The Netanyahu Bogeyman

The Netanyahu Bogeyman: How Israel’s Enemies Hide Behind One Name

There’s a cynical playbook at work in the campaign against Israel, and it starts with two words: Benjamin Netanyahu. For those who seek to delegitimize the Jewish state, Netanyahu has become the all-purpose villain: A convenient bogeyman onto whom every grievance, every accusation, and every call for Israel’s destruction can be projected while maintaining a thin veneer of respectability. “We don’t hate Israel,” they insist. “We just oppose Netanyahu.” It’s a lie, and it’s time to call it what it is.

The strategy is as transparent as it is dishonest: Meld the man with the nation, reduce a vibrant democracy of ten million people to a single face, and then demonize that face until the public can no longer distinguish between opposing a politician and opposing a country’s right to exist. When activists on college campuses chant for the elimination of Israel; when members of Congress lamentedly vote to strip the Jewish state of security aid; when protesters wave signs calling for Intifada… none of that pompous righteousness is about one prime minister’s policies. It’s about Israel itself. Netanyahu is simply the mask they wear to make it seem palatable to the persuadable masses.

What makes this manipulation even more glaring is the stunning silence about the actual architects of terror and destruction in the region. Ask any campus protester or social media activist to name the leaders of the jihadist movements sworn to Israel’s annihilation, and you’ll be met with blank stares.

• Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who masterminded the October 7 massacre, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, in which over 1,200 men, women, and children were slaughtered, tortured, and raped. They’d say WHO?
• Ismail Haniyeh, who led Hamas’s political bureau from luxury hotels in Qatar while Palestinian civilians suffered under his organization’s rule. They’d say WHO?
• Ghazi Hamad, the Hamas official who proudly declared on television that October 7 would be repeated “again and again” until Israel is destroyed. They’d say WHO?
• Nabih Berri, Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker and longtime Amal Movement leader who has enabled Hezbollah’s stranglehold to reign over Lebanon for decades. They’d say WHO?

These names never cross the lips of those who claim to care about justice in the Middle East. They obsess over Netanyahu while granting complete anonymity… and therefore impunity, to genocidal extremists funded and directed by Iran’s IRGC regime.

This selective outrage is not accidental. It is a deliberate strategy to manipulate American public opinion, and it exploits a fundamental misunderstanding of how Israeli democracy works. Americans are accustomed to a system where they vote directly for a President. The American system has a single leader who embodies the executive branch. Israel’s political system is fundamentally different. Israelis vote for parties; not individual leaders. The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, is comprised of multiple parties that must form coalition governments to rule.

Coalition governance is complicated and rife with compromise and drama. Minority parties can exercise outsized influence within the ruling coalition and on the prime minister. No single leader governs alone, and Israeli politics features fierce internal debate, regular elections, and constant accountability.

In fact, Israel is heading to elections this October 27, 2026, with new parties and coalitions already forming to challenge the current government. That is a sign of democratic health that Israel’s detractors conveniently ignore.

By reducing Israel to “Netanyahu,” the haters accomplish something insidious: They erase the agency of millions of Israeli citizens, be they Jewish, Arab, Druze, or Christian… all of whom participate in one of the world’s most dynamic democracies. They erase the fact that Israelis themselves vigorously debate their government’s policies in ways that would be unthinkable in Gaza under Hamas, in Lebanon under Hezbollah, or in Iran under the ayatollahs and their IRGC henchmen.

Here’s the truth the haters don’t want you to see: If Netanyahu left office tomorrow (which may actually happen before year’s end), the calls to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel would not stop. The inclination for campus encampments would not fold. The chants of “from the river to the sea” would not fall silent. Because it was never about Netanyahu. It was always about Israel and the Jewish state’s right to exist, to defend itself, and to thrive. Netanyahu is simply the excuse. The sooner the American public sees through this charade, the sooner we can have an honest conversation about who truly stands in the way of peace. And it certainly isn’t the only democracy in the Middle East or whoever may be its Prime Minister of the moment.

David Alpern is part of the executive board leadership of Democrats for Israel Los Angeles (dfi-la.org) and would be casting his vote for the Beyachad (Together) party of former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid if he were voting in the upcoming October 27, 2026 Israeli elections