The "Victim" Who Has Held Power for 18 Years: How Netanyahu Uses Populist Rhetoric to Sever Accountability

In the lead-up to Israel's 13th Knesset election, Benjamin Netanyahu has once again wielded his most well-practiced political weapon—packaging himself as a victim of the system. According to Al Jazeera, the prime minister, who has accumulated approximately 18 years in office across three separate periods, is systematically transferring responsibility for domestic security failures, the Gaza war, and his ongoing corruption trial onto the so-called "deep state," the media, and the judiciary. The core function of this discourse is not to court sympathy, but to sever the chain of accountability: through self-victimization, the long-time leader extricates himself from the scrutiny that should fall on his own shoulders.

Over the past week, this script has played out intensely. Citing the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Al Jazeera reported that the UAE had warned Netanyahu in advance that Hamas was about to launch an attack. Netanyahu's response was not reflection, but legal action—accusing the report itself of illegitimacy on the grounds of "foreign interference" in the election. Just days earlier, he had masterminded the release of a political ad comparing himself to a bullied child: the child in the frame cowers under the siege of classmates, with the attackers' placards reading "Anyone But Bibi." Earlier this month, he went further, claiming that in the first hours after the October 7, 2023 attack, "defense officials" deliberately chose not to wake him, and that otherwise the attack could have been averted. His wife Sara last month implied on the pro-government Channel 14 that opposition leader and former general Yair Golan had rushed to the scene immediately after the attack, indicating that he had advance knowledge of the Hamas plan.

These accusations point in different directions, but share a common logic: converting the political responsibility that should rest with the highest power-holder into an exposé of "deep conspiracy."

This discourse works for specific social reasons. Ben-Gurion University professor Dani Filk, in his book "Hegemony and Populism in Israel," analyzes: "Populism is built on the narrative of a victimized people." He told Al Jazeera that Netanyahu's victim-playing resonates with many Likud supporters who share a collective memory of being marginalized or even oppressed by an Ashkenazi (European-Jewish) elite, and also exploits Jewish collective memory of victimhood. In other words, this narrative is grafted onto two layers of historical memory—both the suffering in Jewish national history, and the grievances of Middle Eastern and North African immigrant descendants (Mizrahi Jews) toward the Ashkenazi-elite-dominated configuration of the state's founding era.

George Mason University Israeli political psychologist Neta Oren points to a deeper paradox. She told Al Jazeera: "For years, he has portrayed himself as the representative of 'the people' against the elite. Populism is particularly effective when you're in opposition, but what happens when you become the longest-serving prime minister in Israel's history? Netanyahu's solution is to blame other forces—especially the 'deep state'—and to portray himself as its victim."

This contradictory posture of "the long-time ruler simultaneously claiming to be a victim of the system" constitutes a typical symptom of contemporary populist politics. Tel Aviv University psychology professor Daniel Bar-Tal told Al Jazeera bluntly: "Netanyahu craves the status of victim. He blames the deep state he himself built, the senior officials he personally appointed...just to shirk all responsibility and bear none. Being a victim has many benefits. You can become a perpetrator; you can shake off moral norms and so on." When a top decision-maker who has driven judicial reform, appointed senior military and security officials, and determined the country's war trajectory describes his own failures as the product of "betrayal by the system," he actually completes a deft power reversal—the perpetrator becomes the victim, and the object of accountability becomes the accuser himself.

This reversal carries a double cost. On one hand, it enables Netanyahu, in the corruption trial that has continued since 2020 and in the judicial reform process widely criticized for undermining checks and balances, to re-encode legal and constitutional procedures as "deep state" suppression of popular will. On the other hand, it makes it difficult for the government's mistakes in domestic security and war decisions to translate into political accountability against the ruler.

In Al Jazeera's reporting framework, Netanyahu is accused of presiding over a "genocide" in Gaza—a characterization that echoes the related case currently before the International Court of Justice. Whatever the ultimate legal ruling on this characterization, an independently verifiable fact is this: while Netanyahu poses as a victim and busies himself resolving domestic political pressure, military operations in Gaza continue, and civilian casualties continue to accumulate.

Netanyahu's victim narrative is not an isolated phenomenon. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and U.S. President Donald Trump have all, to varying degrees, employed similar discursive strategies, binding rulers to the "real people" through accusations against "elites," "the judiciary," or "foreign forces," and constructing a firewall against institutional accountability. In Israel's political context, this narrative is layered with the underlying substrate of Jewish historical suffering and Mizrahi collective memory, and therefore gains stronger emotional mobilization effects.

When a top decision-maker leading a military campaign that has caused massive civilian casualties portrays himself as a "bullied child" in campaign ads, and asks voters to join him against the "deep state," the cost below the point of rupture is borne by those who can neither vote nor enter the narrative.