When, on May 30, the new Knesset took the unprecedented step of dissolving itself and holding a second round of elections, most Israelis were frustrated, Evelyn Gordon among them. In retrospect, she has arrived at the conclusion that, whatever sort of government emerges, the recent vote will restore faith in democracy and better reflect the will of the people. The nub of the issue is that, when voting for right-wing parties other than Likud, most voters thought doing so would still help win the premiership for Benjamin Netanyahu:

In April, rightist parties that explicitly promised to support Benjamin Netanyahu for prime minister won 65 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. In other words, a clear majority of voters seemingly cast their ballots for a right-leaning, Netanyahu-led government. But after the election, Avigdor Liberman, chairman of the [right-wing, secular party] Yisrael Beytenu, refused to join such a government.

Thus even if an alternative government could have been formed—whether one led by Netanyahu’s rival, Benny Gantz, or a unity government [led by both]—it would have undermined rightists’ faith in the democratic process. Any such government would have looked like a product not of the majority’s will but of the whims of a single individual, Liberman, who “stole” right-wing votes and gave them to the left.

The do-over election showed this wasn’t the case. Liberman’s party not only maintained its strength but increased it, thereby proving him right that his voters cared more about curbing ultra-Orthodox power than about keeping Netanyahu in office. . . . That doesn’t mean Gantz won. [But] nobody will be able to claim the election was stolen. [regardless of what] happens.

Democracy’s sine qua non is that voting actually matters. When people stop believing this, democracy dies.

This is of particular importance, Gordon explains, because of undemocratic moves by both Yitzḥak Rabin and Ariel Sharon that led repeatedly to territorial compromises, leaving the right more cynical about the democratic process. Perhaps, she concludes, the reversal of this trend will be Netanyahu’s “final service to Israel.”

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.