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Do Israelis Really Want 'Anyone But Bibi?'

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JERUSALEM, Israel -- "Anyone but Bibi." Those three words encompass the predominant media theme here as Israelis prepare to vote in Tuesday's election.

If the final polls are correct--and they often aren't in the jumble of last-minute decisions among the voters--a coalition of leftists and centrists led by Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog may be poised to replace Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

The polls say voters in Israel want "change." Sounds like America in 2008 when hundreds of millions of dollars went into a campaign mantra of "change" (paired with "hope") that would erase the "nightmare" created by eight years of George W. Bush.

In May 1999, I was on assignment in Jerusalem with Chris Mitchell, now CBN News Middle East bureau chief. We had been sent to cover the election between Netanyahu, who was serving his first term as prime minister, and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak. The Clinton administration in Washingon, which had put the squeeze on Netanyahu for land concessions at every turn, now had dispatched its chief pollster and other top campaign strategists to Israel in an effort to engineer a come-from-behind victory for Barak.

They succeeded.

We were in the central media headquarters building on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem when the election results came through: Barak had handily defeated Netanyahu.

Joyful pandemonium broke out among the journalists, many of them 20-somethings.

"Are you going to the rally in Tel Aviv?" they asked each other as some climbed on desks and shouted and hugged. Chris and I looked at each other, somewhat dumbfounded. These were the journalists--Israeli, European, North American--who were supposed to be reporting on the campaign, not leading it.

Despite the glee over Netanyahu's defeat, Barak's term in office proved to be short. He had berated Netanyahu for his policies in Lebanon, and Barak fulfilled a campaign promise to withdraw Israel's military within a year from the security zone in south Lebanon, where many soldiers had died protecting Israeli civilians and Lebanese Christians.

But immediately after the pullout, Hezbollah terrorists took over the region. Scores of Israeli soldiers and civilians would die in a hail of Katyusha rocket fire on Haifa and other northern Israeli cities from that same area during the 2006 Lebanon war.

Today, as many as 100,000 more sophisticated rockets, some able to reach all of Israel, are poised on the northern border.

Barak also came to Camp David near Washington in the summer of 1999 with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for a peace conference brokered by President Bill Clinton. Barak offered very generous terms for an agreement, including half of Jerusalem and most of the territory in the West Bank (biblical Judea and Samaria) that Israel won in the 1967 Six-Day War.

It wasn't enough for Arafat, and months later the Nobel Peace Prize winner began the second Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, which left thousands of Israelis and Palestinians dead.

Since then, the failures of the so-called Oslo "peace process," where it was decided that Israel would concede territory in exchange for peace promises from its Palestinian neighbors, have piled up under prime ministers named Sharon and Olmert -- not Netanyahu.

Decisions made in Washington and Brussels and Ramallah and Tehran, rather than in Jerusalem, have helped transform the Middle East into a region far more dangerous than it was when Netanyahu began his second stint as prime minister in 2009.

In the years since then, Netanyahu has consistently warned in detail, sometimes with eloquence (as his address before Congress showed) about the threats to Israel's national security and the security of the West from radical Islamist governments and parasite groups in host countries.

But that has not shortened the lengthy list of those who would like to see him gone: the Obama White House, the U.S. State Department, the Israeli Left, including most of the media (as well as some political opponents on the right), The New York Times editorial board, Ayatollah Khamenei, ISIS, Mahmoud Abbas, Hezbollah, most European leaders and Hamas, among others.

While some in Israel may want to party like it's 1999 after March 17, the hard reality will set in soon enough. The same dangers that threaten not only Jerusalem, but a wider circle beyond the cauldron of the Middle East to Europe, Australia, and North America, will be waiting for the next prime minister.

The post-election euphoria will no doubt create a buzz of "diplomatic breakthroughs" from custodians of the fantasy that forcing Jews from several communities in the West Bank will still the jihadists and make them reasonable. The White House staff may even start cleaning the wine glasses for a new round of toasts.

But the Israeli voters haven't spoken just yet, and they may not choose "Anyone but Bibi."

So keep the party on hold, for now.

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About The Author

John
Waage

John Waage has covered politics and analyzed elections for CBN New since 1980, including primaries, conventions, and general elections. He also analyzes the convulsive politics of the Middle East.