As Israelis prepared to mark Passover Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week delivered a defiant wartime address replete with biblical references of ancient Jewish triumphs over their enemies.
He likened Israel’s strikes on its enemies as the Ten Plagues that God is believed to have inflicted on Egypt to free the Israelites from slavery.
Israel has “changed the Middle East,” he boasted
Just hours later, Iran unleashed one its heaviest barrages of the conflict, shattering the holiday mood and laying bare the gap between Netanyahu’s victorious rhetoric and the reality on the ground over a month into the US-Israeli war in Iran.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid swiftly countered with a video of his own, mocking Netanyahu’s speech as “arrogant.” Before the war started, Iran was firing ballistic missiles at Israel under the leadership of a supreme leader named Khamenei, Lapid noted. A month later, not much has changed.
“Netanyahu is unable to make a strategic decision. He is simply incapable,” he said.
The exchange exposes the deepening cracks in Israel’s political establishment and public five weeks in, as the optimism and unity the government garnered in the early days of the war begins to fade. Most Israelis still back the campaign, according to multiple pollsters. But public confidence in Israel’s ability to meet its stated objectives in the war is plummeting.
According to a survey by the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), the share of Israelis who believe the Iranian regime will collapse or be significantly weakened by the US-Israeli campaign has fallen from nearly 70% at the outset of the war to 43.5% today. Confidence in Israel’s ability to seriously damage Iran’s nuclear program has slipped from 62% to 48%; expectations of crippling its ballistic missile arsenal have dropped from 73% to 57%. Israelis are near evenly split on whether Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, can be disarmed.
“Bibi (Netanyahu) led Israel into a super-justified war, but with his great skill, he turned it into one whose essence many do not understand, or its purpose, and exactly how he plans to end it”, wrote Avi Issacharoff, a veteran Israeli journalist and the creator of the Netflix series “Fauda,” in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper.
“Classic Bibi – proclaiming victory, instead of focusing on the goals.”
The erosion of confidence in the war has been compounded by a series of domestic moves that are fueling discord and testing the limits of wartime solidarity.
Last weekend, Netanyahu’s coalition passed the controversial 2026 budget that effectively keeps the government in power until October, when elections are scheduled. The budget allocates significant funds toward Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox political allies who are a key component of his coalition, while cutting education and healthcare spending and raising taxes.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett decried it as “the most reckless and anti-Zionist budget in the history of the State of Israel.”
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s government is pushing a divisive conscription bill that would entrench the existing exemption for ultra-Orthodox men from mandatory military service, when the Israeli army publicly acknowledges a shortfall of 15,000 soldiers during wartime. Reservists have significantly borne the burden of Israel’s multi-front war – in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and now Iran – many serving multiple call-ups amounting to hundreds of days in the past two and a half years.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir warned the cabinet last week that the army risks collapse without legislation compelling ultra-Orthodox service and extending mandatory and reserve duty obligations, an Israeli military official told CNN.
“One hand dismisses and rewards the (conscription) evaders, and the other hand extends the service of those who serve,” former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, an opponent of Netanyahu, wrote on X.
Another law, a death-penalty bill for Palestinians convicted of terror attacks, was passed at the insistence of far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir. Netanyahu backed the bill despite warnings of an international backlash accelerating Israel’s diplomatic isolation in Europe and beyond.
“Because of the madness of Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and the extremists, we are racing towards international sanctions that will harm the economy, science and the entire country,” said Yair Golan, leader of the left-wing Democrat party.
And Netanyahu’s personal legal drama continued to thread as well. His allies – in Israel and abroad – kept his campaign for a pardon in the headlines, even as the news cycle and the national attention has been consumed by the war.
Seeking to cancel his year-long fraud, bribery, and breach-of-trust trial, Netanyahu formally requested a pardon from President Isaac Herzog in November.
One of the campaign’s main champions has been US President Donald Trump, who has been actively pressing Herzog to cancel the trial. In his latest intervention, Trump__ told Axios on March 5, less than a week into the war, that Herzog must pardon Netanyahu “today,” branding him “a disgrace” and “scoundrel” for delays. “I don’t want anything on Bibi’s mind other than fighting”, he was cited as saying.
It was a striking instance of a US president rebuking an Israeli president during a war the two countries are fighting together, while forcefully backing its prime minister.
Netanyahu’s trial is already one of the most contentious in Israeli history, and a pardon before legal proceedings have concluded would be extremely rare.
The Israeli justice ministry has since advised Herzog against the move, citing the lack of a conviction, the absence of remorse or admission of guilt. Under these circumstances, legal observers say that any pardon is likely to face a significant Supreme Court challenge.
Netanyahu has repeatedly denied orchestrating Trump’s interventions, though two Israeli sources with direct knowledge told CNN they were coordinated with his inner circle. Asked about Trump’s comments in a news conference in mid-March, he declined to disavow them. “Trump spoke from the blood of his heart,” he told reporters. “US presidents are entitled to say what is on their minds.”
