Netanyahu’s Rabbi is Trump

Although Netanyahu has been in power for the greater part of the last two decades and Donald Trump is a relative political novice, Trump has become Netanyahu’s teacher, mentor and role model.

Trump’s business career was defined by autocratic leadership. He issued orders with the expectation they would be executed fully, legal or not. He built his enterprises through absolute loyalty, dismissing anyone who failed to comply. This mindset shaped how Trump viewed presidential power. After his surprise election victory, he entered office unprepared and appointed individuals he believed would be powerful on his behalf and follow his directives. He quickly discovered many would not, leading to unprecedented turnover among senior officials.

Despite achieving some goals, Trump was constrained in his first term by institutional gatekeepers who upheld democratic norms and the rule of law. These constraints largely disappeared in his second administration, where loyalty became the primary qualification for office. Trump’s word increasingly superseded law and institutional norms.

have given him a freer hand, particularly regarding Palestinians and illegal West Bank settlements, while Democratic presidents imposed some restraints. Ironically, Democratic administrations have provided Israel with greater financial and military aid. The idiom “He who pays the piper calls the tune” may have some relevance. Democratic presidents insisted on calling some of the ‘tunes’ while Netanyahu rejected any interference from American president. He requires personal support and loyalty. Sound familiar? Therefore, Netanyahu has continually been more deferential to Republican presidents than to Democrats.

With Trump, deference evolved into reverence. Netanyahu viewed Trump as a model for what he sought to achieve in Israel. Trump treats law not as a boundary but as an obstacle—something to evade, exploit, or ignore until stopped. His contempt for democratic constraints and embrace of autocratic methods offered Netanyahu both validation and a governing blueprint.

Netanyahu has demonstrably adopted or adapted the observable political techniques that Trump has normalized.

Following are the key lessons Netanyahu appears to have learned from Trump about governing while hollowing out democratic constraints.

1. Treat accountability as illegitimate persecution

Trump lesson:
Redefine investigations, courts, prosecutors, and the media as part of a “deep state” conspiracy.

Netanyahu application:
Criminal indictments are presented not as legal processes but as a leftist, judicial, or elitist coup. This converts personal legal exposure into a political rallying tool and delegitimizes the rule of law itself.

Autocratic value:
If accountability equals persecution, then resisting accountability becomes patriotic.

2. Personalize the state

Trump lesson:
Blur the distinction between the leader and the nation: “I alone can fix it.”

Netanyahu application:
Israel’s security, diplomacy, and survival are repeatedly framed as inseparable from Netanyahu’s leadership. Criticism of him becomes criticism of Israel itself. Netanyahu self-defined himself as the savior of the Jewish People, not just the State of Israel and claimed throughout his premiership that he alone can keep Israel secure.

Autocratic value:
Removing the leader through elections is made to feel like national suicide. Both Netanyahu and his wife have referred to this as an illegal coup.

3. Turn elections into existential battles

Trump lesson:
Every election is “the last one,” and losing is portrayed as illegitimate.

Netanyahu application:
Elections are framed as a struggle between “the people” and traitorous elites (especially anyone he describes as a Leftist, which he does to anyone who have ever worked closely with him and then spoke out against him, including former IDF, Shin Bet and Mossad chiefs), judges, protesters, and the media. Losing power is depicted as catastrophic for the nation.

Autocratic value:
Democracy survives elections only if leaders accept losing them.

4. Normalize lying by repetition

Trump lesson:
Repeat falsehoods constantly; truth becomes optional when exhaustion sets in. Redefine facts with made up terms as ‘alternative facts’ and calling anything disfavorable as a hoax.

Netanyahu application:
Contradictory narratives about October 7, responsibility, warnings, and decision-making coexist without resolution. Confusion replaces accountability.
Every event that makes Netanyahu look bad becomes the target of systematic and constant lies by the Prime Minister’s Office, his loyalists and spread through a well-oiled poison machine consisting of tens of thousands of bots in India, Iran, Russia and China which are used to flood all social media platforms within minutes of launch.

Autocratic value:
When citizens no longer know what is true, power becomes unchallengeable.

5. Weaponize grievance and victimhood

Trump lesson:
Portray the most powerful person in the country as the greatest victim.

Netanyahu application:
Despite decades in power, Netanyahu casts himself as persecuted by elites, judges, media, political adversaries and protesters—never as responsible.

Autocratic value:
Victims are owed loyalty; leaders are owed devotion; those who ‘persecute’ them are deserving of illegitimacy, attack, and prison.

6. Divide the public into “real people” and enemies

Trump lesson:
Redefine the nation narrowly and exclude opponents from it.

Netanyahu application:
This is something that happened long before Trump was on the scene. Throughout his premiership, Netanyahu turned a political and ideological label, ‘leftist’ into a curse word and convinced his followers that leftists were enemies of the State. His learnings from Trump took it further. Opponents are labeled anarchists, traitors, foreign agents, or security risks. Protesters are treated as enemies, not citizens.

Autocratic value:
Once opponents are enemies, repression becomes justified.

7. Undermine courts while claiming to defend democracy

Trump lesson:
Attack judges while insisting reforms are democratic or corrective.

Netanyahu application:
The judicial overhaul was framed as restoring democracy, even as it removed checks on executive power.
Prior to his trials: Netanyahu repeatedly criticized and sought to weaken the judiciary as an institution, largely on ideological and political grounds. Following his indictments (2019 onward), those attacks became systematic, personal, and existential, aimed at delegitimizing the legal process against him.

The trials did not create his hostility to judicial independence; they radicalized and weaponized it.

Autocratic value:
Autocracy advances fastest when cloaked in democratic language.

8. Capture institutions through loyalists

Trump lesson:
Install loyalists, not professionals, across institutions.

Netanyahu application:
Appointments increasingly prioritize loyalty over independence—in policing, ministries, and regulatory bodies. Through his loyalists, laws are advanced which corrupt the entire system of legal gatekeepers in all of the government ministries by placing the ministry legal advisors under the politically appointed heads of the ministries instead of under the Attorney General where they are now, as well as removing the requirement that the ministries follow the legal judgements of the legal advisors. This action and others both neutralize legal and judicial rule and take over the institutions of the ministries.

Autocratic value:
Institutions become tools, not constraints.

9. Use permanent crisis to suspend norms

Trump lesson:
Declare constant emergencies to justify extraordinary behavior.

Netanyahu application:
Security threats, war, and instability are used to argue that “now is not the time” for elections, inquiries, or accountability. Despite all of the recommendations of the security chiefs and senior officers, Netanyahu deliberately kept the war going without any declaration of strategies or attainable goals. Continuing the war kept the country in a war emergency which was used as his rationale for delaying/preventing any Commission of Inquiry as well as taking any kind of responsibility.

Autocratic value:
Emergencies erase limits.

10. Discredit the media as an enemy

Trump lesson:
Call unfavorable coverage “fake news.”

Netanyahu application:
Critical Israeli media is portrayed as biased, elitist, or disloyal, while friendly outlets are amplified. This is easily seen with who Netanyahu allows to interview him and ask questions at press conferences.

Netanyahu attacked and sought to delegitimize the media well before his criminal indictments, exactly as with the judiciary. However, the scale, aggressiveness, and strategic centrality of those attacks increased markedly once he became a criminal defendant.

Autocratic value:
Without trusted media, citizens cannot coordinate resistance, nor can citizens present truth to power.

11. Replace facts with identity loyalty

Trump lesson:
What matters is not what happened, but who you support.

Netanyahu application:
October 7 discourse increasingly revolves around loyalty to Netanyahu versus opposition to him, not factual basis required.

The hostage crisis is, unfortunately the most glaring case of loyalty over facts. While the hostage crisis should have been embraced as a national issue of the greatest importance, Netanyahu used his loyalist to turn the most apolitical issue of October 7 into a strictly political one. He recognized immediately the political price he might pay in the future due to the overwhelming hostage taking on that day and he made it into an issue of loyalty over facts and over citizens’ lives.

Autocratic value:
Identity politics overrides evidence.

12. Delay, deflect, exhaust

Trump lesson:
Never resolve scandals—drag them out until the public is numb and replace them as quickly as possible with other headlines that drown out the scandals.

Netanyahu application:
Responsibility for October 7 is endlessly deferred: after the war, after investigations, after elections, after “unity.”

While October 7 is the most glaring example of the concept of delay, deflect, exhaust, it is only one of so many. Every single event that incriminates Netanyahu and/or his loyalists or makes Netanyahu look bad in the eyes of the public is immediately followed by an issue of deflection that becomes the new headline. Qatargate is a prime example. Every time that something new emerges that reflects on Netanyahu directly or indirectly through the Prime Minister’s Office, something major happens or is presented to take the focus off of him and his loyalist. The deflections may be minor events that temporarily take on major focus or other real events are taken and amplified to take over all headlines. Netanyahu depends on the adage of the public having a short memory, therefore delays have always been beneficial to him.

Autocratic value:
Time becomes a shield against justice.

13. Attack institutions preemptively

Trump lesson:
Discredit institutions before they rule against you.

Netanyahu application:
Courts, inquiry commissions, and watchdogs are attacked before findings are issued. Netanyahu’s continuous attacks on the judiciary, especially against the Supreme Court serves his total opposition to a State Commission of Inquiry by claiming that the President of the Supreme Court cannot be trusted and therefore should not be in the position to determine a State Commission of Inquiry.

Autocratic value:
Future judgments are delegitimized in advance.

14. Turn supporters into a human shield

Trump lesson:
Make legal or political consequences feel like attacks on supporters themselves.

Netanyahu application:
Any move against Netanyahu is framed as disenfranchising his voters. Throughout Netanyahu’s premiership, he has defined the public as ‘us’ and ‘them’. Anyone who does not support Netanyahu is considered ‘them’ and therefore a traitor to be seen as an enemy to all of his supporters.

Autocratic value:
The leader hides behind the people.

15. Never concede error

Trump lesson:
Admitting fault is weakness; denial preserves dominance.

Netanyahu application:
There has been no full acceptance of responsibility for October 7—only partial, conditional, or collective blame. Netanyahu has never taken responsibility or blame for anything that portrays him negatively. It is always the fault of others. Since the first day of the war, he placed all blame on the security organizations. He is quick to take credit for anything that makes him look good no matter who deserves the credit, but blame is not part of his lexicon.

Autocratic value:
Accountability is replaced by permanence.

The core lesson Netanyahu learned and taken to heart

Trump demonstrated that you do not need to abolish democracy to rule autocratically.
You only need to hollow out institutions, poison trust in truth, turn loyalty into identity and make yourself indispensable. Democracy then survives in form, but not in substance.