Understanding Why Netanyahu Won

“Whatever else one may think about the unholy trinity of Prime Minister Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich, they are, among other things, willing to discuss the serious internal security concerns that much of the country outside of Tel Aviv faces.”

I lived in the United States when President Donald Trump was elected in 2016. Today, living in Israel, I see the same kind of hyperbolic handwringing about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new coalition. Concerns about “the end of democracy” and fears that we will all be living in The Handmaid’s Tale sound remarkably similar to when President Trump was elected. All the while, the Israeli political left uses the same adjectives to describe Prime Minister Netanyahu as the American political left uses to describe President Trump: fascist, dictator, theocrat, bigot, racist, homophobe, sexist. Although the United States and Israel are different in so many ways, they do have this in common: The Left stubbornly insists on calling names rather than doing the much more nuanced and complex work of figuring out what happened when the Right wins.

When power changes from one side to the other (insofar as Israel’s complex coalitions can be said to have “sides” of Right and Left in the same way the United States does), we should pay close attention. This is because the far-right and the far-left do not change how they vote in a short period of time, especially in Israel, where the period between this election and the last election was barely a year and a half. The people who made the decisive difference were persuaded to move further to the right.

If, as former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett wrote in his recent New York Times guest essay, 70% of Israelis agree on 70% of issues, why did so many people vote Prime Minister Netanyahu back in? Why did they take a chance on someone like Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose past, if one cares anything about civil rights, is pretty awful? Why did his Jewish Power party double its support in the short time between Prime Minister Bennett and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s mandates? Asking why people changed their vote is essential for understanding why we are where we are, but it requires looking at the thorny issues in Israeli culture and politics that defy simple solutions and combative rhetoric.