About 24 hours from now, the polling stations will open and Israelis will go to the ballots to vote. Never has there been an election season in which the ideological victory has been so clear. The Right has won. Conceptually, ideologically, morally. The leaders of the major parties – the true contestants in these elections – were raised in the democratic spirit of the Likud. Three out of four emerged from the party's ranks.
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Some 25 years after the Oslo Accords, it is clear that the leftist political approach has failed in Israeli politics. Most of the candidates speak, each in his own idiom, about the need for change, if not a revolution, in the justice system and the relations between the branches of government. This issue was marginal, of not hushed, in the political discourse a decade ago. Economically as well, the Left's brand of socialism is almost entirely absent from the ballots.
The issues facing the voter are not the Right's geopolitical achievements, nor the vaccine drive that placed Israel at the head of the global war on COVID-19; neither is it the country's stable economy, one of the least impacted by the worldwide crisis. At the heart of these elections – the factor that motivated it and drove it mad – is the issue that placed the justice system and the failing Left at the center of Israel's political agenda: personal hatred.
How strong is this hatred? So strong that, for the Left, Netanyahu's removal has become a goal that justifies turning their back on all their values and the ideas they have propagated. Some in the Left even call on the public to vote for "rightist" parties, such as Sa'ar's or Naftali Bennett's, as a "strategic vote." Just to bring Netanyahu down. No matter that the last decade has been the most peaceful security-wise, that the economy is booming, that Israel is thriving geopolitically, that its streets are bustling while Europe is resuming lockdowns: for them, "Israel has never known such evil days as the days of Benjamin Netanyahu's rule," and it is our duty to hate him. It sometimes seems that, if even reality cannot break through to the camp mired in mud, no words will help.
This inconceivably absurd situation must end – and it will, the moment the side that has won the ideological battle gains a majority. The ideological war in Israel has been decided. Now, the Right must buttress its triumph through an unequivocal numerical victory, gaining enough seats in the Knesset to allow it to continue on its path.
This is what is at stake in tomorrow's elections, and this is the mission of the national camp. It sounds simple, but there are those in the Right who have also become addicted to the "change at any cost" discourse. They should keep in mind that the Left is seeking Netanyahu's fall for a reason.
Now, it may attain a moral victory from the hands of rightists. Any attempt to transfer votes from the Right to the Left, or to undermine the chances for an unambiguously rightist-national government, may put to waste generations of an ideological battle that has ended in a heroic victory. The responsibility lies on the shoulders of the candidates – but no less so, those of the voters.
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