Why the Most Hated Man in Israel Might Stay in Power

Updated at 9:50 a.m. ET on November 27, 2023

After Hamas’s October 7 assault on Israel, vigils and demonstrations broke out in Tel Aviv, mourning the dead and demanding the return of the hostages. One popular photo showed a lone woman with a hand-drawn sign that proposed a trade: . Remarkably few Israelis would, in those early days of the war, have objected. Bibi—Benjamin Netanyahu—was prime minister during the worst sneak-attack in the country’s history, and the disgust at his government’s failure was universal. A survey recently found that only 4 percent of Jewish Israelis ranked him as the most reliable of Israeli public figures. His overall approval rating recently clocked in at 27 percent, which for a wartime leader is desperately low, comparable to what a politician gets when) “running on a platform of higher taxes and episiotomies.”