The re-election of a prime minister in a European country with a population not much bigger than Israel’s is not usually of great import for the wider world.

The re-election of a prime minister in a European country with a population not much bigger than Israel’s is not usually of great import for the wider world.

This was how I began a blog post on this very site, four years ago, analysing the significance as I saw it of Viktor Orban’s re-election as prime minister of Hungary. Orban’s return to power was not a surprise; not least because he had eroded Hungarian democracy to such an extent that the deck was stacked in his favor. His Fidesz Party passed legislation that politicized the judiciary, removing a central check and balance on the power of the government; media critical of the ruling party was crippled by spurious fines and then bought out by supporters of the government; and the previously non-partisan election commission was handed over to Orban loyalists, enabling partisan gerrymandering of electoral districts – solely in Fidesz’s favor – and allowing Fidesz alone to break the rules on campaign spending.

At the time of writing that piece, the significance for Israel was hypothetical. This was during the period of the Naftali Bennett / Yair Lapid -led ‘change........

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