Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s motorcade arrived in the coastal town of Bat Yam just south of Tel Aviv in the unseasonably hot afternoon hours of March 10. Netanyahu bounded out of the car surrounded by bodyguards, engaging passersby in conversation. Children asked for selfies with him, and a bride and groom on the way to their nuptials were treated to an unusual photo-op with  for their wedding album.

“Back to life, back to weddings,” beamed Netanyahu, clapping hands to congratulate the couple. The event was documented and posted on social media in real time, as was his entire walk along the promenade of the town considered a bastion of Likud support.

Undeterred by the heavy security cordon and coronavirus distancing, the hundreds of people he met on his walk showered Netanyahu with the adulation and good wishes that his opponents often ridicule. “Bibi, we love you,” “You’re our soul,” “What a hunk,” “Bibi King of Israel,” “Bibi, baby,” “Bibi, I’m crazy about you,” (this from an elderly woman) they cried out. For the many Israelis fed up with Netanyahu, such scenes are emblematic of the endemic corruption generated by a quasi-dictatorial regime and buoyed by a public oblivious to its insidious rot.

Netanyahu is well aware of such sentiment, harnessing it to his advantage. He makes each follower feel special, arouses in each identification with his sense of persecution by a sated elite, and generates anger at the injustice to which he is allegedly being subjected. He is essentially telling them that those who deride him are actually contemptuous of his voters, too, and that their vote is worth just as much as the next person’s at the ballot box.