The Man We Love to Hate (and Hate to Love)
Reconciling our anger and admiration for Netanyahu in an age of moral confusion
It is a strange thing to feel both pride and shame toward the same man. To feel angry at him yet still find yourself defending him when the world attacks. Many of us who care about Israel live in this uneasy place when it comes to Benjamin Netanyahu.
We are furious with him. We have watched him undermine Israel’s democratic institutions to save himself from indictment. We have seen him pit Israelis against one another, alienate American Jews, and put his own survival ahead of the nation’s. The trauma of October 7, and the government’s shameful unpreparedness and fumbling response, happened on his watch. For that alone, he deserves to be held to account.
And yet…
He is not the cartoon villain his fiercest critics make him out to be. The ICC’s warrant and the accusations of genocide against him and Israel are grotesque, dishonest, and hypocritical. And however much we may wish otherwise, Netanyahu is also the man who elevated Israel once again to the position of dominant military power in the Middle East, neutralizing Hezbollah’s leadership, devastating Hamas, frustrating Iran’s nuclear ambitions, reshaping the regional order, and daring to confront enemies others said could obliterate the Jewish state.
He is at once extraordinary at securing Israel’s place in a hostile world and dangerously willing to tear at its fabric from within.
The Case Against Him
There is no denying Netanyahu’s failures.
Even before October 7, his obsession with pushing judicial overhaul while ignoring growing security threats left the nation distracted and divided.
The Hamas massacre, which killed more than 1,200 people and saw over 250 taken hostage, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, revealed shocking lapses in intelligence and readiness, followed by a disorganized, hesitant response. Many have accused Netanyahu of putting his own survival above the country’s, endangering Israel to protect himself from justice. As Benny Gantz, former IDF Chief of Staff and Defense Minister, warned, “Netanyahu’s determination to hold on to power at all costs … has come to threaten Israel’s very democracy.”
On the international stage, he has sometimes treated American politics like a partisan game, undermining bipartisan support and alienating much of the American Jewish community. His 2015 address to Congress against the Iran deal, while prescient about Tehran’s intentions, was a diplomatic breach that angered even Israel’s closest allies.
His survival tactics have also come at a heavy cost to Israeli society. To hold his coalition together, Netanyahu has normalized incitement and given legitimacy to extremist voices that many Israelis see as corrosive to the country’s soul. He brought extremists into positions of real power: Itamar Ben Gvir, a provocateur once convicted of inciting racism, and Bezalel Smotrich, an advocate of annexation and unapologetic opponent of Palestinian rights. Their presence has pushed Israeli politics further toward intolerance and confrontation, alienating both Israelis and allies abroad.
After October 7 exposed Israel’s vulnerabilities and stretched its military to the limit, Netanyahu still refused to confront the question of Haredi military service. Instead of insisting on shared sacrifice in the country’s hour of need, he protected his coalition by shielding the ultra-Orthodox from service, a choice that weakens Israel’s security and deepens its internal divisions.
His embrace of such extremists has also reverberated far beyond Israel’s borders, leaving many American Jews struggling to reconcile their support for Israel with policies and rhetoric that violate the values they cherish. In the United States, support for Israel has become increasingly polarized along partisan lines, with Democrats, once a bedrock of pro-Israel sentiment, growing more critical, and many Jews caught between defending Israel from its enemies and disowning policies that contradict their ideals.
He has also eroded trust in Israel’s own institutions. His relentless attacks on the judiciary, police, media, and even military leaders have frayed national unity and weakened public confidence in the very systems that protect Israel’s democracy.
And the corruption scandals cannot simply be waved away. Netanyahu is the first sitting Israeli prime minister to stand trial while in office, facing charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust for allegedly trading political and regulatory favors for personal gain, including favorable media coverage and lavish gifts. Even if some accusations seem politically motivated, his willingness to entangle himself in these scandals has tarnished his legacy.
The Case For Him
Yet it is equally undeniable that Netanyahu has accomplished things few others could have.
When Mossad agents stole half a ton of Iranian nuclear documents in a single night in 2018 and smuggled them back to Israel, it wasn’t just a daring intelligence coup. It was a humiliation of Iran’s regime and a wake-up call to the world. That kind of operation bore Netanyahu’s fingerprints.
Under his watch:
Hezbollah has been deterred from starting another full-scale war with Israel since 2006, despite being massively armed.
Iran’s nuclear program has been repeatedly set back through ingenious operations, from the Stuxnet cyberattack, widely attributed to U.S.-Israeli cooperation, to the Tehran archive raid.
The Abraham Accords fundamentally reshaped Israel’s standing in the region, formalizing ties with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. As Bret Stephens noted in The New York Times, these were “achievements that every one of his predecessors aspired to but could never deliver.”
Iran’s and Hezbollah’s ambitions in Syria were curtailed in no small part by Israel’s quiet but relentless strikes on their infrastructure and operatives during the civil war, limiting their entrenchment and weakening their ability to threaten Israel from Syrian territory.
After October 7, he oversaw a relentless campaign that eliminated much of Hamas’s senior leadership, including high-value operatives in Gaza, Lebanon, and inside Iran, where a strike on the day of Iran’s presidential inauguration humiliated Tehran and demonstrated Israel’s reach.
He also oversaw a remarkable and largely invisible campaign against Hezbollah, degrading its leadership through targeted killings of senior commanders, disrupting weapons shipments and communications networks through intelligence coups like the so-called “Pager Attack,” and maintaining relentless pressure. This kept Hezbollah deterred without plunging Israel into another full-scale northern war for nearly two decades. This was a strategic and tactical achievement few thought possible after the 2006 war, and it reshaped Israel’s security environment along its northern border.
Even some of Netanyahu’s fiercest critics have, at times, acknowledged his tactical decisiveness when confronting Israel’s enemies. On the subject of Iran in particular, Avigdor Lieberman, a rightist former defense minister, said, “Netanyahu took a really difficult decision. On the topic of Iran, right now he is doing the right thing.” Benny Gantz, a centrist former IDF chief, echoed this sentiment, saying, “On the Iranian issue, there is no right or left. There is only right or wrong. And we are right.”
The Hypocrisy of His Critics
But perhaps the most infuriating aspect of this moment is not Netanyahu himself, but the hypocrisy of the international response to him.
The ICC’s decision to seek an arrest warrant against Netanyahu alongside Hamas’s leaders is not just legally dubious but morally obscene. No warrant has been issued for Bashar al-Assad, who has slaughtered half a million Syrians, nor for the Iranian regime that arms proxies to terrorize civilians across the Middle East. Vladimir Putin’s warrant came years into his invasion of Ukraine, but Israel was targeted within months.
Legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich has sharply criticized the ICC’s approach to Israel, calling it “a travesty” and warning that pursuing war-crime warrants against a democratic government undermines international justice. He observed that the court has convicted only six people since 2002, while ignoring major dictators, and argued that targeting Israel could prevent democracies from defending themselves vigorously in future conflicts.
Israelis and Jews worldwide know that criticism of their country is often not just about policy but about existence. And when the world singles out Israel’s war of self-defense while overlooking proven and undeniable crimes committed by others, it is hard not to suspect something darker at play.
Loving, Criticizing, and Protecting
Many of us who care deeply about Israel wrestle with another tension too: the fear that our own criticisms could be weaponized against her.
It is right and necessary to hold Israel’s leaders accountable, just as one would any democratic government. To demand better of a country you love is an act of love itself. As Amos Oz explained in a 2010 interview, “There is a fine line, but a very clear line, between legitimate criticism, which is what Israel deserves, and illegitimate criticism, which leads to the conclusion that perhaps it will be better if Israel ceased to exist.”
And yet, history has taught us that even our silence can be turned into evidence of guilt, and our cries for justice can be distorted into justification for hate. So we speak carefully, but we speak anyway. We know that our words can be twisted, used as fodder by those who do not wish Israel to improve but to disappear.
This is the tightrope we walk: to speak the truth about Netanyahu’s flaws without endorsing the lies told about Israel. To demand accountability while defending her against slander. To love her enough to want her to be better, and to protect her from those who do not want her at all.
In the End
To some he is a monster, to others a messiah, but in truth he is neither. He is something far more complicated, and far more human. He has done grave harm to Israel, and great good.
When this war ends, Israel will face an equally important battle at home. Netanyahu must be held accountable for his failures, for the corruption, the arrogance, and the catastrophic lapses of October 7, and he must also be remembered for his historic achievements. Both truths are necessary.
But the time has come for Israel to turn the page. To enter the next phase of its development, a post-Netanyahu phase, led by those who put the country’s best interest above their own survival. Israel deserves leadership worthy of its people’s sacrifice and resilience, leadership that unites rather than divides, that strengthens rather than erodes, and that sees beyond itself to the future.
We hold her to account because we believe she is worth saving, from her enemies and from herself. And because we still believe she can fulfill her promise.
Excellent essay