There is a strange, almost painful paradox at the heart of Israeli public life right now. For nearly three years, the country has lurched from one catastrophe to another: the brutal October 7 attack, the hundreds of hostages taken and many still held, the grinding war in Gaza, skirmishes and full-blown conflict with Hezbollah and Iran, tens of thousands of displaced families, a battered economy, and a society torn open by grief and anger. Any reasonable observer might expect the prime minister who presided over this period, Benjamin Netanyahu, to be swept away by a wave of public fury. And yet his core support remains stubbornly, even mystifyingly, intact. It is a puzzle that confuses outside observers and frustrates his critics. But for those who have spent time with his voters, the puzzle starts to make a strange kind of sense. This is not a story about facts or policies; it is a story about fear, identity, and the human need to believe that someone, anyone, still holds the wheel while the storm rages.
To understand this loyalty, one has to stop thinking about voters as rational accountants who tally successes and failures. The core supporters who still stand by Netanyahu are not denying that the past three years have been terrible. Very few of them would say that everything is fine. But they see the disasters through a different lens: not as proof of Netanyahu’s failure, but as evidence of the eternal hostility of the world toward Israel. For them, the October 7 attack was not the result of a flawed intelligence system or a government that had grown too complacent. It was the latest eruption of an ancient, never-ending war in which Israel must always be on guard. In that framing, Netanyahu is not the captain who crashed the ship; he is the stubborn captain who refuses to abandon the deck, even as the waves keep crashing. He is the man who stands on the world stage and says no to ceasefire demands, no to a Palestinian state, no to any deal that might force Israel to give up its security. In the minds of his supporters, the disasters are proof that the world wants to destroy them, and Netanyahu is the only leader tough enough, sly enough, and defiant enough to keep that world at bay.
There is a deeply human desire underneath all of this: the desire for order in the face of chaos. When people are terrified, when their neighbors have been killed, when their children are on the front lines, they do not always want a nuanced leader who acknowledges complexity. They want a father figure who promises that he will take care of it, even if his promises sound unrealistic. Netanyahu has perfected the voice of authority. He speaks slowly, deliberately, as if every word is a secret strategic calculation. He projects certainty, and certainty is intoxicating to people who feel their world is dissolving. For his supporters, he is not just a politician; he is a symbol. He is the embodiment of a certain Jewish story: the lone survivor, surrounded by enemies, using wits and willpower to endure. Every time the world condemns Israel, every time a ceasefire resolution passes at the United Nations, every time an international court issues a warrant, Netanyahu’s base feels its suspicion of the world confirmed. And he uses those moments brilliantly. He converts external pressure into internal loyalty. The more the world attacks him, the more his followers feel that he must be doing something right.
But the human side of this support is also tangled with grief, memory, and guilt. After such a terrible event, people need to find meaning. For many Israelis in Netanyahu’s camp, the meaning of October 7 is that Israel cannot rely on anyone else. They remember the trauma of the Holocaust, the sense that the world stood by and did nothing. They look at the current war and see it as an inevitable continuation of that history. To blame Netanyahu, to say that he could have prevented this, feels almost like blaming the victim. It would mean that the old story of Jewish helplessness had returned, and that their leader had failed to protect them. That is too painful to accept. So the mind defends itself. They focus on the courage of the soldiers, the resilience of the civilians, the strength of the nation. They tell themselves that despite everything, Israel is still there, still strong, still fighting. And in that narrative, Netanyahu becomes the great survivor, the man who survived political scandals, corruption charges, coalition collapses, and now war. To admit that his core support is misplaced would be to admit that the past three years were not just a nightmare but a self-inflicted wound, and that is an admittance too far.
This is not to say that his supporters are blinded or brainwashed. They are making a choice, just as we all make choices under pressure. Some of them are simply exhausted. They have lost relatives, friends, their homes, their jobs. They do not have the energy for another political upheaval. They look at the opposition and see the same faces, the same failures, the same weakness. They remember that before the war, the country was already convulsed by protests over judicial reform, and they blame the fractiousness of Israeli society for the enemy’s boldness. They want stability, even if that stability is an illusion. They want a strong arm, even if that arm has failed before. There is also a sense of identity at stake. For many religious, nationalist, and conservative Israelis, Netanyahu represents the last barrier against a world that seems to want to redefine the Jewish state, to impose a “new Middle East” in which Israel is just another small country with a dashed border and an uncertain future. They are not voting for a person; they are voting for a mirror that reflects their own fears and hopes. When they look at him, they see a version of themselves: tough, despised, lonely, but standing upright.
Where does this leave the future? It is possible that the core support will eventually crack, that the weight of grief will become too heavy, that the hostage families will finally change the conversation, that the economy will force a reckoning. But as of today, the loyalty remains, and it is rooted in something more stubborn than politics. It is rooted in the human need to believe that in a chaotic and dangerous world, there is someone at the helm who will not give in. Netanyahu has spent his entire career cultivating that belief. He is not just a politician; he is a psychological phenomenon, a figure who absorbs the nation’s fear and returns it as fury. His supporters know that the last three years were disastrous. They know that their lives are harder, that their children are scarred, that their future is uncertain. But they also know that to let go of him would be to let go of the story they have told themselves about who they are. And so they hold on, not because they think he is perfect, but because the alternative is too terrifying to imagine. In the end, the enigma of Netanyahu’s staying power is not really an enigma at all. It is a deeply human story, written in the language of fear, pride, memory, and the desperate hope that after so much loss, at least one thing can remain unwavering.
