Hard Right

Reuters is typical of most news organizations as they report under the headline "Hard-right shift delivers upset election win for Netanyahu":

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Wednesday to form a new governing coalition quickly after an upset election victory that was built on a shift to the right and is likely to worsen a troubled relationship with the White House.

In the final days of campaigning, Netanyahu abandoned a commitment to negotiate a Palestinian state - the basis of more than two decades of Middle East peacemaking - and promised to go on building settlements on occupied land. Such policies defy the core vision of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict embraced by President Barack Obama and his Republican and Democratic predecessors.

In the main-stream media, "hard-right" is used frequently as a pejorative phrase that is intended to delegitimize a group that the Left disagrees with. In the context of this Israeli election, let's examine exactly what the phrase "hard right" means:

• It means people who are concerned—very concerned —about the Arab predilection to publicly and repeatedly express the desire for the annihilation of the State of Israel.
• It means people who do not want a nuclear Iran and are willing to tell feckless Western leaders that a deal with a terror-sponsoring state that repeatedly lies about everything except its intention to destroy Israel (and ultimately, the West) is a bad deal.
• It means people who don't appreciate one feckless leader in particular who actively tried to sway their election with political operatives and, it appears, taxpayer money from his own country.
• It means people who do not see any reason to make peace with a group—the palestinians—who have no legitimate historical or lawful claim to Israeli land, who have no past "palestinian state" that was "taken away" or "occupied," and who have murderous intentions that have been played out repeatedly over the last 70 years.
• It means people who have every right to build apartment blocks and other housing on land that is part of their country, and cannot understand how leftists somehow equate building housing  with the palestinians' rockets targeting schools and Israeli civilian population centers.
• It means people who love their country, are proud of its amazing achievements, and are equally proud of the liberal democracy (unique in the Middle East) that respects women, gay people, religious freedom, the rule of law, and yes, even its Arab citizens who have the right to vote and participate it its democracy (something not present in most of it neighboring Arab countries).
• It means people who say "never again" and live it every day in a country that must be strong in a very, very bad neighborhood.

That's what "hard right" means in this context, and if an increasingly petulant Barack Obama, some of his Democrat supporters, and Reuters, along with the other trained hamsters of the MSM, are upset by that reality, it's too damn bad.

UPDATE:
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It appears that there will be no attempt at rapprochement with Israel coming from the Obama administration. Instead a president who has been petulant and vindictive when he doesn't get his way now threatens (via leaks from the White House) to sponsor UN sanctions that would force Israel into a peace deal with the palestinians. Of course, the phrase "peace deal" is laughable because it would empower the terror group Hamas and increase the influence and threat from Islamist Iran—apparently, Obama's new friend in the Middle East.

The Wall Street Journal comments:

As for peace with the Palestinians, Israelis have seen Gaza become a launching pad for missile attacks on innocent civilians after Israel left. They have seen the Palestinian Authority reject reasonable land-for-peace offers and the terror group Hamas join the PA’s governing coalition. Israelis have shown they will take risks for peace—recall Oslo in 1993 and Ehud Barak’s sweeping concessions in 2000 that Yasser Arafat rejected—but they are not suicidal.

President Obama might also reflect on his own contribution to Mr. Netanyahu’s victory. Israelis surrounded by hostile nations sworn to their destruction are most likely to take risks for peace when they feel secure in America’s support. But Mr. Obama’s looming concessions to Iran’s nuclear program have united Israelis and Arabs in opposition. The President has also been so personally and overtly hostile to Mr. Netanyahu, even trying to stop and then belittling his speech to Congress, that he invited a backlash.

But Obama never reflects on his mistakes, never adapts, never veers from a left-wing ideology that conveniently forgets the facts noted by the WSJ. My guess is that the Obama administration will punish Israel in a vindictive act that will allow an anti-Israel UN to sanction our ally. What's surprising is that the Democrats in the House and Senate will likely do nothing to stop him.