Israelis’ Anger Against Netanyahu Grows – What Poll Shows

An Israeli minister was barred from entering a hospital. Grieving man throws coffee at another minister’s bodyguards. A third Israeli cabinet member, who went to comfort families of victims of the Hamas attack, faced their fury, with some calling him a “traitor” and an “idiot”.

The shock of the October 7 Hamas attack has rallied Israelis but also fueled anger at the government, which they accuse of crushing resistance and dragging the country into a war with Gaza.

Whatever comes next, doomsday awaits Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after a long career in politics and having survived a series of scandals.

Outrage over the deaths of some 1,300 Israelis was fueled further as Netanyahu portrayed himself as a seasoned politician who can foresee threats to Israel’s national security.

In the meantime, there remains great polarization in the country’s society on the occasion of the reform of the judicial system promoted by the Netanyahu government – the most right-wing in the history of Israel -, due to which some army reservists refused to serve, creating doubts about the readiness of the Israeli army.

“The Mayhem of October 2023,” was the headline on the front page of the Yediot Ahronoth newspaper, a reference to Israel’s failure to pre-empt the October 1973 attack by Egypt and Syria, which eventually led to the resignation of Golda Meir’s government .

Amoz Asa-El, a researcher at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, predicted that Netanyahu and his Likud party would meet a similar fate.

“It doesn’t matter if a commission of inquiry is set up or not, if he admits his mistake. “All that matters is what the ‘average Israeli’ thinks, which is that this is a fiasco for which the prime minister is responsible,” Asa-El told Reuters.

“His entire establishment will leave with him,” he estimated.

A Maariv newspaper poll showed that 21% of Israelis want Netanyahu to remain prime minister after the end of the war. But 66% said they wanted to be “someone else”, while 13% were undecided.

If elections were held today, Likud would lose a third of its Knesset seats, while those of the centrist party of Netanyahu’s rival, Benny Gantz, would increase by a third.

Emergency War Cabinet

But the Israelis now do not want elections. They want action, and with a military ground operation in the Gaza Strip a possibility, Gantz, a former soldier, has put aside his political differences with Netanyahu and is joining the emergency war cabinet.

The Israeli prime minister has limited his public appearances. He met with the relatives of the approximately 200 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, without the presence of cameras. Amid mounting criticism, his wife visited a grieving family.

Also Netanyahu has made no statement claiming responsibility, despite senior government and intelligence officials admitting that they failed to anticipate and prevent the worst attack on civilians in Israel’s history.

The country has received Western support for its counter-offensive, but this may dwindle if the ground operation in Gaza bogs down, with the number of Palestinian casualties rising as well as casualties among the Israeli army.

Moreover, this war is likely to overturn Netanyahu’s foreign policy: the normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia, a process that has frozen, and the containment of Iran, which hails the attack by Hamas as a victory for the Middle East axis that he desires the destruction of Israel.

Military analysts expect the war in Gaza could drag on for monthsmeanwhile Netanyahu would benefit from a political truce, noted Asa-El.

Some commentators also believe that the rift in Israeli society, and the extent to which it has undermined national security, is not solely Netanyahu’s fault.

“We forgot that we are brothers and we are at war,” Amit Segal, a political analyst at Channel 12, wrote on Telegram. “It’s not too late to fix it. Stop fighting – now.’

However, Asa-El noticed that citizens’ anger against some ministers is growing, while disagreements have already started to appear within the governing coalition.

“You hear people on the street who support Likud talking about them with unmistakable hostility”, Asa-El pointed out. “Anger will grow and this apparent attempt by Netanyahu to shirk his responsibilities only makes people angrier. He doesn’t seem to be able to say: ‘we did it.'”