The sound missiles make when they strike home in the distance is surprisingly dulcet; a soft, almost gentle thud that bears little relation to the damage it makes. It’s hours after the historic US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and the Iranians are retaliating. Yet again, it’s an early morning wake-up call. Yet again, I’m in a Tel Aviv air-raid shelter with Israelis in varying degrees of funk. The shelter is some sort of storage room: peeling yellow and white paint, exposed pipes and the odd hole in the wall. A snapshot of Israeli society sprawls here, waiting for impact.
To my left, in the corner, there’s an old couple — he hunches, she has a Zimmer frame — grumbling quietly to each other. On the floor are some Israeli youths: a tattooed couple in their early twenties. There is a silent middle-aged couple and another huge, hairy man, itching to get out of the shelter.
You can assess a country’s economic health by the state of its air-raid shelters. In Ukraine, they tend to be basic basement rooms. Here in Israel, the fundamental premise is the same — but there is a clear difference. They are better maintained and inspected; there are also more of them. Israel’s superior stock of shelters is a result of the country’s economic power, notwithstanding its far smaller population and largely non-existent natural resources. The Israeli economy has boomed this century, thanks in part to the efforts of the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
When Netanyahu became finance minister in 2003, he claimed that the country was “six weeks away from being Argentina”. Later, he would recall a conversation with his young son as the two stood in Tel Aviv looking at the skyline and comparing it to New York. “We’ll never be like them,” the boy said, to which Netanyahu replied: “Your father’s going to be finance minister. Believe me, we’ll be like them.”
With its grandiosity, its detailing of his implacable belief in his own destiny, and the fact that it’s probably not true, the anecdote is Netanyahu in miniature. But he had a plan — to focus on privatisation and liberalisation — and its impact was immediate. GDP growth surged from 0.2% in 2001 to 4.2% in 2005. By 2020, Israel’s GDP per capita ranked in the global top 20, surpassing both the UK and France.
This speaks to an inescapable fact. For good, and often for ill, “Bibi” gets things done. And this fact is inseparable from the weekend’s strike, the events since October 7, and indeed Israel in the 21st century.
Netanyahu is now a historically consequential figure. Everyone has an opinion on him (usually negative). And if he is going to take his country deeper into war, this time not against a terror group but against a country of 91 million people, he will need his population at least vaguely behind him.
So what do Israelis think? Before the horrors of October 7, Netanyahu’s popularity was already in decline. A Pew Research poll in August 2023 found 52% of Israelis viewed him unfavourably. A July 2023 survey by Israel’s top broadcasters projected his governing coalition would lose its majority.
After the October 7 attack, a poll by Dialog Center revealed 86% of respondents blamed the leadership for the failure. As the war dragged on, Netanyahu’s approval continued to plummet. By April 2024, 58% of Israelis said he should resign immediately. A March 2025 poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found 72.5% believed he should step down, with 48% demanding his immediate resignation. Additionally, 87% said he should take responsibility for the October 7 attack.
In the past week, though, Netanyahu’s coalition has received a boost. A Channel 13 poll shows Likud going from 24 to 27 seats, making it the largest party in the Knesset for the first time since October 7. The same poll shows that Israelis support his strikes on Iran — 75% back the campaign and only 17% are opposed. A separate Israel Democracy Institute survey found that 70% of Israelis support the strikes. Crucially, another poll found that 64% of respondents believe Netanyahu’s strikes are aimed at eliminating Iran’s nuclear threat, rather than being driven by domestic political concerns.
This is key. The Israeli public are not foolish. They know how cynical their prime minister is. As a fellow visitor told me amid the sirens and chaos: “This guy would sell not just his mother, but his children’s mother to stay in power.” If, despite this, the public believes he is doing, with conviction, what many Israeli leaders have talked about but held off from, Bibi may well have turned it all around.
This is partly because the Israeli strike on Iran has boxed in Netanyahu’s political opponents. Straight after Israel’s 13 June attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, Israel’s leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, could only limply say: “Yes, this government needs to be toppled, but not in the midst of an existential fight.” Lapid added: “I think he’s the wrong person to lead the country. But on that” — striking against Iran — “he was right”.
And if he was grudgingly positive then, Lapid was effusive after the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “I congratulate President Trump and the brave American army for being part of a historical change,” he said unctuously. Later, he claimed that the strike had made the world “a safer place”. Lapid knows he cannot break ranks without being seen to be putting politics above the national interest.
Netanyahu and those around him could be forgiven for thinking that the 2026 elections could return him to power yet again. Next year, though, is a long way off. And there is also a caveat in all this: the polls hold, and the opposition is muted, for as long as the military operations succeed. Right now, those most exercised by Israel and US actions are the usual bolus of social media blowhards, bewildered Corbynistas, Islamic Republic stooges and Lincoln’s Inn human rights lawyers. To most Western observers, it is clear that the surgical neutralisation of Iran’s nuclear facilities and its murderous military commanders is, in and of itself, a political and moral good. But what comes next is critical. And it could still all end in disaster.
“The Israeli public are not foolish. They know how cynical their prime minister is.”
And that is driving the Tel Aviv mood. This city is Israel’s liberal enclave. It is here that you will find those who most mistrust and despise Netanyahu. “This was probably inevitable,” says one liberal of the US strikes. “We’re glad it happened, but less confident that what comes now will be easy as what has come before. I support Bibi in this. But after this is all over, he will have to account for everything — and that includes the disaster of October 7. No way can that guy ever be prime minister again.”
But you can never say never with Netanyahu. The vagaries of Israel’s politics are unpredictable. As Joshua Hantman, a British-Israeli political consultant who has worked with politicians from both sides of the aisle, observes: “Polling may show Likud going from 24 to 27 seats. But the question is from where Bibi is getting those seats. In our parliamentary system, whereby leaders rule by coalition, if he takes those seats from other Right-wing parties, which seems the case, it is entirely irrelevant in our electoral system. He needs to take seats from the opposition block. Which he shows no signs of doing.”
Hantman adds: “Israelis understand the existential nature of this threat and support Netanyahu’s decision to finally do something about it. An ideal situation for a majority of Israel is, like Churchill, for Netanyahu to win the war — but lose the election.” But for Netanyahu to become Israel’s Churchill, an idea that most of the country would scoff at, he first has to actually win this war. And for that, he will have to do what is most difficult for him: park his ego and understand the limits of what can and cannot be realistically achieved.
