The mantra of the MSM, aped on FR, that Israel is moving ‘right’ has been simply wrong from the start. Israel is moving left by any definition, just like the USA, and for the same reason: When the right achieves power, it doesn’t deliver.
I think you’ve got a key point there. There’s a stereotype in USA of Israelis as tough, fighting off those terrorists and surrounded by Arabs. But I know lots of Israelis, their country’s left is just like ours, they have large numbers of people with the same mentality of appeasement, peace at any price, the Palestinians are really nice people who have been pushed to extremes by poverty and suffering, cooperate internationally to avoid war, etc. Hard to believe when they have seen Arab violence so much more frequently and so much more up close, not to mention the UN prejudice, yet as you say, if the right does not fully exercise its principles and thereby prove the efficacy of those principles, credibility is eventually lost.