Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits an area destroyed by an Iranian ballistic missile in Dimona, Israel — leaving more than 50 wounded — on March 22. Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

Columnist Dan Perry March 23, 2026

Much of Israeli society is living with a profound cognitive dissonance, one that few articulate openly and many would rather not confront.

On one hand, there is a broad and deeply felt desire to see the jihadist Iranian regime weakened or deposed. On the other, there is a pervasive fear that any success on that front will redound to the political benefit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A boost significant enough to keep Netanyahu in power would prolong a domestic trajectory that many Israelis consider to be existentially dangerous. Within my own circles, I have seen a growing conviction that this trajectory poses such a profound threat to the country’s ability to survive that fears about it should dwarf fears of any external foe — including Iran.

The idea is that the entrenchment of Netanyahu’s right-religious bloc challenges the liberal-democratic foundations of the state in a way that is for many people foundational. As a consequence, should it truly and irreversibly prevail, many people expect that they or their children will leave the country.

A popular war

To be clear: most Israelis do support the war. The Iranian regime has posed a threat for decades. Its stated hatred for Israel, its sponsorship of armed proxies devoted to harassing the Jewish state, and its nuclear program have defined Israel’s strategic environment for decades.

Even if the regime does not fall, the consensus position in Israel holds that hitting it carries real value. Setting an enemy regime back is worthwhile; so is creating space for the Iranian people to overthrow their oppressors — although no such domestic movement has manifested since the onset of war.

That consensus creates a willingness to sacrifice. But within Israel’s productive classes — the several million people responsible for the technological miracle known collectively as Start-Up Nation — there is a growing fear that some of the sacrifices to which this war might lead may prove to be too dear.

History offers examples of leaders who converted battlefield achievements into electoral advantage, reshaping their nations in the process. If Netanyahu, who is facing elections this year, succeeds in doing the same, the consequences for Israel could be severe.

Netanyahu’s efforts to establish an authoritarian regime might move forward; his pandering to the Haredim, whose rapid growth risks creating a devastating demographic crisis, would continue; and any prospect for a lasting future peace with the Palestinians would fade away. Emboldened by once more scraping out an electoral victory, the Netanyahu coalition, which depends on the messianic settler lobby, would keep expanding settlements in the West Bank. It might succeed in making the attachment of that territory to Israel irreversible.

Without offering the millions of Palestinians who live in the West Bank citizenship, charges of apartheid, including from liberal Israeli Jews, will grow. Israel will become a non-democratic and totally binational state at permanent war with itself.

Is potentially sacrificing the country’s democracy worth it to defeat — or temporarily hamstring — a bitter foe?

A looming mass departure

For many Israelis, the answer will be no. Although this prospect is heartbreaking, it is being seriously discussed as something close to an inevitability if Netanyahu spins this war into a renewed grasp on power.

The good news: Right now, the Netanyahu coalition is significantly behind in the polls. That’s true even though he can already, in a way, claim success: even if the war ends now, Iran’s regime will have been degraded and humiliated, its military power and nuclear program set back considerably.

Israeli public opinion has defied easy assumptions. The current polls have remained strikingly stable since before the war, despite Israel’s remarkable military successes. This stability hints at a public capable of distinguishing between the campaign in Iran and the desirability of the country’s current path.

This duality offers a way out of the current bind. It allows Israelis to support efforts that genuinely enhance national security without conceding the domestic future.

How does a country survive?

I hope that continuing skepticism about Netanyahu suggests that Israelis see a deeper principle at stake in these elections: the sense that the country’s worth lies not only in its survival, but also in its nature.

There is a perhaps useful analogy from recent history. Netanyahu has long admired Winston Churchill and frequently invokes him in his speeches. He celebrates how Churchill stood uncompromising before external threats. Indeed, Churchill won admiration for his style, and gets much credit for the Allies’ victory in the war against Nazi Germany.

Yet soon after the war’s end he was unceremoniously turfed out by British voters. They understood that their post-war domestic concerns required something a little different. More blood, toil, sweat and tears wouldn’t cut it.

If Netanyahu wishes to be the Israeli Churchill, then he may get that wish — just not quite in the manner he’d hoped. Democracies are shaped by choices, and sometimes those choices become a test of maturity. Israel’s voters are about to show us whether, when it comes to Netanyahu, they’re really ready to grow up.

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