There's desperate need for healthy discourse between Left-Right in Israeli politics - opinion

For decades, Israeli politics was defined by a Left-Right spectrum rooted in three dimensions: security and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, economic policy, and religion and culture. The weight of each shifted with wars, peace talks, and political upheavals. In Israel’s early years, Labor’s Left embodied state-building and socialism, while Herut, and later Likud, stressed nationalism and economic liberalism.

After 1967, the debate moved to territory: The Left favored compromise, the Right insisted on retaining land. The Oslo years sharpened this divide until the Second Intifada discredited the peace camp and elevated the Right’s security-first narrative.

Traditionally, the Right resisted territorial concessions, backed settlement expansion and military strength, and upheld conservative religious values. Economically, it leaned toward free market, though religious allies often pushed for welfare.

The Left, by contrast, promoted negotiations, a two-state solution, reduced religious authority in public life, and social-democratic economics. Centrist parties mixed hawkish security stances with more liberal social and economic policies.

In recent decades, however, these boundaries have blurred.

Into the vacuum created by the Second Intifada stepped Benjamin Netanyahu. From 2009 onward, he recast Israeli politics around himself. He branded himself as Israel’s indispensable protector – against terrorism, Iran, and foreign pressure – while consolidating a durable alliance with ultra-Orthodox and nationalist parties. His opponents, fragmented and often adopting similar hawkish stances, struggled to mount a coherent alternative.

The debate along the traditional ideological dimensions has hollowed out the Left-Right spectrum and became personal and far more polarizing divide: “Bibi vs anti-Bibi.” Under his leadership, nearly every issue – security, economics, religion – has been recast as a referendum on Bibi.

Netanyahu reframed “Left” as shorthand for disloyalty, elitism, or detachment from “authentic” Israel. Even centrists or ex-generals were tarred as “leftists” for daring to criticize him. In public discourse, “leftist” became an insult: naive, unpatriotic Tel Aviv bubble-dwellers, while “Right” became synonymous with patriotism, toughness, and loyalty to the prime minister.

Netanyahu himself occasionally embraced centrist or left-leaning policies, like limited restraint in Gaza and coordination with the Palestinian Authority, but he always framed critics as “Left” to delegitimize them. Corruption scandals, judicial battles, and populist attacks on the media and institutions further deepened the divide.

From 2019 to 2022, Israel endured a series of elections fought almost entirely on the Bibi vs anti-Bibi axis. Right, Center, and even Arab parties united in 2021 to oust Netanyahu, only for him to return late in 2022 with far-Right and ultra-Orthodox allies. For much of the electorate, the question was no longer Left or Right but whether Netanyahu himself embodied Israel’s survival or threatened it.

The anti-Bibi camp, meanwhile, remains reactive, defined more by opposition than by clear agenda with meaningful debate.

Netanyahu’s image as Israel’s ultimate security guarantor collapsed, yet he endured by stalling inquiries, casting himself as indispensable in wartime, and exploiting fears of instability. For his base, defending Bibi is now less about policy than identity.

Even in his gravest crisis, the divide he cultivated still structures Israeli politics. Broader debates about governance, accountability, and strategy are emerging but for now, the lens remains “Bibi vs anti-Bibi.”

Diaspora Jewish communities mirrored this split. Pro-Israel advocacy often equated loyalty with support for Netanyahu, while criticism of his policies risked being branded as disloyalty to Israel itself.

Post–October 7, that framing is fraying. Jewish organizations increasingly define their engagement with Israel not through personalities but through values: democracy, human rights, accountability, and the urgent return of the hostages. Establishment institutions still lean government-aligned, but grassroots voices demand change. What emerges is not the end of the “Bibi divide,” but its transformation. The debate is shifting from Netanyahu the man to the values by which Israel and its supporters abroad wish to be defined.

A healthier divide would focus on competing visions for Israel’s future: safeguarding security while preserving democracy, balancing religion and state, sustaining growth without deepening inequality, and defining long-term relations with the Palestinians. Parties rooted in these choices, rather than loyalty to or rejection of a single leader, can restore democratic contestation that strengthens society instead of tearing them apart.

In the new Jewish year, Israelis deserve leadership that transcends self-preservation and partisanship. After years of chaos, division, and war, they need leaders who would restore trust in state institutions, unify the nation, and offer a vision worthy of Israelis’ courage, passion, and creativity.