Earlier this year, Yonatan Levi left his home country of Israel to observe the Hungarian election. Levi, a scholar at the center-left think tank Molad, had traveled with a group of parliamentarians and activists to study how opposition leader Péter Magyar was running a winning campaign against an authoritarian prime minister.
The next global Trump ally to fall?
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Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. His book on democracy, The Reactionary Spirit, was published 0n July 16. You can purchase it here.
This was, in their view, a vital mission ahead of their own elections this year. Levi and his colleagues see, in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a kindred spirit to Hungary’s defeated autocrat. Israel “is not the Middle East’s Hungary yet,” Levi says. But, he added, “it’s getting closer and closer.”
Indeed, opposition parties are bullish on taking down Netanyahu — and defending democracy is central to their campaign.
Americans know, and generally dislike, Netanyahu based on his foreign policy: the brutality in Gaza or more recent lobbying for the ruinous Iran war. But inside Israel, Netanyahu’s opponents are most animated by domestic issues: specifically, a fear that his ultimate aim is to demolish Israel’s remaining democratic institutions and stay in power indefinitely.
This is a reasonable concern. Netanyahu’s government has put cronies in charge of Israel’s security services, demonized the Arab minority, persecuted left-wing activists, and pushed legislation that would put the judiciary under his control.
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