The Gaza war mostly behind him – or perhaps not – Benjamin Netanyahu must soon face a volatile Israeli electorate.
The country will go to the polls by next fall, assuming his thin coalition government can pass a budget by spring.
Israelis are sharply divided over the man who has dominated their country’s politics for 30 years, and who was on watch when Hamas terrorists overran southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Few Israelis are more torn about Bibi than Israeli-Canadians; an estimated 35,000 Canadian citizens live in the Jewish state. For many of them, questions remain about Netanyahu’s wartime leadership, political survival and Israel’s future, reflecting the anxiety and divisions of postwar Israel.
“To say it’s complicated is an understatement,” noted Meir Balofsky, 49, from Ramat Gan, who moved from Toronto 21 years ago.
“Look, yes, we know he’s a great orator, and he knows how to make friends with America, and that’s good, I guess, as a politician.”
But it comes with an asterisk.
“I think he has to go. The brand of Israel has been so tarnished, and he’s the face of it. I think Israel desperately needs a reset again. You can say it’s fair or not. Doesn’t really matter. The reality is that the world opinion of Bibi is that he is a monster, and Israel is now a pariah state. He’s never groomed a successor.”
Ahuva, Balofsky’s wife, added that Netanyahu, “has reached a point in his career where he doesn’t trust anyone else’s ability to do what he can do, and so in his mind, he’s the only suitable leader for the country. And the ends justify the means; he can do anything that he needs to do to stay in power for the good of the country. I think that’s a little bit of a scary place to be for a leader, because I do think he’s still the better candidate from the options on the table, but that doesn’t mean he’s a great candidate anymore.”
Israel’s longest serving prime minister, Netanyahu was first elected in 1996, then returned to power 2009, 2013, 2015 and 2022, where by the latest possible election date of Oct. 27, 2026, he will have served some 7,000 days – or 19 years.
Ben Waxman, 64, a tech writer in Ariel, is not a fan of the prime minister but said he has “mixed feelings.”
“He has some great aspects to him. Netanyahu is a true Zionist in every sense of the word. He is able to decide what are his priorities and what aren’t. That means that things that aren’t his priority he will sell to the highest bidder,” he said.
One example, Waxman said, is that Netanyahu “couldn’t care less” about “religion and state issues,” and caters too often to the religious parties for votes.
“There is a certain advantage to that approach, in that Netanyahu stays focused. On the other hand, for concerned citizens, it can be infuriating that he has no principles in these areas. He is extremely intelligent, well-read and able to understand how to navigate difficult waters. On the other hand, once he has decided something, nothing will change his mind.”
One of Waxman’s biggest criticisms of Netanyahu over the last two years was “his absolute refusal to speak to the country via the press.”
Netanyahu has also faced a long-running trial on corruption charges; on Sunday, Netanyahu asked Israel’s president to pardon him, even as he denies any wrongdoing: “An immediate conclusion of the trial would greatly help to lower the flames and promote the broad reconciliation that our country so desperately needs,” Netanyahu said in a videotaped statement.
Shai Reef, a 30-year-old former Torontonian who has lived in Israel for three years, says Netanyahu “has many flaws,” but Reef thinks he is “probably the best leader Israel can hope for right now.”
He added: “There’s no other political leader close to the prime minister’s office with both an ideological compass and the ability to navigate the geopolitical landscape.” That includes being able to try “to resist Washington’s agenda for our region.”
Reef is less fond of Bibi’s economic policies and what he describes as “rhetoric” about “Judeo-Christian values, or ‘civilization versus barbarism,’” which Reef said “sounds very colonialist.”
Sahar Silverman, 27, who moved from Toronto to Jerusalem on Oct. 7, 2024 – a year after the Hamas-led attacks – said Netanyahu was “the best option we have right now.”
She cited his “great powers as a leader” but who has caved to “external pressures” from the United States.
“He needs to start making decisions independent of what he thinks the world, or Trump wants, because otherwise we will just continue the same cycle,” meaning that Israel’s enemies benefit from global pressure. An example she gave was of the Gilad Shalit deal in 2011, where the Israeli soldier held hostage by Hamas was traded for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
“As long as he keeps walking the line of appeasement, we will never have true peace. It’s time to start making decisions based on what the country needs, and not what the rest of the world demands from us.”
This very sentiment was expressed by one prominent non-Canadian, member of Knesset Amit Halevi, who made it clear he wasn’t happy with the White House-led negotiated Gaza agreement signed in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Oct. 9.
“Was Israel pressured by Trump, forced to take what’s happening now in Gaza, with Qatar, Turkey? No doubt about it,” the member of the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defence committee told the National Post in a meeting facilitated by the Toronto-based Exigent Foundation.
Halevi, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, emphatically added he was “absolutely opposed” to the ceasefire deal.
“So what do you think should be done? What every nation does in a war. Victory. To fight and to win,” he said.
The problem, he intimated, was that Donald Trump has it wrong believing that Russia and China are the most dangerous enemies of the West, rather than “radical neo-Marxist progressive forces” and “radical Islam.”
Max Lightstone, a Torontonian who now lives in Jerusalem, said Bibi’s priorities are to keep himself in power, and “out of prison.”
The 31-year-old engineer continued: “His ministers are the open subject of ridicule, with his transportation minister so out of touch with the citizenry, it’s ridiculous. He has failed on both security and diplomatic fronts, bringing Israel to the lowest level of safety and PR. He fires his only competent staff, because his wife doesn’t like them. He’s secular, but throws the secular sector under the bus to appease the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox).”
Jack Benaim, 44, a Torontonian who lived in Tel Aviv, said that Netanyahu “somehow manages to evade responsibility.”
He criticized the prime minister for never having visited Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, the grassroots central site for gathering, protest and memorial for Gaza hostages and their families.
“Instead he politicized them, attacked families, when the last group of hostages were finally released. It was Trump that delivered them. I still can’t find one of those families or hostages who thanked him. How can it be?”
Benaim also holds the prime minister accountable for public divisions in the Jewish state, before and after October 7.
“He is a walking conflict of interest, who ripped the social fabric of Israeli society to the point that every institution in the state, and most notably the Israel Defense Forces and Israel Air Force, were compromised prior to October 7, 2023,” he asserted.
“It’s time for Israel to turn the page from Bibi Netanyahu, and October 7.”
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