It was strange to watch Fox News’
Martha MacCallum yesterday refer to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s “unpopularity” in Israel. McCallum is a straight-shooting
journalist. So how is it that she is unaware that Netanyahu is the most
popular prime minister Israel has had in ages?
Direct Polls is Israel’s most accurate
polling company. It was the only one to accurately call the 2022 Knesset
elections that returned Netanyahu and his Right-Religious bloc to
power. Over the past year, Direct Polls accomplished what was previously
considered impossible: It conducted uniformly accurate polls of much
smaller local government elections.
Netanyahu’s popularity
reasonably sank in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion
and slaughter of 1,200 Israelis. But it began rebounding in late
November. After National Resilience Party leader Benny Gantz resigned
from Netanyahu’s government in June, Netanyahu steadily rose in Direct
Polls tracking polls—leading Gantz and Opposition leader Yesh Atid Party
head Yair Lapid by double digits in head-to-head matchups. In the
intervening months, the gap between Netanyahu and his rival has grown
steadily.
On Sunday, two days after Israel
eliminated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Direct Polls published the
results of its latest tracking poll for Channel 14. It found
that for the first time since Oct. 7, the parties comprising Netanyahu’s
governing coalition have an outright majority in Knesset seats. If
elections were held today, the government would be re-elected.
As for Netanyahu, his popularity has
reached epic proportions in Israel’s polarized political jungle,
enjoying higher ratings than his top two rivals combined. In head-to-head matchups, he leads Gantz in favorability 52% to 25% and Lapid 54% to 24%.
Netanyahu is enjoying higher ratings than Benny Gantz (L) and Yair Lapid combined.
Any time Netanyahu walks down the street
or his convoy drives past pedestrians, they shout out their support and
clamor to take selfies with him. And as Israeli sociologist Dr. Avishai
Ben Haim has noted, Netanyahu is the only prime minister since Menachem
Begin whose supporters actively pray for him personally.
Despite Netanyahu’s wild popularity, the
media narrative in Israel and across the world remains where it was in
the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7. The standard mantra is the one
MacCallum parroted on Tuesday evening. The underlying message is that
Netanyahu is prolonging the war to avoid elections.
Aside from being dead wrong, the assertion
that Netanyahu is unpopular and is prolonging the war to avoid
elections obfuscates the importance of what Netanyahu is doing. If the
war is reduced to a question of politics, then we can ignore its
strategic significance. And if we ignore the war’s strategic
significance, then we can also avoid the issue of the polls, which show
that the public is rallying around Netanyahu in a way no Israeli leader
has experienced in recent memory. And if we ignore the polls, then we
can ignore the reasons for Netanyahu’s historic popularity.
But understanding his popularity is key to
understanding not only the political realities of Israel, but the
forces driving events.
The sources of Netanyahu’s popularity
Netanyahu’s support stems from two
sources. The first is the public’s recognition that Israel is fighting
for its survival. The second is the Biden-Harris administration’s
hostility.
Oct. 7 was a shattering event. It wasn’t
merely a massive terrorist attack. For Israelis, it was a glimpse of the
future if Israel fails to win the war. It showed Israelis that we are
in a zero-sum game with Iran and its terror proxies. There is no deal to
be had with Hamas, Hezbollah or the Iranian regime. Either they win and
Israel is annihilated, or Israel wins and they are destroyed as
military and political entities. There is no middle ground, no win-win
deal.
While the Biden-Harris administration has
professed solidarity with Israel since Oct. 7, Hamas’s day of atrocities
did not change the administration’s policy goals. Both before and since
Oct. 7, the Biden-Harris administration has had two goals in the Middle
East—reaching a nuclear accord with Iran through strategic appeasement;
and establishing a Palestinian state in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and
Gaza.
Both of these goals are opposed by the
overwhelming majority of Israelis who view both a Palestinian state and a
nuclear-armed Iran as existential threats to the country. Given the
outpouring of emotional support Israelis received from President Joe
Biden and his advisers after Oct. 7, Israelis reasonably expected that
they would jettison their anti-Israel policies.
But the administration did no such thing.
Instead, just days after Oct. 7, the Biden-Harris administration unfroze
$6 billion in Iranian accounts and transferred the funds to Tehran.
Despite mountains of evidence, the administration denied that Iran was
involved in planning and approving Hamas’s terrorist invasion. And they
ignored the fact that upwards of 75% of Palestinians supported the
slaughter of that day and no Palestinian Authority official condemned
the atrocities.
Far from standing with Israel, as early as
Oct. 8, the administration began a policy of gaslighting Israel,
intimating that it was on the verge of committing war crimes by
insisting that Israel fight in accordance with the “laws of war,” as if
there was any reason to think that it wouldn’t do so as a matter of
course.
Just a month into Israel’s ground
operation in Gaza, the administration began slow-walking offensive
weapons, including everything from assault rifles and bullets to tank
and artillery shells, and bombs for air force jets. The only armaments
that were steadily resupplied were Iron Dome missiles.
From the administration’s perspective,
Israel had the right to self-defense but not to victory. To this end,
the administration sought to micromanage Israel’s military operations
and minimize the strategic significance. Israelis recognized that
fighting to a draw meant being defeated.
Gantz, Lapid and Defense Minister Yoav
Gallant were all willing to accept the administration’s position. It
aligned with the way the military had been doing business for decades.
Moreover, by accepting the administration’s dictates, they were showered
with praise from the administration. The Netanyahu-hating media used
their love fests with the White House and Pentagon as a means to present
them as statesmen and Netanyahu as an isolated egomaniac who was only
keeping up the fight to avoid new elections.
But the public didn’t buy the media
narrative. Far from viewing Netanyahu as egotistical, they saw him as
their only hope of preventing national destruction. From the very early
stages of the war, Netanyahu distinguished himself as the only leader
the public saw: Israel is facing foes who want to kill every single Jew
they come across, and if we don’t defeat them, they will.
Netanyahu alone pledged publicly and
repeatedly that he would not permit Israel’s fallen soldiers to have
died in vain and would not relent in the war effort. As U.S. pressure
grew stronger and more aggressive, he was also the only one who didn’t
falter.
The administration responded to
Netanyahu’s refusal to accept anything short of victory by openly
interfering in Israeli politics with the clear aim of either
neutralizing him within his government or ousting him from power. To
achieve the first goal, Biden, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken
and their subordinates used the public’s call for national unity to
compel Netanyahu to give effective veto power over military operations
to Gantz by making him a partner in the war cabinet. From his position,
Gantz was able to consistently weaken Israel’s military operations in
line with U.S. dictates. The administration was also deeply involved in
Gantz’s decision in June to exit from the government. The idea was that
following Gantz’s resignation, Gallant would rally four Likud Knesset
members to leave the government with him and form an alternate coalition
with the left. In the event, Gallant was unable to carry out the plan.
And in Gantz’s absence, Netanyahu quickly moved to ratchet up the
aggressiveness and the effectiveness of Israel’s war effort in Gaza. The
public strongly supported Netanyahu’s moves. Any chance that Likud MKs
would join the opposition disappeared.
The symbiotic relationship that the
Biden-Harris administration cultivated with the Israeli left did not
weaken Netanyahu politically, as the media and its political allies on
the left assumed. To the contrary. Since the public agreed with
Netanyahu that this was a war for national survival, as the public grew
more aware of the administration’s opposition to Israeli victory, its
support for Netanyahu grew. Likewise, politicians like Gallant, Lapid
and Gantz, who are perceived as having good relations with the Biden
administration, became objects of suspicion.
What moved Netanyahu’s approval ratings
from the impressive 40s to the stratospheric (in Israeli terms) 50-plus
was his trip to Washington in late July. Israelis overwhelmingly view
the U.S.-Israel alliance as a strategic imperative. So while they
approved Netanyahu’s refusal to bow to American pressure, they worried
that the media were right when they accused him of wrecking U.S.-Israel
relations.
The enthusiastic response Netanyahu
received from lawmakers from both parties as he delivered his speech to
the joint houses of Congress, and his successful meetings with Biden,
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump
demonstrated to the Israeli public that Netanyahu’s pursuit of victory
didn’t dampen U.S. support for Israel at all. Netanyahu’s biggest jump
in approval came following that visit.
The purpose of the myth of Netanyahu’s unpopularity
This returns us to the persistent media
myth regarding Netanyahu’s unpopularity. To a large degree, the
international media narrative regarding him is shaped by the Israeli
media’s coverage. With the notable exception of Channel 14,
Israel’s print and electronic media have been central actors in the
left’s longstanding efforts to demonize the prime minister with the goal
of ousting him from power. To this end, since the early stages of the
war, the coverage has been defeatist and demoralizing. For instance, Channel 12’s
correspondents and commentators reacted to the announcement by the IDF
on Sept. 27 that Nasrallah was killed with mournful faces and barely
hidden disappointment. In contrast, the public was elated and energized
by the news.
By insisting that Netanyahu is unpopular,
and his unpopularity is driving his determination to bring victory in
war, the media drives a narrative that ignores the strategic
implications of ending the war without defeating Hamas, Hezbollah or
Iran.
But the public isn’t buying it. Netanyahu
supported because by insisting on fighting to victory at all costs, and
then doggedly maintaining allegiance to his pledge, Netanyahu regained
the public’s trust. And now that his determination is yielding
victories, from day to day, Netanyahu’s unrelenting determination
increases his popularity and makes the administration, the opposition
and the media appear increasingly ridiculous and irrelevant in the eyes
of the Israeli public.
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