IDF Chief Halevi rated highest for wartime conduct – PM Netanyahu ranked near bottom

Israelis were asked to rank the conduct of six of their most prominent leaders in an opinion poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) after almost half a year of fighting in the war against the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ranked near the bottom, while IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi’s conduct in the war was widely praised.

Respondents were asked to evaluate the leaders' performance using a scale from 1, indicating very poor, to 5, for excellent.

The majority of Israelis said Halevi, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz performed excellent, good, or average during the war.

On the other hand, Netanyahu, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich all received low grades for their conduct in the war, which began on Oct. 7.

Among Jewish respondents, the ratings given for Netanyahu and Gallant slightly improved since IDI’s most recent surveys were conducted in mid-October and November.

Netanyahu’s positive ratings improved from 24.5% and 26.5% previously, to 32% today. Gallant’s behavior was ranked with larger approval from 40.5% to 46%.

Arab respondents rated all leaders much lower, with Gantz and Halevi leading the pack at only 15% positive ratings, while Netanyahu was rated positively by only 5% of Arab respondents.

When the responses were broken down by political orientation, the right, left and center all ranked the leaders in the same order, with Halevi leading and Smotrich ranked at the bottom.

While right-leaning Israelis were generally more content with their leaders, left-leaning and centrist Israelis rated Halevi and Gantz higher than their fellow citizens on the political right.

A recent U.S. intelligence report highlighted a decline in confidence in Netanyahu's leadership among Israelis and predicted large-scale protests calling for new elections. The survey revealed that 42% of the respondents agreed with both assessments, while 28% did not agree with either of them.

Roughly 16% said they agreed only that the public was losing faith in the prime minister, while only 8% agreed that large-scale protests against him were imminent.

The IDI poll was conducted between March 18 and 21 of this year, with 578 men and women interviewed in Hebrew and 159 respondents in Arabic via the Internet and by telephone. The maximum sampling error was ±3.68% at a confidence level of 95%.