Analyst Says Israel's Repeated 'Fateful Election' Claims Distort Political Legitimacy

Israeli voters head to the polls Tuesday amid a familiar chorus from campaign leaders and commentators describing the contest as the most consequential in the country's history, a label one analyst says deserves scrutiny.

Danny Kushmaro, who introduces the election segment nightly by calling it the most fateful in Israel's history, argues that such framing converts ordinary partisan competition into a matter of national survival. Defeat under that framing becomes something the country cannot weather rather than a setback that can be corrected at the next vote, he writes. The stakes of accepting an outcome shift accordingly.

Kushmaro points to the period since Naftali Bennett assembled his government in 2021 as evidence of how this language plays out. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu branded the coalition's formation "the greatest election fraud" before Bennett was even sworn in, referring to broken campaign promises. The opposition then worked continuously to topple the government from within the Knesset, where the coalition held a narrow majority. In recordings published in May 2022, Likud MK Miri Regev defended voting against measures aiding soldiers and vulnerable groups because toppling the coalition took priority.

After Netanyahu won the 2022 election and formed a hard-right government, Yair Lapid conceded and arranged an orderly handover. The language of illegitimacy returned as opposition to the judicial overhaul drew large street protests. At an April 2023 demonstration in Tel Aviv, former Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin said the government had been elected legally but was morally illegitimate because of its "appalling composition and reprehensible actions."

Kushmaro's concern is that treating each ballot as uniquely fateful makes the losing side less willing to grant the winner a chance to govern. Since Bennett's government took office, Israel has grappled with whether the defeated faction will permit the victor to serve, not merely over who should hold power.

Israeli campaign rhetoric has repeatedly cast elections as existential contests. Netanyahu's characterization of the 2021 coalition formation as fraud and Diskin's April 2023 remarks illustrate how disputes over legitimacy have surfaced on both sides of the political divide.