When the going gets tough, the tough don’t get subtle. Yesterday, with polls casting doubt on his continuing as Israel’s prime minister after Tuesday’s election, Benjamin Netanyahu posted a closing argument on Instagram: an AI-generated image of Tel Aviv destroyed by a nuclear blast, with accompanying text that asked, roughly, Would you prefer to reelect Netanyahu, or be incinerated along with your family? The text—written by the commentator Yuval Bloomberg and reproduced approvingly by Netanyahu—called all of the other campaign issues a “smokescreen,” and accused Netanyahu’s opponents of being so blinded by hatred that they would rather increase their chances of being burned alive than see their country’s political maestro win another election. If you support another candidate, the Instagram post cautioned, “your hand should tremble” as you vote.
For years, Israelis both pro- and anti-Netanyahu have advised against counting him out. That advice remains sound. He has a Nixon-like ability to reemerge improbably stronger every time his political career has been declared over. It seemed over on October 7, 2023, when his government presided over an actual mass burning of Israelis. This time, the group of politicians cooperating to drive him from office is diverse and formidable. A former observer in Netanyahu’s war cabinet, retired General Gadi Eisenkot, is his chief antagonist. But two allied former prime ministers, the centrist Yair Lapid and center-right Naftali Bennett, are enthusiastic members of the anti-Netanyahu coalition, and another ex-general, Yair Golan, is attacking him from what remains of the Israeli left. These combined efforts have reduced Netanyahu’s chances of remaining in power to one in four, as of this morning.
These relatively long odds account, perhaps, for the wild messaging from Netanyahu during the past three days. Netanyahu’s statements have been, as George W. Bush said after Donald Trump’s “American carnage” speech, “some weird shit.” In addition to warning that his opponents will be too beholden to Islamists to stop the flattening of Tel Aviv, Netanyahu’s pronouncements include the assertions that: it is “only a matter of time” before American military assistance for Israel is “over”; that Israel will be beset by international sanctions and compelled to cope without the friends who have in the past guaranteed its survival; and that blockchain-based technologies, such as cryptocurrencies, might provide ways around sanctions.
[Read: Defeating Netanyahu means solving a math problem]
The other candidates have positioned themselves as normal people who can govern Israel competently in difficult times. Bennett replied to the atom-bomb post by calling for the “revival of our international standing,” and declaring his intention to improve the tech sector and force thousands of Israel’s 1.5 million ultra-Orthodox citizens to trade full-time religious study for military service and employment. (Netanyahu and his further-right coalition partners have refused these measures and tried to preserve draft exemptions.) Netanyahu, Yair Lapid wrote, “has gone off the rails. We must send him home.”
Netanyahu’s case is that he is an unusual man for unusual times. If the times are not unusual already, he will make them unusual, by shifting Israel’s politics and alliances preemptively—away from America and toward the United Arab Emirates, away from Western financial systems and toward crypto, in a manner reminiscent of sanctions-hobbled regimes like Russia, Iran, and North Korea. There is a logic to this frightening perspective. If you think Israel can be a liberal democracy in a familiar international order, and that competent institutions and international alliances are the way to stave off catastrophe, then vote from the menu of Netanyahu’s opponents. If you think Israel is doomed to being a pariah state, then vote for the guy posting images of his country torched in a nuclear holocaust. Today Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the secular-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, and a member of the anti-Netanyahu club, requested a treason investigation into Netanyahu for intentionally “dragging Israel into war” to improve his electoral chances.
This threat of annihilation is not, of course, wholly concocted. But Iran’s open desire to annihilate Israel can be real and still be used as a political pretext to avoid the issues that have led so many Israelis to hate Netanyahu. The same Instagram post that warns of nuclear annihilation helpfully lists these issues: alleged links between Netanyahu and the government of Qatar; reports that Netanyahu received warnings before the October 7 attacks and did nothing; and his support for welfare and draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox full-time Torah students. About 100,000 such ultra-Orthodox are liable for military service, and most instead study Talmud and are therefore too busy to cram themselves into tanks and fight in Gaza like other Jewish Israelis. Netanyahu’s response to all of these accusations is to crank up the end-of-days volume, to make even the most reasonable criticisms of his politics inaudible.
Among secular Israelis, the last of these gripes produces such bitterness that some seem willing to die rather than vote for a politician who would preserve the exemptions. The bitterness stems from the perception that Netanyahu (himself a religious novice) is eager to make unconscionable concessions to the most extreme elements of the ultra-Orthodox political machine in exchange for a few more seats in his coalition. The main ultra-Orthodox parties are Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ), both pro-Netanyahu and monomaniacal about preserving exemptions for as many Torah students as possible.
[Graeme Wood: Israel can’t postpone its reckoning forever]
The cynicism of this move is easiest to appreciate not by assaying the venom of secular Israelis but by hearing the dismay of ultra-Orthodox Israelis, also known as Haredim (those who “tremble” before God) unaligned with Shas and UTJ. Ziva Glanz, a candidate for the upstart Haredi Public party, told me with exasperation that the “legacy” parties were immune to change, and that most Haredim were ready to move on, if only the ossified political system would let them.
Her party is broadly in the Netanyahu camp, and her party is happy to support Netanyahu’s view of Israel’s security. “Existential problems are existential problems,” she said. But they nonetheless want reform, and see his government and its partners as stopping it. Her party supports reducing the number of draft-exempt Torah students. Glanz, the wife of a rabbi, says she thinks the low civilian casualty rate in Israel’s war with Hezbollah was a miracle granted by God due to Israel’s commitment to religious study. But she says there are 12,000 Haredim who purport to be studying, and whose institutions claim government funds, when in reality they are “hanging out in pizza shops.” They should be put to work. “Our community is a success,” she said, and “with success comes responsibility.” Netanyahu’s response to this modest attempt to disrupt Haredi politics and integrate Haredim into the Israeli national project has been to tell her party to back down.
When Netanyahu first won the premiership in 1996, he successfully campaigned on “making a safe peace”—peace guaranteed through Israeli military supremacy, rather than primarily through the negotiation or diplomacy preferred by his rivals. Three decades later, a “safe peace” guaranteed through military might has become so strategically desirable that it unites his rivals—security hawks, one and all—while Netanyahu himself has moved on. He once promised to bring peace. Now he promises that his opponents will bring annihilation.
In this account, Israel’s violent devastation is so imminent that corruption, pandering, and venality become mere foibles. But what if ignoring these political vices devastates Israel in slower, less lurid ways? What if limitless draft exemptions, unwillingness to scrutinize past failures, and international isolation are themselves devastating? Tomorrow Israelis will vote, many trembling for the future of their country, no matter which candidate they prefer.
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