failed to fulfill that task, but won’t admit to failing in that task.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. 
