‘This Helps Netanyahu’: Israelis Rally Around Leader Over Warrant, for Now
The New York Times
An I.C.C. arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza spurred outrage across Israel’s political spectrum. But in the long term, it’s not a good look for a prime minister.
The more Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is cast as an international pariah, the more many Israelis appear to embrace him.
The arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court on Thursday for Mr. Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip spurred a wave of outrage and condemnation across Israel’s political spectrum.
“It is embarrassing to see Netanyahu and Gallant in the same place as Muammar el-Qaddafi, Slobodan Milosevic, Ratko Mladic and several African dictators,” wrote Sima Kadmon, a political columnist and longtime Netanyahu critic, in the Friday editions of the popular Yediot Ahronot newspaper. Still, she added, “the allegations of anti-Israel-ism are understandable. Perhaps even antisemitism.”
Despite deep domestic polarization, analysts said, most Israelis were likely to rally around Mr. Netanyahu’s repudiation of the court’s decision, which he denounced as “antisemitic" for “falsely accusing” the democratically elected prime minister of Israel.
“This helps Netanyahu,” said Mitchell Barak, an Israeli pollster who worked as an aide to Mr. Netanyahu in the 1990s, portraying him as “the lonely man standing against all the evil in the world.”
“It turns him into the victim he likes to be, the person fighting for Israel’s rights,” Mr. Barak said, adding that Israelis have been largely unified in their support for the war.
