Israeli voters just want a leader they can trust

I overheard a group of political science students last week discussing Israel’s coming 27 October election. In the middle of the conversation, one announced, “I’m a Bennettist.” Everyone around the table laughed. So did I. Perhaps I’d heard the word before and simply hadn’t registered it, but this time, it stopped me in my tracks. 

It wasn’t the support for former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who is seeking a political comeback, that caught my attention. Israelis have always backed politicians with passion. It was the language. Hearing someone casually define themselves by a politician’s name made me wonder whether I was witnessing something bigger. 

For years, Israelis have spoken about “Bibists”, a term that’s come to mean much more than people who vote for Benjamin Netanyahu. Depending on who’s using it, the word is either worn as a badge of honour or hurled as an insult. Either way, everybody knows exactly what it means. “Bibist” has come to describe a political identity, carrying assumptions about a person’s worldview, values, and loyalties. The term has become so embedded in Israeli political culture that it’s not unusual to see cars with stickers reading “Bibist on board”. 

Whether “Bennettist” catches on or quietly disappears is almost beside the point. 

I’ve heard Israelis argue about military strategy while sitting in bomb shelters. I’ve covered elections where they argued about peace. This time, I find myself listening less to what they’re arguing about than to the language they’re using to describe themselves. 

After more than three decades as a journalist, I’ve learned that populations reveal themselves not only through how they vote, but through the words they invent. Political language often tells us what’s happening beneath the surface long before election results do. Sometimes a single word captures a political mood better than an opinion poll ever could. This isn’t just my observation. Political scientists have warned for years about the growing personalisation of Israeli politics. Their concern isn’t that charismatic leaders exist, but that political parties risk becoming vehicles for personalities rather than institutions built around ideas and policies. 

When I first began covering Israeli elections some 18 years ago, people tended to identify first with parties. They were Labour supporters, Likud supporters, Meretz supporters, Shas supporters, or National Religious Party supporters. Leaders mattered enormously, but it was the parties that carried the history, the ideology, and, often, the loyalty. That balance has gradually shifted. Netanyahu became bigger than Likud. Yair Lapid built a movement, Yesh Atid, closely associated with his own name. Benny Gantz became inseparable from Blue and White. Bennett even registered a party bearing his own surname, Bennett 2026. 

If politics is becoming more personal, the changing fortunes of Gantz, former defence minister and leader of the Blue and White party, and Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party, help explain why. Both entered politics after distinguished careers as Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. Both presented themselves as pragmatic alternatives to Netanyahu. Yet while Gantz’s support has weakened in recent polling, Eisenkot has emerged as one of Netanyahu’s strongest challengers. Those numbers may well change before election day. Israeli elections have a habit of humbling pollsters. 

The polling is interesting. The question behind it is even more so: Why is Eisenkot resonating now? 

Part of the answer may lie in the moment Israel finds itself in. After almost three years marked by the trauma of 7 October, the war in Gaza, conflict with Hezbollah, direct confrontation with Iran, and continuing political division at home, many Israelis seem less interested in political theatre than in judgement. Eisenkot also appears to retain something Gantz has found harder to hold onto, the perception that he remains relatively untouched by the compromises and disappointments that inevitably come with years in frontline politics. 

At first glance that seems to reinforce exactly what political scientists have warned about for years, the growing personalisation of Israeli politics. But I wonder whether we have the cause and effect the wrong way round. I don’t think Israelis are investing more faith in personalities because they care less about ideas. Rather, I suspect they’re doing so because they have become less confident that parties and institutions can deliver those ideas. In a political system where parties regularly split, merge, and reinvent themselves, leaders become the only constant. Trust shifts from institutions to individuals. 

That doesn’t necessarily make personalisation healthy. Democracies are strongest when voters choose between competing ideas and institutions rather than investing too much hope in individual leaders. But Israel’s recent history helps explain why personalities have become so important. After years of political deadlock, repeated elections, national trauma, and war, many Israelis seem to be asking a different question. Not simply “Who agrees with me?”, but “Whose judgement do I trust?” 

Perhaps that’s why hearing someone casually describe themselves as a “Bennettist” felt significant. It wasn’t really about Naftali Bennett. It was about the possibility that the language Israelis use is beginning to reflect a deeper shift in how they relate to politics itself. 

Sometimes political change doesn’t announce itself through election results. Sometimes it begins with a single new word. Perhaps the personalisation of Israeli politics isn’t the cause of today’s political uncertainty. Perhaps it’s the consequence of it. 

• Paula Slier is a veteran journalist and foreign correspondent who has reported from conflict zones across the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. She writes about media, geopolitics, and information warfare.