Ever since 1993 when, in a New York Times article, he compared the then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s efforts for peace with the Palestinians to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler, Benjamin Netanyahu has been widely credited with having something of a Winston Churchill complex.

In devoting much of his premiership to denouncing the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear programme, Netanyahu managed to model himself, almost certainly consciously, as a wilderness years Churchill seeking to alert his countrymen to the need to stand up to the power of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

As the prime minister in charge of what he himself predicted, on 8 October, would be a war of “massive vengeance” after Hamas’s multiple atrocities and murder of 1,200 Israelis the previous day, he has found that the comparison no longer stands up, if indeed it ever did.

For one political paradox of the unprecedentedly deadly and destructive war his government is visiting on Gaza is that, while it remains popular with average Israelis – far more so than among the publics of Israel’s allies, including Britain – the war leader himself is anything but.

Whereas Churchill personally polled consistently above 80 per cent from 1940-45, Netanyahu’s ratings could not be much worse. A Maariv poll last Friday, for example, showed his main opposition rival, and now war cabinet colleague, Benny Gantz preferred as prime minister by 49 to 30 per cent.

Of course his popularity had started to plummet before 7 October. In a brief reminder of one reason for this, his defence lawyer this week persuaded the Jerusalem District Court to limit the resumed hearings on three corruption charges (which he denies) to two days........

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