(1) All the major media, in Israel, North America and Europe, relying on multiple polls in Israel, wrongly predicted a massive right-wing electoral sweep.  And while that didn’t materialize (in fact Likud-Israel Beiteinu lost 11 of 42 seats), neither did the Left feel the wind beneath its sails--it did poorly, with Labour receding, and Tsipi Livni’s party getting 6 votes (plummeting from her former party, Kadima’s 29 tallies in 2009).

 

What Israel’s electorate in fact returned, upsetting all expectations, was a Right-Center  preponderance, clearly focused domestically on social and economic issues (and, in Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid’s 19-vote case, on IDF service for the ultra-Orthodox). (We will turn to foreign policy in a moment.)

 

(2) Max Weber, an opponent of Marxism, understood that while socio-historical dynamics involve economic, political, and cultural-ideological factors, history above all rests upon, and is made by, politics.  Politics, not the economy, is the “independent variable”, and politics, in turn, has much to do with the intangible human qualities we call  leadership (it was Weber, after all, who invented the term “charismatic leader”).

 

And Israel’s election indeed turned on leaders, able and less able. Here three leaders, who organized and motivated coherent large-scale followings were key. Bibi Netanyahu, already twice prime minister, and clearly on the verge, despite losses, of organizing a third governing coalition; Yair Lapid, an actor and journalist, able to ride the wave of a domestically centrist movement with social concerns but which is, at the same time, as we shall see, “soft-right” in terms of security policy; and Naftali Bennett, of the Jewish Home party, taking right-wing and religious votes away from Likud-Beitenu with a clearly pro-settlements and anti-Palestinian platform. 

 

On the other hand, would-be leaders of leftist parties did not do very well. Shelly Yachimovich, concentrating wholly on domestic issues, led Labour to a disappointing, lacklustre finish; and Tsipi Livni (concentrating  on making peace with the Palestinians) fell off the electoral cliff, barely making the cut with a miserable two seats for the “Tsipi Livni Party”.

 

So Israel’s election throws light on how politics both reflect, and shape, issues, and is in turn affected by leadership. And how, in democracies, politics and leadership largely determine the outcome of elections.

 

Thirdly, Israel, alongside the election’s clear domestic emphasis, nevertheless also expressed a second, “soft-Right” regional-diplomatic-security consensus. Here the pundits and pollsters again missed the boat: the key parties upon which a new, Netanhyahu-led governing coalition will be based—Likud-Beitenu, Yesh Atid,  probably Shas and Jewish Home (both of which may well reach workable issues-related  compromises), and even, possibly, Tsipi Livni’s Kadima remnant, are united by a “go-slow” policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians, and a clear concern over Iran’s approaching nuclear capability…. 

 

Indeed, this right-center, or soft-Right, consensus is the election’s over-riding importance, given the gathering storm over Iran.  And it validates a key reason Netanyahu chose to hold the vote at this time in the first place: as a kind of referendum on his tough, “red-line” anti-Teheran security policy.

 

Here we should all recall another key variable facing Netanyahu, and Israel, American policy after Obama’s re-election.  Here my hunch—reinforced recently by his nomination of the Un-Holy Trinity of Hagel, Brennan, and Kerry (a trio which reminds one of FDR’s attacks on “Martin, Barton, and Fish”, three Republican isolationists), all clearly anti-Israel figures, to key Cabinet posts--is that Obama will not only not support an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear installations, but will work actively to prevent it. 

 

And—once the real meaning of the recent election becomes more clear--Obama will also do what he can to undermine the emerging “soft-Right” Israeli coalition probably emerging from the current political negotiations. (Here we should register his striking election-eve indication that he, Obama, knew better what was in Israel’s best interest than Netanyahu.)

 

All of which brings us back to Weber, politics and power—given that “big fish [try to] eat little fish”, can Israel defend its own national existence (which, in its neighbourhood, means survival) in the face of opposition, indeed, even undermining, by what is, after all, not only the world’s only super power, but Israel’s only ally?

 

It is an excruciating situation—how this struggle between survival and expediency, sovereignty and  intervention, will play out remains shrouded in the mists of the future. But some kind of final confrontation seems, and not too long off,  to be in the offing, and in this regard the recent Israeli election—which could, somewhat paradoxically, result in a broad-based 70+ vote Right-to-Center-Left national-unity coalition--may well prove providential.

 

(Professor Krantz is Editor of the Daily Isranet Briefing, and Director of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research)