Tyrant of the year 2025: Benjamin Netanyahu
Israel once boasted it was the only democracy in the Middle East. But in the last year the country’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accelerated attempts to erode democratic institutions. So dire is the situation that US political scientist Steven Levitsky, a leading expert on democracy, declared this year that Israel has “crossed into authoritarianism”.
In 2025, Netanyahu has reignited his attempts to control the judiciary – the very actions that saw thousands of Israelis protest two years ago – as well as acts to neuter arms of the state which were independent from the government. He’s passed legislation to control who is appointed to the supreme court, attempted to sack the attorney-general who tried to hold the government to account for exceeding its authority and fired the head of the Israeli security agency Shin Bet who revealed that Netanyahu had asked him to treat anti-government protesters as terrorists. Just this month the justice minister is looking to pass a bill allowing the government to hand-pick a person to investigate the attorney-general.
All of this is in addition to attempts to muzzle the national and international media by not allowing free access to journalists to report the situation in Gaza, and the continued targeted killing of Palestinian reporters in Gaza by Israeli security forces. Israel under the Netanyahu government still faces damaging legal proceedings in the Hague for breaking international law, and a United Nations report from September saying the country has committed genocide in Gaza. Quite the charge sheet.
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The closing date is Monday 5 January 2026.
To view the other contenders for Tyrant of the Year, click here.
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