First, the results. Recall that Israel has a parliamentary system. The people vote for a party, not for individuals. The Knesset, the parliament, has 120 seats. Any future government needs to put together a coalition of the many parties to total at least 61 seats - a majority. After four rather indecisive elections, the Israeli public chose a conservative path.
Benjamin Netanyahu, already Israel's longest serving prime minister, won. More accurately, his party, Likud, won; and he is the leader of that party. Likud got 32 seats in the Knesset. The religious parties did well also. The Religious Zionist party got 14 seats, Shas got 11 seats and United Torah Judaism got 7 seats. It is expected that Israeli President Isaac Hertzog will shortly give Netanyahu the authority to form a government, if he can. Bibi (Netanyahu) is a shrewd politician, and I am confident he will be able to put together a ruling coalition, with himself as prime minister. And Meretz, a far left party, got zero seats. Labor, a left-wing party, and the ruling party for many years after Israel's reestablishment in 1948, got only 4 seats.
Caroline Glick is one of the best commentators on Israeli affairs and the Middle East. She had a very interesting article prior to the election, discussing the issues that voters should be focused on. As you read some of the quotes from her article, you will see that it is amazingly similar to our issues in the U.S. But maybe not that amazing, because the Left everywhere is the same.
Glick wrote that under Netanyahu Israel's economy grew. And that "Israel was at the pinnacle of its regional power and global stature." But under the current government there has been a backsliding. Australia announced that it was rescinding its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. And under the recent governments (of Bennett, Lapid and Gantz) "Israel surrendered its operational independence." Glick points out that there have fewer attacks of sabotage on Iranian nuclear facilities.
And, as Biden did in his recent speech (see the next post), Glick also discusses "democracy" as an issue in their election. She says that the Left's version of democracy is "substantive democracy...where unelected. 'enlightened' members of the judiciary and the permanent bureaucracy decide Israel's course." (Akin to our deep state.) And Glick says that under Gantz Israel's boundaries (borders) were loosened because he allowed illegal construction of Palestinian homes in parts of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). The result is the creation of a de facto Palestinian state. (Akin to Biden's and the Left's open borders here.)
Glick: "In place of Jewish and Zionist education (the Education Minister) has introduced gender studies and other progressive nostrums, beginning in pre-school." (That definitely sounds familiar.) Glick also takes issue with the prior governing coalition on the fundamental nature of the country: "Lapid and Gantz have both expressed their desire to gut Israel's basic law, which defines Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people." It is amazing to me that this should even be an issue. When the UN voted partition of Mandatory Palestine in 1947, they did it expressly to create a Jewish state and an Arab state, The land is the Jewish homeland, with centuries - millenniums actually - of Jewish history.
Glick ends with this very astute observation (which, again, can easily apply to the US): "Do we believe in our nation state and wish to preserve and defend it, or do we reject our national identity and national rights, and aspire to replace both with a globalist, progressive identity, devoid of Zionism and of Jewish sovereignty?" (Do we wish to preserve our national identity of a constitutional republic of 50 states? That post about our upcoming midterms is next.)
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