It is a tragedy for Israelis and Palestinians alike that the state of Israel happens to be home to two extraordinarily charismatic populist politicians. The first is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The second is his national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir.

The word tragedy is cheapened by misuse, but in this case it fits — not only because of the scale of the damage that Israel’s government has already done since coming to power in 2022, but because should the pair win re-election this week, the damage can only deepen and will likely become irreversible.

By any measure, another Netanyahu victory should be inconceivable. Both he and Ben Gvir were in charge of Israel’s security on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas succeeded in what should never have been possible: a massed attack on Israeli soil by a vastly inferior military force.

The prime minister and his government have since blamed everyone but themselves for the manifest policy and security failures of that day, while at the same time blocking the full public inquiry that could credibly establish what went wrong and whether — as recent reporting suggests — Netanyahu ignored warnings. And yet opinion polls suggest this will be a tight race. And that was before the president of the United States put his hand on the scales by endorsing the incumbent.

To a visitor, there is a head-snapping paradox in the way Israelis talk about this vote, agreeing simultaneously that it is the most consequential in the modern state’s history and likely to change little. On big issues such as ending wars or addressing the Palestinian question, the major candidates either aren’t far apart or have magic no solution to offer. The election is seen here as being less about any specific policy change than the nature and future of Israel itself. It’s a question so polarizing that when Israelis were surveyed this year about what threat they feared most, the winner was civil conflict among themselves, narrowly edging out a nuclear-armed Iran.

Will this country cling to the intentions of its founding leaders, that it should at once be a Jewish homeland, a safe haven from persecution and an outpost of secular, liberal democracy in the Middle East? Or will it become another religious-nationalist, managed democracy, more akin to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey or Vladimir Putin’s Russia? Make no mistake, that is the direction of........

© The Japan Times