NETANYAHUISM - The next Israeli election may be about something larger than Benjamin Netanyahu. For the first time in a generation, Israelis may be deciding not simply who should lead the country, but what political and security doctrine should guide it after October 7.
For more than two decades, Israeli politics has revolved around essentially the same question: Benjamin Netanyahu or someone else. Elections have come and gone, governments have risen and collapsed, and political alliances once considered impossible have been assembled and dismantled. Yet beneath all that turbulence, one reality has endured. Netanyahu has remained the central figure around whom Israeli politics is organized, and the security worldview associated with him has influenced even many of the politicians determined to defeat him.
That is why the political consequences of October 7 could ultimately reach far beyond Netanyahu himself. Israel emerged from the attack and the wars that followed with fundamental questions about deterrence, military preparedness, political leadership and the assumptions that had governed its security strategy for years. The coming election therefore has the potential to become something much larger than another referendum on Netanyahu. It could become a referendum on the political and security consensus that helped define an entire era of Israeli history.
Netanyahu’s extraordinary political durability has never depended solely on Likud loyalty or his abilities as a campaigner. At the heart of his appeal has been a powerful argument about Israel’s place in the Middle East: the country exists in a dangerous region, military superiority is indispensable, international guarantees cannot substitute for Israel’s ability to defend itself, and optimism about hostile actors can carry catastrophic consequences. Even politicians who bitterly opposed Netanyahu frequently accepted significant portions of that worldview. Their disagreement was often less about the necessity of Israeli strength than about who could exercise that strength most effectively and responsibly.
That dynamic helped produce one of the central paradoxes of modern Israeli politics. Netanyahu’s opponents could challenge him over judicial reform, religion and state, economic policy, his legal troubles and the composition of his governments while remaining much closer to him on fundamental questions of national security. Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid demonstrated in 2021 that Netanyahu could be removed from office without Israel undergoing a dramatic ideological transformation. Their coalition succeeded partly because enough Israelis became convinced that replacing Netanyahu did not require abandoning the security assumptions that had shaped the country during his years of dominance.
October 7 shattered the comfort of that arrangement. Israelis are no longer debating security primarily as a campaign slogan or an abstract ideological concept. They are examining what failed, what must change and what obligations political leaders and ordinary citizens must carry in a country that has endured devastating attack and prolonged war. The emerging argument is therefore not simply about which politician can sound toughest against Israel’s enemies. It is about what Israeli strength should actually look like in the next generation.
The controversy surrounding Haredi military service illustrates how dramatically that debate has changed. What was once treated primarily as a dispute over religion, coalition politics and longstanding exemptions has become inseparable from a larger question of national responsibility. After repeated reserve deployments and enormous sacrifices by Israeli families, the country is confronting difficult questions about who serves, who sacrifices, who receives exemptions and whether the burden of defending the Jewish state can continue to be distributed as it has been in the past.
The West Bank may present an even more consequential dividing line. Settlement expansion, Palestinian terrorism, settler violence, Israeli security control and the possibility of future political separation cannot be confined neatly to the old categories of left and right. These questions reach directly into Israel’s security, demography, diplomacy and national identity. Supporters of continued Israeli control argue that surrendering strategically important territory could create another intolerable security threat close to Israel’s population centers. Opponents argue that continued settlement expansion makes political separation increasingly difficult while creating serious diplomatic, demographic and security consequences of its own. Whatever position Israelis ultimately embrace, the debate is increasingly about competing visions of the country's future rather than simply competing opinions about Netanyahu.
The battle over judicial reform deepens that divide. Israelis are not merely arguing about judges and politicians; they are debating the distribution of power within their democracy, the limits of elected government and the institutions that should restrain political authority. When those questions are combined with military service, the West Bank and the lessons of October 7, a much larger political realignment begins to come into view. Israelis are increasingly debating not only how their country should defend itself, but what kind of country they are asking their soldiers and citizens to defend.
This is where Netanyahu’s challengers face their most difficult test. Gadi Eisenkot, Bennett and other opposition figures can criticize the government’s preparedness before October 7, its management of the war and its decisions afterward. But opposition is not a governing philosophy. If they want to build a political era that extends beyond Netanyahu, they must explain where they would preserve the security principles associated with his governments, where they would depart from them and, most importantly, what they would put in their place.
Netanyahu confronts the opposite problem. After so many years at the center of Israeli government, he cannot easily separate himself from the political and security establishment that Israelis are now reassessing. His long experience remains central to his political identity, but longevity carries a burden as well. When voters examine the successes, failures and unresolved challenges of the last generation, they are inevitably examining the era that Netanyahu has dominated.
That is what could make this election fundamentally different from so many that preceded it. Israel has spent much of the last quarter-century arguing about Netanyahu the politician. It may now be approaching the moment when it begins arguing about Netanyahuism itself. That distinction is enormous, because politicians eventually leave office while the doctrines, institutions and political coalitions they create can survive them for decades.
The defining question, then, may no longer be whether Benjamin Netanyahu should remain prime minister. It may be whether the assumptions that defined his era are sufficient for the Israel that emerged from October 7. Military service, the West Bank, judicial power and the future of Israeli security may appear to be separate controversies, but together they point toward the same larger debate about the obligations, priorities and identity of the Jewish state.
For a generation, Israeli politics has largely revolved around a familiar question: Who can keep Israel safe? After October 7, Israelis face a harder and more consequential one: What must Israel do and what kind of country must it become to remain safe?
Benjamin Netanyahu’s political career will eventually end, as every political career does. But the struggle over what replaces the era he built is only beginning, and its outcome could shape Israel long after his name disappears from the ballot.
(Avrohom Moshe is a California-based civic affairs writer and public policy analyst focused on government accountability, fiscal responsibility, and public safety. He also writes on issues affecting the Jewish community, including combating antisemitism and advancing civic engagement.)
