In a bright spot for electoral politics worldwide, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, staunch defender of Western values and Israeli liberty, has been restored to power once again. In what is arguably the most perilous Middle Eastern security environment in decades, including an increasingly bellicose and assertive Iran vowing death to Israel even as it moves closer to developing nuclear weapons, Israeli voters have apparently had enough of their latest dalliance with Israel’s establishment Left. There can be little doubt that the Biden administration’s hapless Middle East policies and appeasement of Iran have also been influencing factors in the unexpected electoral change of heart.
Netanyahu has already served as Israel’s prime minister during two previous terms, from 1996 to 1999 and again from 2009 to 2021, for a total of 15 years. He has been prime minister during at least part of the term in office of every United States president since Bill Clinton except for George W. Bush. Netanyahu — like Donald Trump — is currently being targeted by the Left with unfounded legal charges alleging corruption, which Netanyahu fiercely denies.
Netanyahu’s winning coalition is also supported by Israel’s Religious Zionist party, which, we are assured by the Leftist media worldwide, is dangerously right-wing and intolerant. Certainly the fact that the Religious Zionist party is non-secular is alone grounds warranting condemnation from the militantly secular international Left. The specific transgressions of this movement and its unapologetic leaders Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich include opposition to the LGBTQ movement and support for the formal annexation of all Israeli occupied territory, including the entire West Bank. Such views, of course, constitute nothing less than blasphemy against the international radical Leftist consensus, and have put the movement “squarely at odds with the vast majority of American Jews, as well as the US Democratic Party,” in the Times of Israel’s unironic phraseology. But regardless of the Left’s hissy fit, the Religious Zionist party is poised to become Israel’s third largest after many years in the electoral wilderness.
As for the new Netanyahu government, look for a new urgency in dealing with Iran’s obvious nuclear menace, a matter Netanyahu has repeatedly indicated Israel is prepared to deal with unilaterally if the United States continues to play footsie with Iran’s mad mullahs.
