Voting For Security

"I can't tell you what the other guys did, but all along, I had Likud ahead of the Zionist Union."
"Ten days before the election, I had Likud at 26 seats, and Zionist Union at 21."
Avi Degani, president, Deocartography Knowledge Group, Israel

"Netanyahu's comments have clearly crossed a red line. Imagine a presidential candidate in the United States, for instance, warning the public of voting trends among Afro-Americans or Jews. These statements join a long history of similar provocations made by Netanyahu and other party leaders against Arab society -- which cause long-term damage to Jewish-Arab relations in Israel."
Amnon Be'eri Sulitzeanu, co-director, The Abraham Fund, Israel

"Netanyahu gambled that even though economics were at the forefront of the campaign, people would not want to vote for the Zionist Union. He is still not popular among the right but he is still seen by most Israelis as the best of a bunch of bad choices."
Mitchell Plitnick, program director, Foundation for Middle East Peace

"I'm touched by the weight of the responsibility that the people of Israel have put on my shoulders. I wish to say that I will do anything in my power to ensure the well-being and security of all the citizens of Israel."
"Against all odds, we achieved a great victory for Likud."
Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu

Copies of ballot papers and campaign posters for Prime Minister Benjaminin aftermath of parliamentary elections. Jack Guez, AFP Getty Images

As it happened, Likud won 30 seats, and his closest opponent 24, not the iffy 27-27 split-decision so many had prognosticated, inferring that Mr. Netanyahu's political career had come to a careening halt. And though economic matters were the largest domestic issue motivating people to complain about their lot as Israelis, an even larger purple blot of trepidation about the future motivated them to come out for a 70% voting rate to retain the one man whom they felt had the best chance of securing their future.

It's the threat, stupid. The everpresent threat, from everywhere outside Israel's borders. Let us count the ways; from Syria where the regime has its own malignant designs and Islamic State may yet prevail but both with a similar agenda relating to Israel. And then there is Lebanon where Iran's proxy Hezbollah terror group has its own plans spurred by the Iranian Republic. And of course Iran itself with its nuclear ambitions and its very directly expressed threats of annihilation of the Jewish State.

From the Sinai there is the presence of Salafists of all stripes from al-Qaeda and Islamic State to Hamas and other Islamist brigades sworn to the destruction of Israel. The Muslim Brotherhood has its place in there as well as all the other disparate groups slavering at the bit to get their share of bloodletting should the occasion finally arise as they hope it will. Right next door in Gaza, Hamas is preparing its logistics, its weapons and its tunnels for another kick at the cat alert to its actions.

Qatar and Turkey do their best to incite, to arm, to fund as many of these jihadi Islamofascists to destroy the presence of a Jewish state on land consecrated to Islam. So, yes, Israel has an existential problem that confronts it regularly, constantly. At threatening times like these it is always comfortable to know one has friends who will support the struggle to exist, who can be relied upon to give the kind of emotional, if no other, support that gives empathetic encouragement to endure.

And whoops! those friends are becoming scarcer and scarcer, their attestations of friendship and concern, support and encouragement becoming more wan and insincere as the days go by. The United States and the countries of Europe have sprung anti-Semitic leaks here, there and everywhere, finding boycott-divestment programs and United Nations threats handy cudgels to keep Israel in line with their thoughts that the Palestinians under Fatah-led Palestinian Authority who also attack Israel, get their just due.

And their due is just about anything they claim, from a divided Jerusalem, incorporating Israel's most sacred sites of worship into a Palestinian state, to an unbridled right of return to the descendants of the Palestinians who fled the creation of the State of Israel, so that the two-state solution becomes two Palestinian states, with Israel failing by right of dominating numbers. The countries of the Middle East know themselves as Arab Muslim countries with one Persian Muslim country. The Middle East cannot accept one Jewish country.

It is an assault on Arab sensibilities that Israel would wish to assert itself unequivocally as a Jewish State and enact into law that reality, for to do so would be to prove the accusations that assail it from the Palestinians, from the Europeans, from the Americans, that it is edging ever closer to the anti-democratic, apartheid position that besmirches its reputation. Even though citizenship is denied Palestinians in Arab countries.