Analysts say that the country is locked in a fundamental clash not between left and right but between the values of the founding generation of leaders who put the common good and the interests of the state first and a newer, more populist and partisan politics epitomized by Mr. Netanyahu’s government.

Mr. Rivlin, 78, and Mr. Netanyahu, 68, though only a decade apart, reflect these two Israels.

Mr. Rivlin champions the old-school nationalist but liberal democracy envisioned by the right-wing Zionist Revisionist movement of Zeev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin, who pushed for a greater Israel territorially but were sticklers for defending minority rights and the rule of law. Mr. Netanyahu is also a disciple of Mr. Jabotinsky and Mr. Begin, but analysts say he and many of his ministers reflect the brash political populism of the digital age.

Mr. Rivlin did not mention Mr. Netanyahu by name but accused those in power of working to delegitimize and weaken “the gatekeepers of Israel’s democracy,” and, crucially for a country that lacks a constitution, erode the justice system and the influence of the courts.

Mr. Rivlin, like other critics, accused the government of championing the will of the majority while weakening the institutions that protect the rights of the minority.

“We are today witnessing the winds of a second revolution or coup,” he said. The first one, which he said he also opposed, was a decision by the Supreme Court in the 1990s to overturn laws that contradicted Israel’s Basic Laws. “This time,” he said, “it is the rule of the majority that is the sole ruler.”

Declaring that “statesmanship has come to an end here,” he used the Hebrew term “mamlachtiyut,” a concept of putting the national interest first, coined by Israel’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.



Netanyahu loyalists saw the attack as an inside job. Some Likud politicians said that Mr. Rivlin “is no longer one of us,” and others suggested abolishing the presidency.