‘It’s only Netanyahu we don’t like’ — New leadership in Israel will test that claim
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog has tasked Gadi Eisenkot with forming a new government coalition. It’s far from clear that he will be able to do so — see the complications he faces in our page 1 story. We say this not to disparage Eisenkot. Had Herzog tasked Benjamin Netanyahu with forming a government, it would be equally uncertain that he could do so.
But say that Eisenkot succeeds. The line that countless political voices have come to embrace around the country is that it’s only “Netanyahu” or “the current government in Israel” they don’t like. On the basis of that purportedly pro-Israel take, Israel’s conduct of war is stigmatized, often as genocide, and the sale or gift of American weapons for Israel is voted down.
The honesty of the “it’s only Netanyahu” argument will be tested under an Eisenkot-led government. That’s because Israel is a different country after Oct. 7. Eisenkot, no less than Netanyahu (and the other candidates for prime minister in Israel’s recent election), is different. No one in Israel is any longer under the illusion that anything Israel does will bring Hamas to the peace table. Vituallly no one in Israel thinks anything different about the Palestinian Authority.
There is virtually no more “peace camp” in Israel, given the atrocities of Oct. 7 and the widespread support for them, not only in Hamas, but in the PA.
Put another way: PR is far less of a concern for Israel — and for Israel’s leadership on any side of its political spectrum — than Israel’s safety. In Israel, the idea that peace can be made in Gaza with Hamas in charge there is dead. The idea that anything but force can deal with Hamas is dead.
Could Eisenkot communicate better than Netanyahu? Maybe. But at the end of the day it is Israeli policy that will color the way people look at Israel. It won’t change much under Eisenkot. Under an Eisenkot government, those who say, “we love Israel but hate Netanyahu,” will be compelled either to confess to their actual anti-Israel animus or to take a more mature, realistic look at the security conditions that Hamas, the PA and Iran have imposed on Israel.
Those who really are pro-Israel will be compelled to analyze the “genocide” claim on the basis of actual IDF tactics under Hamas-created, impossible military options. It won’t help just to blame “the current government in Israel” because the new government in Israel — composed of very different political parties than those in Netanyahu’s government — will govern much like Netanyahu.
Take James Talarico, Texas’ US Senator-elect. He says, “I believe that Israel, like any nation, has a right to defend its people. But I don’t believe that Benjamin Netanyahu has a right to wage war against civilians or use collective punishment or restrict aid to civilians.”
It’s not “Netanyahu” who is waging war, it’s thousands of Israelis reservists volunteering for their country. It’s a war against Hamas, not civilians. The restriction of aid is contradicted by the thousands of trucks of aid Israel has allowed into Gaza. If Eisenkot becomes prime minister, will Talarico and acknowledge all this?
The real dividing line is this: Between those like Mamdani and Denver’s Melat Kiros who — it remains chilling to write even as it’s repeated ad nauseum — prefer Israel to be destroyed or de-Judaized, and between those who soberly asses Israel’s actual security needs, given its implacable enemies.
© IJN 2026
