Why the murky election results do not necessarily leave no options

• Published date: 29 March 2021
• Date: 29 March 2021
• Author: Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer
• Publication title: Israel National News (Israel)

On the other side, six seats were won by the three Arab parties comprising the "Joint List", and another four were secured by the more theologically conservative Mansour Abbas and hisRa'am party.

On the Jewish anti-Bibi front, the more left of center got 38, with Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid at 17, Benny Gantz's Blue and White at 8, socialist Labor at 7, and even more extreme-left Meretz at 6.

Gideon Saar's politically conservative, theologically and socially moderate-traditional New Hope came out with six, and Avigdor Liberman's mostly Russian and Ukrainian politically right-wing and anti-Arab but theologically anti-religious Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Is Our Home) with seven.

Of course it is a mess. But it is the fourth time there has been the same mess, a messy two years that never would have happened if Bennett's earlier United Right-Wing effort that secured 3.22 percent of that vote had secured only 0.03 percent more - or he had stayed in the Jewish Home party that he had taken over just a few years earlier. But that's the way the matzo crumbles.

Throughout, there consistently has been a vigorous move to the political right in Israel, with two-thirds of Jewish parties' Knesset seats consistently drawn to the right. The Left had forecast and promised a Mideastern paradise after they shoved the Oslo Accords through the Knesset, by buying off two select MKs, Alex Goldfarb and Gonen Segev, who actually had been elected on the right-wing party platform of Raful Eitan's Tzomet Party. So the Israeli Left gave the terrorist Yasser Arafat political legitimacy and a polity, and the intifadas followed.

Additional left-wing initiatives — Ehud Barak's unilateral withdrawal from South Lebanon and Ariel Sharon's similar unilateral withdrawal from Gaza — likewise gave rise to chaos. Iran-backed Hezbollah now dominates South Lebanon, with thousands of perilous rockets trained on Israeli cities that extend southward beyond the border "development" towns, and Hamas controls Gaza and launches rockets as far north as Eilat with almost no consequences of substance stopping them.

So the Left had its chance, barreled through its visions of "peace now," and most of Israel's electorate will not let them near power again. The only obstacle obstructing the formation of a solidly strong right-wing government is the conflict between those who stand with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and those who despise him, his style, his integrity in the most intensely personal way.

The Jewish...