'The government is hoping Israelis are too worried about their safety to think about democracy'

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been enjoying a "dramatic but quite consistent recovery" in the polls in past months, after the failures of October 7 sent his popularity plummeting to unprecedented lows, according to public opinion expert and Haaretz columnist Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin . On this week's Haaretz Podcast, Scheindlin analyzes what may be Netanyahu's slow but steady political comeback despite the fact that the war has continued while a deal to return the country's remaining hostages still has not actualized .

She says recent escalations with Iran, particularly the daring assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which Israel has not claimed responsibility for, have restored some of the public's faith in his leadership. "When escalation happens, and Netanyahu manages it in a way that Israelis ultimately feel like they managed to both strike a blow and not be existentially destroyed, that gives them the old sense of the 'rally round the flag effect' which you would normally expect to see in wartime among most countries," she tells host Allison Kaplan Sommer. Scheindlin also discusses the government's troubling "assault" on democracy , and how, contrary to public perception, the Gaza war is accelerating the process by allowing it to happen "under the radar.

" "Those determined to weaken [democratic institutions] know that they need to get as much as they can done under the fog of war, and hopefully the citizens won't notice," she says. "The go.