Israelis are finally revolting against Netanyahu — for agreeing to the U.S. ceasefire with Iran

“Donald, you wimped out like a duck,” wrote Israeli coalition member and chair of the National Security Committee, Zvika Fogel, on X earlier this week, lambasting U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of a two-week halt to the war on Iran. Although Fogel is aligned with the far-right Jewish Power Party, headed by hardline National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, his position reflects a near-consensus across the Israeli political spectrum. That consensus is: give war a chance.

It was probably inconvenient for a politician aligned with Israel’s ruling coalition to insult the American President so stridently (the post has since been deleted), but opposition leader Yair Lapid didn’t hold back when heaping the blame on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu, Lapid said on Wednesday, “will try to sell to you that the battle in Iran was a success” — but that would be “a total lie.” The Israeli public had backed the war with a rare “wall-to-wall” consensus, the opposition leader said. Yet after six weeks, “it turned out that Netanyahu can’t win any battle.” 

Lapid kept up his attack on Thursday, after reports emerged that Netanyahu had asked the military to “portray the war achievements better,” stating that Netanyahu was rattled not because Lapid’s criticism was wrong, but because Netanyahu had “failed.”

Over on the left of the Zionist political spectrum was Yair Golan, head of the Democrats party, tweeting out that Netanyahu had only “strengthened” the “axis of evil” instead of overthrowing the Iranian government. What’s worse, Golan said, was that “Iran emerged from it with strategic superiority,” and that Netanyahu “has proven that he is a danger to the security of Israel and is unfit to remain in leadership one more day.”

Golan also had a few choice words for Netanyahu’s reported request for the military to speak of the war more positively, asserting that despite the “excellent” achievements of the Israeli army, “they will not compensate for the government’s shameful failure to turn them into security for Israel.”

Golan added that the “Netanyahu-Smotrich-Deri government” has thrown the army’s “achievements” straight into the trash heap, with Trump “closing a deal with the Iranians right over Netanyahu’s head.”

Golan’s comments dovetail with those of his far-right counterpart, Zvika Fogel, in his now-deleted post. The political messaging is the same across the board: Netanyahu didn’t stand up to Trump or Iran. But while Donald is a duck, Netanyahu is a chicken. On this, the Democrats and Jewish Power converge. 

With this kind of thinking, it’s not hard to understand how Lebanon has experienced one of its deadliest days in recent history, with about 300 killed under Israel’s massive and indiscriminate bombing campaign the morning after the ceasefire took effect. Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, who mediated the deal, stated that the terms of the ceasefire would also include Israel’s war on Lebanon, but Israel decided to contest the statement with fire. 

The push from Israel across the political spectrum is to sustain the momentum of war. And because Israel reads Lebanon as an Iranian proxy, the country is now serving as a proxy for Israel’s rage. That is what is underlying the all-out indiscriminate assault that has left entire neighborhood blocks in Beirut in ruins. 

Trump faces his own political and economic pressures to stabilize tensions with Iran, but Israelis will have none of it. In this, the vast majority of them want the total victory they have never been able to achieve. And while Golan may mock Netanyahu’s goals for “total victory” as a “fantasy,” he is, in the end, the same kind of dreamer.

A society of war junkies

It isn’t limited to the Israeli political class. An Israeli poll in early March showed that a whopping 93% of Jewish Israelis supported the war of aggression on Iran. The consensus was just as striking on how long the operation should continue, with 93% of centrist voters saying it should last until all military objectives were achieved (defined as the “elimination of ballistic and nuclear capability”). Those demanding regime change accounted for 49% of respondents, while 44% were satisfied with achieving military goals alone. Among right-wing voters, who make up over two-thirds of the Israeli electorate, support reached 96%, and even among left-wing voters, it stood at 79%.

That being said, most Israelis believed that the war wouldn’t last longer than a month, as shown in a separate poll by the Israeli Democracy Institute conducted on March 12. When the war surpassed the one-month mark, Jewish Israeli support dipped, but only to 78%. The war fever has not broken — neither in the Zionist political spectrum, nor in the Israeli public at large.

This is not just a Netanyahu problem, although his opponents keep chiding him for being obsessed with “forever wars.” This is an Israel problem. And the reason, to put it simply, is that Israelis are war junkies. The same obsession has served Netanyahu well, helping him to stay in power, because nothing unites Israelis like war.