{"id":92094,"date":"2026-04-30T22:43:04","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T22:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/berkowitz-israels-politics-now-defined-by-one-question-do-you-support-netanyahu\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T22:43:04","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T22:43:04","slug":"berkowitz-israels-politics-now-defined-by-one-question-do-you-support-netanyahu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/berkowitz-israels-politics-now-defined-by-one-question-do-you-support-netanyahu\/","title":{"rendered":"Berkowitz: Israel’s Politics Now Defined by One Question\u2014Do You Support Netanyahu?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hoover Institution scholar Peter Berkowitz, author of “Explaining Israel,”<\/a> gave the RCP Podcast on Thursday an update on politics inside Israel about six months out from their next election. “Polls suggest that Netanyahu is in trouble, but polls remain inconclusive,” Berkowitz said. “This election, like the previous five elections held between 2019 and 2022, will be bitterly fought. The last election was decided by 30,000 votes-in a country of 10 million.” He said Israeli politics has largely collapsed into support for or opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu personally, and that policy toward Iran would change little if he were replaced by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett-the leader of a new, center-right coalition. Both candidates are right-wing Zionists with strong ties to the U.S. and strongly oppose a nuclear Iran. “The country really is united around the imperative of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” he said. “None of their extraordinary military achievements have healed the harsh political divide-where you’re no longer defined by right and left, but by whether you support Netanyahu or oppose him,” he said. “If you’re opposed to him, you’re adamantly opposed to him. And so that bitterness amid war remains in Israel.” “We only learned a few days ago that Netanyahu, age 76, underwent radiation treatment for prostate cancer-so he might see this as a time to step down,” Berkowitz said. “By the way, the biggest legal reform Israel needs is to provide speedy trials. The investigation of Netanyahu began in 2016. An indictment was issued in 2019. The trial began in 2020 or 2021. It is absurd. The country has been rent by this controversy for a decade.” “There is renewed talk by the president of Israel about the possibility of Netanyahu entering into a deal with the government over the long-standing charges against him of fraud, bribery, and breach of the public trust,” he said. “I only see that happening if Netanyahu can plausibly say to the Israeli people that Iran has been defeated and has renounced its nuclear program. He was elected in 2009 to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.” “If Naftali Bennett ascended to the prime ministership, Israel’s orientation toward the Iran challenge, in my judgment, would change in no discernible way,” he said. “If his coalition assumed power, you would still have an Israeli prime minister who is a right-winger and a Zionist, intensely pro-American, and speaks fluent English.” “I don’t think, actually, we would see a substantial change in the relationship between Israel and the United States,” Berkowitz said.
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Hoover Institution scholar Peter Berkowitz, author of “Explaining Israel,” gave the RCP Podcast on Thursday an update on politics inside Israel about six months out from their next election. “Polls suggest that Netanyahu is in trouble, but polls remain inconclusive,” Berkowitz said. “This election, like the previous five elections held between 2019 and 2022, will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[24234,14400,10581,10582,7829,28948,2720],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92094"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}