The Polls and the Pundits

"It's clear that Netanyahu thought what he did in ?Washington would help him, but it didn't do him any good at home."
Yehuda Ben Meir, director, Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv

"It's the first time that I can recall that the voters are zeroing in on the economy."
"Some thought there might be other issues, like Iran, but there hasn't been."
Naftali Bennett, economy minister, Tel Aviv

The predictions were for a) a loss; b) a razor-thin win for Likud, and the likely end to the political career of the skilled politician whose rhetoric outmatches even that of his most un-ardent admirer, Barack Obama. No word that one could detect yet, that the President of the United States, that firm supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood who prefers to keep Benjamin Netanyahu at arm's length, has telephoned to personally convey his sincere congratulations at Bibi's victory at the polls.

The acknowledgement has been made that Israeli voters have been moving steadily toward the right of the political spectrum for the past fifteen years. And that's surprising? For the past fifteen years, although Israel hasn't had to face the nightmare of combined Arab armies converging on the Jewish State with the intention of destroying it, it has had to face the reality that Arab and Persian non-state militias generally labelled as terrorists by most civil countries have taken up that task.

Israel no longer trains its military to fight conventional battles to save itself from annihilation. It now must be aware of irregular guerrilla, suicide-assaults, of constant rockets hitting its border towns and villages and occasionally more sophisticated bombs flying overhead toward its major cities. Another front long opened on the public relations side has slapped the country alongside its head with the launching of Palestinian rights to self-determination-while-attacking-Israel.

Israel as Apartheid State where Palestinian human rights have been steadily denied, even while burqa-clad Israeli Arab women wait patiently to cast their ballot for the Combined Arab List. And where European Union countries flagellate Israel for its policies, victimizing Palestinians who only want, after all, their due; their due is explained depending on its audience. To the West, a modest wish for a state of their own; to the Mideast, the reclamation of the entire geography.

So, again; why is it that Israelis have turned to the right, preferring not to be slapped both sides of the head, but choosing instead to slap back at the first whack in a geography where honour demands steadfast resistance, and where conciliation of an enemy is taken as weakness, encouraging that enemy to strike again, and yet again, and harder with each iteration...?

The "surprisingly strong challenge" by Isaac Herzog of the centre-left Labor Party and his running mate, former peace negotiator Tzipi Livni, held in their "small but steady lead", somehow fizzled in the minds of the electorate. The economic conditions of living in Israel certainly is on people's minds, and the rising gap between haves and have-nots a considerable issue both of which must be tended to, but without security and adequate defence against threats of annihilation, bread-price-comparisons take second place.

President Barack Obama may not be grinning, but he'll have to bear it. He has not exhibited much in the way of grace in his grudging relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu. A man whose inexplicable focus on Israel's existence and threats against it, are so irritating to a man sitting in Washington who has his own ideas of issues of importance to him.

And it is, in fact, Obama who has disgraced himself and left his former allies from Europe to Asia to the Middle East lonely orphans, while he has sullied American honour in consorting with the enemies of liberty and human rights.