DIMONA, Israel – When Israeli voter Daniela Hermon heads to the polls next week, she will cast her ballot for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu without hesitation.
“A leader of this calibre emerges only once every century,” she said in her hometown of Dimona.
Netanyahu is in the midst of a close race for re-election, with polls showing him more or less in a dead heat with former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, who has slammed the premier as unfit to lead.
But many like Hermon have kept the faith, crediting Netanyahu for his three decades’ worth of political experience, his toughness on security issues and, more recently, his endorsement by US President Donald Trump.
Hermon, 60, was one of hundreds of people waiting on Oct 21 at a restaurant in Dimona where Netanyahu was scheduled to make a campaign stop.
He arrived to a rock star’s welcome, with the crowd whooping, whistling and chanting his nickname, “Bibi! Bibi!”
The stop coincided with the premier’s 77th birthday, and he was given a cake printed with his face which he brandished before the rapturous crowd.
A ‘well-versed’ leader
In his stump speech, Netanyahu touted the military campaign he launched against Iran alongside the United States, and vowed to finish the job by “toppling this regime”.
He also reminded voters of the endorsement from his “close friend” Trump, saying the American leader’s message on the Iran threat was clear: “Do you want to end it?... Vote for Likud, vote for your humble servant.”
Dimona is friendly turf for Netanyahu: in the last election in 2022, his Likud party achieved its best result there, scooping up 51% of the vote.
His address on Oct 21 in the southern town seemed tailor-made for Hermon.
“We need a leader who is well-versed in global affairs, who understands the strategies, the security landscape, the strategic picture, the foreign relations. We need a leader who knows how to engage with other world leaders,” she told AFP outside the restaurant before Netanyahu arrived.
“At a time like this, we cannot afford to lose such a leader. God help us” if Netanyahu is not re-elected, she added.
The possibility of a return to all-out hostilities with Iran is top of mind for many Israelis, and the country’s military is still occupying parts of Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.
To Netanyahu’s critics, the spiralling multi-front conflict that Israel has undertaken since Hamas’s Oct 7, 2023, attack is a mark against him. But to his supporters it is a sign of his resolve.
‘Win, and win big’
A few days before the Dimona visit, Netanyahu made a similar stop at a shopping mall in the city of Ramla.
His reception was much the same, with screams and whistles permeating the air as the premier stopped briefly for a selfie with a supporter, albeit with his security detail between them.
“I vote only for Bibi,” said Moti Cohen, who was at the mall in Ramla that day.
“He is the only one who can look after our country, unlike all those around him, who, in my opinion, are just nothing.”
Fellow supporter Meir Eini agreed.
“There’s no one like Bibi,” he said. “God willing, we’ll also win, and win big.”
Netanyahu’s main challenger Eisenkot, who comes from a modest background like many Likud supporters, has struggled to shake the loyalty of the pro-Netanyahu base.
In Dimona, Shay Woknin accused the centrist political newcomer of being a puppet of the left-wing elites that right-wing politicians and media outlets say run the country.
Eisenkot is “merely a front man”, he said, claiming that left-wing former prime minister Ehud Barak was “pulling the strings from behind the scenes” – a common conspiracy theory in the right-wing press.
Polls showing the former general pulling even with Netanyahu were “a case of narrative engineering” by the fake-news media, he added.
A short distance away, seated at a cafe terrace, Aaron Meguira, 60, was not on the Bibi bandwagon.
Meguira said he was voting for Eisenkot, accusing Netanyahu of having “divided the people”, and pointing to one of the most potent lines of attack deployed against the prime minister during the campaign.
“Everything we went through on Oct 7 happened under his watch,” he said, adding it was time for Netanyahu to “go home”.
“Enough is enough.” AFP