Netanyahu’s greatest illusion: That Israel’s security depends on him - opinion

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the United Nations General Assembly, perhaps for the last time as Israel’s prime minister, he will be standing in a house he was taught, 42 years ago, to see two ways.

Israelis vote on October 27, and current polls leave his bloc short of a majority. The audience he first courted there in 1984 may therefore be about to hear a valedictory from a man constitutionally incapable of delivering one.

When Netanyahu arrived in New York as Israel’s ambassador, he received two descriptions of the institution that would become his great international stage.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Netanyahu later recalled, told him he would be serving in a “house of many lies,” but that even in darkness a single candle could be seen.

A veteran Latin American diplomat offered another: “The house of immortal life.” At the UN, he explained, no resolution ever truly died.

Netanyahu would spend four decades making a politics out of both.

He cast himself as the man who saw through lies others missed, then turned that claim into an argument that Israel could not afford to do without him.

In a 1988 interview, he described the method: establish “irrefutable facts,” couple them with “powerful arguments,” use rhetoric, and score “visible victories.” Begin with what is true, cast uncertainty in its most threatening form, and turn danger into an argument for his own necessity.

The pitch came with props: a PLO calendar in 1986, a cartoon bomb and red marker in 2012, 44 seconds of silence in 2015. In 2024, he held up placards labeled “The Blessing” and “The Curse” and closed with Deuteronomy: “Be strong and of good courage.”

But the chapter is also about succession. Moses prepares Israel for Joshua; authority passes, and the people continue without him.

Succession was the political problem this politics could not solve. Under Netanyahu, Likud produced no heir. Rivals were diminished, sent abroad, or denied authority; loyalty became safer than stature.

From 2019 to 2022, five elections revolved around a man his party could not replace. His case rested on singularity: only he understood America, only he understood Iran, only he could be trusted with the danger.

Political survival stopped being a talent and became a theory of government.

Even defeat proved temporary. He lost power in 1999 and returned a decade later; lost it again in 2021 and was back 18 months later. Defeat became an intermission.

The October 7 massacre shattered Netanyahu’s central promise: only he could keep Israelis safe. 

A real danger

Since 2009, his governments had treated Hamas as containable, allowed Qatari money to help sustain its rule in Gaza, and found Hamas’s rivalry with the Palestinian Authority strategically useful.

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) later identified the “policy of quiet” and Qatari money among the reasons for Hamas’s military build-up. Netanyahu neither resigned nor accepted responsibility.

The disaster should have destroyed the argument for his indispensability. Instead, its scale became another reason he could not leave.

War supplied the postponement. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir left the government over the January 2025 ceasefire and returned when fighting resumed.

Netanyahu resisted a state commission of inquiry into October 7; his criminal trial was repeatedly interrupted by security emergencies.

Motive is beside the point. Emergency made accountability itself appear irresponsible: resignation premature, inquiry untimely, elections dangerous.

The crisis did not pass.

Iran was the danger Netanyahu returned to most insistently at the UN, the supreme test of his claim to indispensability. Israeli and American strikes badly damaged the nuclear program.

But the campaign widened into a regional war with no plausible end in sight, spreading across the Gulf and into the Red Sea while leaving the nuclear question unresolved.

Iran has been weakened, but at the price of a conflict whose political end-state no one has yet been able to define.

The catastrophe of October 7 became a reason Netanyahu could not leave in wartime; military gains against Iran became proof that only he could deliver them.

When opposite outcomes produce the same conclusion, the claim can no longer be tested against events. It has become a rationale for his continued rule.

The argument now hangs over Tel Aviv. A Likud billboard places New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, beside Iran’s supreme leader, Turkey’s president, and Hezbollah’s chief.

“They want Netanyahu to lose,” it says. “Don’t let them win.” Their hostility becomes his qualification for office.

At home, Netanyahu remains on trial for corruption. Abroad, an International Criminal Court warrant seeks his arrest for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, which he denies. Washington will not execute it; New York is safe. 

Elsewhere, his map has narrowed. For a politician famous for bringing maps to the General Assembly, international law has become an itinerary.

Last September, representatives from dozens of countries walked out as Netanyahu approached the microphone. He spoke to rows of empty chairs. An adversarial audience still grants a speaker the dignity of an adversary.

Even contempt is a form of attention. An empty chair is not.

He will not call this a farewell. Finality is the one verdict Netanyahu has never accepted. Indictment becomes persecution; isolation, vindication; catastrophe, another mandate to stay.

The two descriptions have converged. In the house of lies, every judgment against him can be dismissed as false. In the house of immortal life, every verdict can be treated as temporary.

Much of his audience has already walked out. Netanyahu’s last confidence trick is to persuade enough Israelis that they cannot afford to.

The dangers are real. The lie is that they require Netanyahu.

The writer is a senior fellow for Mitvim: The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies.