As Israelis prepare to celebrate Passover, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a defiant wartime speech earlier this week filled with Biblical quotations about the ancient Jewish victory over their enemies.
He likened the attacks on Israel’s enemies to the ten plagues that God is believed to have inflicted on Egypt to free the Israelites from slavery.
Israel “changed the Middle East,” he boasted.
Just hours later, Iran unleashed the heaviest barrage of the conflict, shattering the holiday mood and exposing the gap between Netanyahu’s triumphant rhetoric and the reality on the ground more than a month after the US-Israel war on Iran began.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid derided Netanyahu’s speech as “arrogant” and quickly responded with a video of his own. Lapid pointed out that before the war began, Iran had been launching ballistic missiles at Israel under the leadership of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Not much has changed after a month.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu is incapable of making strategic decisions. He is simply incompetent.”
The exchange exposed the growing rift between Israel’s political establishment and its people in five weeks, as the optimism and unity the government gained in the early days of the war began to fade. According to multiple polling organizations, most Israelis still support the campaign. But public confidence in Israel’s ability to achieve the war’s stated objectives has plummeted.
The proportion of Israelis who believe the Iranian regime will collapse or be significantly weakened by US-Israeli military operations has fallen from nearly 70% at the start of the war to 43.5% today, according to a survey by the Israel Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). Confidence in Israel’s ability to significantly damage Iran’s nuclear program fell from 62% to 48%. Expectations for destroying ballistic missile weapons fell from 73% to 57%. Israelis are almost evenly divided on whether it is possible to disarm Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon.
“Bibi (Prime Minister Netanyahu) led Israel into an ultra-just war, but with great skill he turned it into a war that many people do not understand its nature, its purpose, and exactly how he intends to end it,” Avi Issacharov, a veteran Israeli journalist and creator of the Netflix series “Fauda,” wrote in Yediot Aharonot newspaper.
“Classic Bibi – don’t focus on the goal, declare victory.”
The decline in confidence in the war has been exacerbated by a series of domestic moves that have stoked discord and tested the limits of wartime solidarity.
Over the weekend, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition passed a controversial 2026 budget that effectively keeps him in power until October, when elections are scheduled. The budget allocates large sums to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox political allies, a key component of his coalition government, while cutting spending on education and health care and raising taxes.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett denounced it as “the most reckless and anti-Zionist budget in the history of the state of Israel.”
Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government is pushing forward with a divisive conscription bill that would strengthen existing military exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men, as the Israeli military publicly admits it has a wartime shortage of 15,000 soldiers. Reservists have shouldered the heavy burden of Israel’s multi-pronged wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and now Iran, and many have served in multiple call-ups lasting hundreds of days over the past two and a half years.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir warned the Cabinet last week that the military risks collapsing without a law forcing ultra-Orthodox service and extending their duty and reserve obligations, Israeli military officials told CNN.
“On the one hand, they fire and reward (draft) evaders, and on the other hand they extend the military service of those who serve,” Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff and an opponent of Prime Minister Netanyahu, wrote in X magazine.
Another law, the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorist attacks, was passed at the insistence of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. Prime Minister Netanyahu supported the bill despite warnings of an international backlash that would accelerate Israel’s diplomatic isolation in Europe and beyond.
Yair Golan, leader of the left-wing Democratic Party, said: “Because of the madness of Prime Minister Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and the extremists, we are rushing towards international sanctions that will damage the economy, science and the entire country.”
And Prime Minister Netanyahu’s personal legal drama continued as well. His allies in Israel and abroad kept his campaign for amnesty in the headlines, despite the news cycle and the war stealing the nation’s attention.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formally requested a pardon from President Isaac Herzog in November, seeking an end to his year-long trial for fraud, bribery and breach of trust.
One of the campaign’s chief champions is US President Donald Trump, who has been actively pushing Herzog to cancel the trial. In his latest intervention, President Trump told Axios on March 5, less than a week after the war began, that Prime Minister Herzog must pardon Prime Minister Netanyahu “today,” branding Netanyahu a “disgrace” and a “villain” for his tardiness. “I don’t want Bibi to think about anything but fighting,” he is quoted as saying.
This was a notable example of a US president rebuking the Israeli president while strongly supporting the country’s prime minister during a war in which both countries were fighting together.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial has already become one of the most controversial in Israeli history, and it is highly unusual for a pardon to be granted before the legal process has concluded.
Israel’s Ministry of Justice later recommended that Herzog oppose the move, citing the lack of a conviction, lack of remorse or admission of guilt. Under these circumstances, court officials said any pardon would likely face significant challenges from the Supreme Court.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly denied that he orchestrated Trump’s intervention, but two Israeli sources with direct knowledge told CNN that he coordinated with his aides. Asked about President Trump’s comments at a press conference in mid-March, he declined to deny it. “Mr. Trump spoke from the heart,” he told reporters. “The President of the United States has the right to say what he thinks.”
