COMMENTARY
The Mess in Israel
Editor’s Commentary
John Podhoretz
April 2023

In November 2022, for the first time in a nearly a decade, an election in Israel had a decisive outcome. The government that emerged from that election two months later was instantly unacceptable to other Israelis, who have since taken to the streets. Over the past two months, the question I have been asked more than any other is: Can you explain what’s going on in Israel? The answer is not difficult: The right is seeking to enact an activist agenda, and that agenda angers, alarms, and/or terrifies everybody who didn’t vote for the parties of the right. Those parties, together with the Likud party under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, won 64 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Thus, the results constituted a winning margin for the Netanyahu bloc of about 3 percent, roughly the same spread that separated George W. Bush from John Kerry in 2004. READ MORE