As Benjamin Netanyahu campaigns for the upcoming October 27 polls, supporters revere him as “King Bibi,” while opponents condemn him as a leader defined by corruption scandals and severe security failures. Yet across the political spectrum, there is widespread agreement that Israel’s longest-serving prime minister has fundamentally reshaped the country’s institutions, politics, and social fabric during a decades-long career defined by a steady rightward shift.
Born in 1949, Netanyahu burst onto Israel’s central political stage in the early 1990s by capitalizing on public anger against potential peace agreements with Syria and the Palestinians. His populist rallies during that era drew fierce condemnation from political leaders who accused him of fueling the hostile rhetoric that culminated in the 1995 assassination of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an ultranationalist Israeli. Rabin was actively leading negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization at the time. Rallies led by Netanyahu featured demonstrators depicting Rabin in a Nazi SS uniform, holding signs portraying him in a gun’s crosshairs, and chanting “traitor.” While Netanyahu has consistently denied any personal responsibility for the killing, former security officials reported warning him prior to the assassination and asking him to dial down his rhetoric, only to be refused.
By 1996, Netanyahu’s populist approach propelled him to electoral victory, making him Israel’s youngest prime minister. His transactional leadership style elevated extreme-right and religious factions that remain indispensable components of his current right-wing coalition. Under his tenure, religious courts gained expanded jurisdiction over civil and business disputes, while state institutions increasingly accommodated religious agendas and funneled record financial backing to ultra-Orthodox educational networks.
Netanyahu also embedded his political ideology directly into Israeli law, significantly altering the state’s identity and the official status of Palestinian citizens. In 2018, the Knesset passed the Nation-State Basic Law, declaring Israel to be the exclusive nation-state of the Jewish people and establishing the advancement of illegal settlements as a national priority. Human rights organizations petitioned the High Court to block the legislation, but the petition was dismissed. International rights groups frequently cite this law and other measures as evidence of systematic discrimination and apartheid-like policies toward Palestinians.
Throughout his 19 on-and-off years in power, Netanyahu systematically re-engineered state security structures by appointing political loyalists and allies to senior posts while clashing with security chiefs he perceived as antagonistic. Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks that touched off the ongoing war in Gaza, Netanyahu sought to deflect responsibility onto the security establishment. That deflection prompted Ronen Bar, who headed the Shin Bet security agency in 2023, to file a defamation lawsuit against the prime minister.
Another major institutional battlefield involved the Israeli judiciary, which is currently reviewing three separate corruption cases filed against Netanyahu in 2019 that could carry prison time if he is convicted. Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing. Under his leadership, the Knesset altered the composition of the Judicial Selection Committee to secure greater political influence for the governing coalition. Netanyahu defended the changes as necessary judicial reforms to curb what he termed a “judicial dictatorship” over elected officials. Conversely, opponents condemned the push as a political coup designed to dismantle the independence of the High Court and subordinate ministerial legal advisers to political control.
As part of his broader efforts to weaken independent oversight, Netanyahu made repeated attempts to dismiss the attorney general, though those efforts ultimately failed. However, he successfully ousted the military’s advocate general after the official leaked video footage showing Israeli soldiers gang-raping a Palestinian detainee, a case in which the accused soldiers were subsequently released and cleared of charges.
Netanyahu remains a polarizing figure as the October 27 election approaches. Wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in Gaza, he has pledged to his supporters that he will complete his overhaul of judicial review and press ahead with controversial policies. While his allies credit him with unmatched political achievements, opponents argue that undoing the deep-seated legal, institutional, and social transformations of his era will present an immense challenge for the country.
