Hendra Wijaya
As he prepares to contest his 13th national parliamentary election, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is once again leaning into a well-worn political formula centered on personal grievance, deflection, and claims of victimhood. The veteran leader has consistently turned to populist rhetoric to confront severe political fallout and maintain his grip on power amid mounting public and institutional scrutiny.
Netanyahu remains the longest-serving and most electorally accomplished prime minister in the history of Israel, having occupied the nation's top political office for 18 years across three distinct periods. Throughout this extended tenure, he has played an instrumental role in steering the country's political landscape steadily to the right, even as his administrations have presided over the nation's most catastrophic internal security breakdown and a devastating genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Despite his decades at the pinnacle of political power, critics observe that the Likud party leader continues to respond to career-threatening controversies by casting himself as the target of institutional conspiracies. Rather than confronting direct accountability for governance and security failures, his strategy relies heavily on deflecting blame onto state bodies, political rivals, and external actors.
A recent manifestation of this approach followed a report published by the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, which alleged that the United Arab Emirates had provided Netanyahu with advance warning prior to the Hamas-led attacks of October 2023. Instead of engaging in substantive reflection or addressing the substance of the reporting, the prime minister reacted with fierce counter-accusations, initiating legal action and dismissing the revelations as a coordinated attempt at foreign interference in Israel’s electoral process.
Simultaneously, Netanyahu's campaign apparatus launched a political advertisement designed to evoke public sympathy by portraying the prime minister as a persecuted child. The promotional video depicted a young boy being persistently bullied by schoolmates carrying placards bearing the slogan "anyone but Bibi," directly invoking the familiar moniker associated with the Likud leader.
This messaging highlights an ongoing paradox within Netanyahu’s political strategy, in which the head of government presents himself as an outsider battling an entrenched establishment. Analysts observe that throughout his political career, he has relied on anti-elite discourses to mobilize his core supporters, framing political opposition not as legitimate democratic challenge, but as an ongoing campaign of institutional persecution.
According to Dr. Neta Oren, an Israeli political psychologist based at George Mason University, cultivating a sense of self-victimization serves as a foundational pillar of Netanyahu’s broader political playbook. She noted that while populist appeals are typically straightforward to mount from the opposition benches, maintaining such an approach as the country's longest-serving leader requires a specific ideological reframing.
To reconcile his prolonged tenure with his anti-establishment messaging, Netanyahu consistently attributes executive failures to the influence of what he terms the "deep state." By depicting himself as an enduring victim of these entrenched bureaucratic and political elites, he mirrors the grievances of his voting base, who view themselves as marginalized by the traditional establishment. Although this framing carries the risk of portraying a sitting leader as weak or ineffective, it remains a potent electoral instrument for retaining core support.
In addition to confronting state institutions, Netanyahu has increasingly engaged in ideological contests on Israel’s political right, competing with figures such as far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The two leaders recently held rival press briefings aimed at laying claim to the historic legacy of the Irgun, a pre-state right-wing Zionist militia that operated during the British Mandate period.
The legacy of the Irgun remains deeply polarizing due to its responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians and British military personnel prior to the founding of Israel. The armed organization was ultimately subdued and brought under state control in 1949 by the country’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, yet Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir have sought to memorialize what they characterize as the historical oppression faced by the militia.
This overarching pattern of blame-shifting was similarly evident in Netanyahu's handling of the security lapses surrounding the October 7, 2023 assault. The prime minister sought to distance himself from operational culpability by alleging that senior defense officials deliberately withheld information and opted not to wake him during the crucial opening hours of the offensive, asserting that he would have contained the attack had he been notified.
This narrative was further amplified by his spouse, Sara Netanyahu, during an appearance on the pro-government television network Channel 14. In her remarks, she cast suspicion on opposition leader and former general Yair Golan, suggesting that his immediate decision to drive directly toward the combat zone on the morning of the attack implied prior knowledge of the impending Hamas operation.
While political observers note tactical similarities between Netanyahu’s populist methods and those deployed by international leaders such as Donald Trump in the United States, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Narendra Modi in India, Netanyahu’s specific deployment of grievance politics carries deep historical roots within Israeli domestic affairs.
His anti-establishment rhetoric traces back to the political atmosphere surrounding the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, when Netanyahu famously asserted that the Israeli left had abandoned its Jewish identity. Today, as he navigates another election cycle, Netanyahu continues to tailor these narratives of persecution to resonate with a shared Zionist and cultural identity among his core political base.
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