NETANYAHU APPEARS HEADED FOR FIFTH TERM

Although the Likud and Blue and White parties are tied with 97 percent of the vote counted, Netanyahu has the support of the nationalist and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties

Beto O’Rourke has compared Netanyahu to a Nazi and he and Bernie Sanders have called him a racist. Barack Obama hates him. Donald Trump loves him. What counts though are the Israelis and it appears they have given Netanyahu a fifth term as prime minister.

Israel has a crazy election system in which voters choose political parties rather than the leader of their nation. Israel’s president, who is chosen by a vote of the Knesset, then chooses the leader of the party with the most seats in the Knesset as prime minister. When no party receives a majority of the 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, the president chooses as prime minister the party leader most likely to put together a coalition that will give him a majority in the Knesset.

With 97 percent of the vote counted in Tuesday’s election, the Likud and Blue and White parties each got 35 seats in the Knesset. But with the support of the nationalist and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties, Likud leader Netanyahu is expected to have a 65-55 majority in the Knesset.

Reuven Rivlin, Israel’s current president, is likely to ask Netanyahu to form a coalition government, a process that could take up to six weeks.

So, O’Rourke, Sanders and Obama will be very unhappy. However, Trump will be glad to see his friend chosen as Israel’s prime minister for a fifth term. And so will I.