The Netanyahu Phenomenon - Why Do His Followers Remain Loyal?
Sara Dobner
For over a decade, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, has demonstrated something that is difficult to explain through conventional political analysis: an extraordinary ability to retain the loyalty of his supporters despite profound failures under his leadership. He has been described as Israel’s most successful politician, its most powerful prime minister, its greatest political survivor and, by his fiercest critics, the leader of a personality cult.
Millions of Israelis have voted for Netanyahu because they genuinely share his political worldview. They believe Israel must be exceptionally strong, distrust the Palestinian leadership, fear Iran, oppose territorial concessions and regard the Israeli left as dangerously naïve about Israel’s enemies. These are legitimate political positions.
The more puzzling phenomenon is not why people voted for Netanyahu, but why their personal loyalty to him remains so resilient even when events appear to contradict the image of him as Israel’s indispensable protector.
What does Netanyahu offer his followers beyond policy? Why can evidence that might seriously damage another politician sometimes strengthen his supporters’ determination to defend him? Perhaps the answer lies in something deeper than politics. Netanyahu offers not only policies, but psychological security.
His rhetoric repeatedly provides five powerful psychological rewards: protection, identity, certainty, vindication and collective struggle. To reinforce these bonds, he has also used the divisions within Israeli society with remarkable effectiveness, creating a powerful distinction between “us” and “them.”
Understanding these psychological dynamics may help explain not only Netanyahu’s extraordinary political resilience, but why some of his most devoted followers remain loyal even when the facts appear increasingly difficult to reconcile with the image, they hold of him.
Protection: “The responsibility is mine”
Netanyahu’s most powerful political appeal has always been security, not merely security as a policy, but security as an emotional promise. Israelis live with a profound awareness of vulnerability. The Holocaust, wars, terrorism, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and repeated attacks have created a society in which physical security is not an abstract political issue. It is existential.
Netanyahu has understood this exceptionally well. He has built much of his political persona around the image of an experienced leader who recognizes dangers others underestimate, understands the fears of his people and, above all, can protect them.
Once a leader becomes psychologically associated with protection, replacing him can itself feel dangerous, even when there are legitimate reasons to question his performance.
For example, in 2014, during Operation Protective Edge, Netanyahu told Israelis: “The ultimate responsibility for your security and peace is mine, as Prime Minister.” The statement is revealing. This almost parental expression creates a relationship in which the frightened citizen looks to the leader to assume responsibility and provide protection.
The psychological appeal is powerful. The political message is no longer simply: Vote for my security policies. It becomes: Trust me with your security. That distinction is central to understanding Netanyahu’s personal following. Security becomes identified not with a policy or a government, but with the person of Netanyahu himself.
That distinction is central to understanding Netanyahu's personal following, as security becomes identified with the person, not his actions. The question his followers then ask is not “Has Netanyahu made mistakes?” but “Who will protect us if not Bibi?”
That is a critical psychological pillar of Bibism, the intensely personal political loyalty to Netanyahu.
Identity: “We are Jews, we are Israelis, we are strong”
Netanyahu offers something deeper than policy: identity. His rhetoric frequently blurs the distinction between himself, his supporters and the nation. In October 2025, addressing the Knesset, he concluded: “We are Jews, we are Israelis, we are strong, and with God’s help, we are winning.” Netanyahu is not speaking simply as an individual politician defending a particular government. He speaks as part of a collective “we” Jews, Israelis, the strong and the victorious.
He used similar language in a March 19, 2025, post: “In America and in Israel, when a strong right-wing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will. They won’t win in either place! We stand strong together.”
This framing can make opposition to Netanyahu appear, to his supporters, not simply as legitimate political disagreement but as opposition to the collective, the country and its security. It also taps into longstanding resentment toward Israel’s traditional elites, resentment rooted in the belief that these elites have looked down on the values, culture and political choices of other parts of Israeli society.
Netanyahu has been remarkably effective at turning that resentment into solidarity with himself. The political conflict, therefore, shifts from a contest between “left” and “right” toward an “us versus them” struggle. And once politics becomes an identity conflict, evidence becomes far less powerful.
Ironically, Netanyahu himself comes from the upper echelons of Israeli society. Yet his followers often overlook his blunders, broken promises, corruption and repeated departures from the truth. Instead, many see him as a champion of their culture and traditional Jewish way of life and, more importantly, as someone who gives them the psychological strength to stand up to the Ashkenazi elite that Netanyahu himself famously criticized. In 1997, he was heard saying that they had “forgotten what it means to be Jewish.”
The irony is striking. A wealthy, secular Ashkenazi Jew has succeeded in becoming, for many of his followers, a powerful symbol of traditional Jewish identity and a vehicle for their resentment toward the very establishment from which he himself emerged. This is not simply political allegiance. It is a powerful psychological identification; they see in Netanyahu someone who represents them, even when his own background bears little resemblance to their lives.
Certainty: “I am taking the reins”
There is another characteristic that makes Netanyahu particularly effective: his extraordinary projection of certainty. In July 2026, reflecting on the change in Israel’s security doctrine following October 7, Netanyahu said: “I am taking the reins, and I am changing it.” He contrasted his approach with what he described as the previous policy of containment, declaring that Israel was moving toward “initiative, action, and attack.” The language is unmistakably that of a strong leader taking control when others have failed.
This satisfies an important psychological need: the reduction of uncertainty. People dislike uncertainty, particularly when the stakes feel existential. They want someone who appears to understand what is happening, knows what must be done and is confident enough to act.
Netanyahu rarely presents himself as uncertain or hesitant. In 2009, for example, he declared: “We won’t stop the IDF, we’ll complete the task. We’ll topple the regime of Hamas terror, we’ll restore security to the residents of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Sderot, Be’er Sheva, and Yavne. We’ll restore security to all the inhabitants of Israel.”
He consistently presents himself as the person who sees what others fail to see and possesses the experience and determination to provide the solution. His political appeal, therefore, cannot be understood solely through his policies. He offers something more fundamental: psychological certainty.
His implicit message is that you do not need to understand everything or navigate every uncertainty yourself as Bibi understands what is happening. Bibi knows what needs to be done.
This is one reason charismatic leaders can become indispensable to followers. They reduce the burden of uncertainty. A leader who says “I don't know” may be intellectually honest but psychologically unsatisfying. A leader who projects confidence in his judgment, certainty and ability to act offers emotional relief and reassurance that someone is in control.
And when the world feels dangerous and unpredictable, that feeling can be extraordinarily powerful.
Vindication: “History will prove me right”
Perhaps the most powerful mechanism sustaining Netanyahu’s following is his ability to turn criticism into evidence of his courage and conviction.
In 2021, Netanyahu told Israelis: “The test of leadership requires that the right decisions be made even when they are not understood at any given moment and their justification becomes clear later on.” It is a remarkably effective political formulation because it creates a protective shield around the leader. If events appear to prove him right, he was right. If they appear to prove him wrong, perhaps history simply has not caught up with him.
There is a revealing example from Netanyahu’s testimony before the U.S. Congress in September 2002, when he predicted that removing Saddam Hussein would have “enormous positive reverberations” throughout the region. He went on to suggest that young people in neighbouring Iran would conclude that the era of despots was coming to an end and that “a new age” was beginning.
Such predictions illustrate the power of retrospective vindication as a political strategy. When a leader claims that history will ultimately prove him right, contradictory evidence can be dismissed as temporary, misunderstood or simply premature. The burden of proof is no longer entirely on the leader to demonstrate that he was right; reality itself is given the task of eventually catching up with him.
Criticism, therefore, loses much of its power. The leader is not wrong; he is simply waiting for history to prove him right.
Netanyahu has used this rhetorical posture repeatedly. In 2024, defending decisions concerning Israel’s security, he told the Knesset that his decisions were vital and added: “Reality has already proved this, and history will prove it all the more.” When followers are persuaded that a leader’s decisions should not be judged by their immediate consequences because history will ultimately vindicate him, the leader becomes extraordinarily difficult to disprove. This is one of the dynamics that can contribute to a personality cult, as the leader’s judgment is elevated above ordinary political accountability, while evidence that contradicts him can be reinterpreted as temporary or incomplete.
The result is a remarkably resilient form of loyalty. If the leader is right, he is right. If he appears to be wrong, his followers are encouraged to believe that it is simply too early to know.
Collective struggle: “No one will stop us”
The fifth psychological element is the sense of a permanent external threat. Iran has occupied a central place in Netanyahu’s political narrative for decades, while Hamas, Hezbollah and other enemies have reinforced the perception that Israel is surrounded by hostile forces.
This mechanism is particularly powerful because the threats are real. Netanyahu does not need to invent an enemy. Israel genuinely faces serious security threats. But there is an important psychological difference between warning citizens about dangerous enemies and presenting uncompromising strength as the only reliable means of protecting them.
In January 2024, as the Gaza war continued, Netanyahu declared: “No one will stop us, not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anyone else.” The language of defiance, strength and collective struggle positions Netanyahu as the leader standing between his people and a hostile world.
This creates another powerful psychological loop. The more Netanyahu’s opponents challenge him, the easier it can become for his supporters to see those attacks as evidence that he is fighting forces that threaten Israel. International condemnation can be interpreted as proof that he is standing up for Israel rather than as a reason to reconsider his policies. Domestic opposition can similarly be portrayed as resistance from elites or political forces that do not understand the dangers Israel faces.
The enemy, in other words, reinforces the leader’s role as protector. And when the country is perceived as being under constant threat, the question can subtly shift from “Is Netanyahu making the right decisions?” to “Can we afford to weaken the person who is protecting us?”
That is a powerful psychological shift. It transforms political support into something closer to dependence: as long as the threat remains, the protector remains indispensable.
Using Division as a Facilitator
As we have seen throughout this article, Netanyahu has succeeded in creating an image of himself as larger than life—an exceptional leader whose judgment and experience are uniquely essential to Israel’s survival. Once that image becomes deeply rooted, facts that contradict it can be dismissed, reinterpreted or attributed to circumstances beyond his control.
A crucial element of this success is Netanyahu’s ability to draw a sharp line between “us” and “them.” By framing political disagreements as a struggle between opposing groups rather than competing ideas, he transforms support for himself into a form of group loyalty. Once that happens, defending Bibi can feel less like defending a politician and more like defending one’s own identity, values and community.
Netanyahu did not invent political polarization in Israel. Israeli society has long contained profound ideological, religious, ethnic and social divisions. The important question is what a political leader does with those divisions, and whether he seeks to bridge them or use them to strengthen his political base.
Over the years, Netanyahu has repeatedly portrayed political opponents not simply as people with whom he disagrees, but as forces whose actions could endanger Israel. During the massive protests against his government’s judicial overhaul in 2023, for example, the political debate increasingly became framed in terms of national security, loyalty and the danger posed by the opposing camp.
Since October 7, this dynamic has intensified. Political opponents have increasingly been portrayed by some of Netanyahu’s supporters as not merely misguided, but as posing a threat to the country itself. This has contributed to the spread of conspiracy theories and accusations that some of his opponents were complicit in or even cooperated with Hamas in connection with the October 7 massacre.
Once political opponents are perceived as an existential threat rather than legitimate participants in a democratic debate, compromise becomes far more difficult. Disagreement is no longer simply disagreement. It becomes disloyalty.
And when political loyalty becomes intertwined with identity and belonging, defending the leader can become a way of defending one’s own side. The political question is no longer simply, “Is this leader right?” It becomes, “Whose side are you on?” That is the point at which polarization becomes a powerful facilitator of personal loyalty.
Academic research examining Netanyahu's responses to Israeli protests from 2011 through 2023 has described his approach as involving a “divide-and-rule” strategy, including attempts to portray opposing groups as a distinct “them” and weaken their cohesion.
The significance is not simply that Netanyahu attacks his political opponents. It is the turning of political disagreement into a question of loyalty and belonging. His opponents are not just wrong. They are naïve, dangerous, “the left,” privileged, elites. They become people who are supposedly weakening the country from within.
When disagreement becomes a question of loyalty, compromise with other parts of society becomes increasingly difficult. In a deeply polarized society, citizens stop arguing primarily about policies and begin arguing about which side you are on. Once politics becomes tribal, compromise can begin to look like betrayal. And when opponents are portrayed as “Israel-haters,” even serious weaknesses or failures on the part of the leader can be tolerated because rejecting him may appear more dangerous than defending him. Netanyahu’s supporters may acknowledge that he has problems or has made mistakes, yet still find it difficult to consider the alternative. The question becomes not whether Netanyahu is perfect, but whether anyone else can be trusted to protect Israel.
The leader then becomes the protector not only against external enemies, but against perceived internal enemies as well. That is an extraordinarily powerful political position.
Through his political abilities, Netanyahu has created a relationship with his followers in which he increasingly embodies security, strength and national identity. But his political success cannot be separated from the personal characteristics that have enabled him to sustain this relationship over so many years.
His exceptional self-confidence, rhetorical ability, emotional discipline, political adaptability and powerful sense of historical destiny have all contributed to his remarkable political resilience. He has an unusual ability to project authority, absorb criticism, redefine setbacks and maintain the conviction that he is uniquely capable of leading Israel through its most dangerous moments.
Together, these qualities have helped transform political support into something more personal: a belief among some followers that Netanyahu is not simply the leader they prefer, but the leader they need.
The Loyalty Trap
Netanyahu’s followers remarkably loyal, in spite of his enormous failures, corruption allegations and repeated departures from the truth because admitting that Netanyahu failed would create a profound problem. For a devoted follower, admitting that Netanyahu has failed would not be simply an admission that a politician made mistakes. It can mean confronting something far more painful, that the person they trusted to protect them did not protect them.
After years of emotional investment in Netanyahu, acknowledging that he has failed can carry a significant psychological cost. Psychology describes one mechanism that can help explain this phenomenon as cognitive dissonance: when reality conflicts with a deeply held belief, people do not necessarily abandon the belief. Instead, they may reinterpret the reality in ways that allow the belief to survive.
Educated and sophisticated people are not immune to these mechanisms. Political attachment can become deeply intertwined with identity, fear, belonging, confirmation bias, motivated reasoning and cognitive dissonance. The more a political leader becomes part of a person’s understanding of who they are and what their country represents, the harder it can become to separate loyalty to the leader from loyalty to oneself.
When political identity becomes intertwined with national or social identity, changing political allegiance can feel like betraying oneself. And after publicly defending a leader for years, admitting that the leader was fundamentally wrong can carry an additional psychological cost. It means not only reconsidering the leader but reconsidering one’s own judgment. For some of his most devoted supporters, letting go of Netanyahu can mean letting go of a part of the identity, security and certainty that he has come to represent.
For years, Israelis have been told that the country’s survival depends on one exceptionally experienced politician. Yet Netanyahu’s hold on the Israeli public is no longer as strong as it once was. Since the judicial overhaul and the profound failures surrounding October 7, his personal standing has declined in a number of public-opinion polls. In June and July 2026, for example, polls found that a majority of Israelis did not want him to remain prime minister, while only about one-third said he was the best candidate for the job. More importantly for the argument of this article, some Israelis who once saw Netanyahu as indispensable appear to have been able to separate their loyalty to Israel and the right from loyalty to Netanyahu himself. They have begun to loosen the psychological grip of “Only Bibi.”
The October 27 elections therefore present Israelis with more fundamental questions about the kind of leadership they want for the country’s future: whether Israel will have a leader who can unite Israelis without demanding uniformity; who can speak to the entire country, not only to those who agree with him; who can acknowledge mistakes without blaming everybody else; who listens to the professionals; who understands that political opponents are not the enemy; and, above all, who understands that no individual should be indispensable to a democracy.
