Free Republic

The Knesset voted Wednesday night to dissolve itself after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a governing coalition, sending Israel to a new election mere seven weeks after the last one. At the heart of the impasse was the issue of drafting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students: Yisrael Beiteinu's Avigdor Lieberman, without whom Netanyahu can't form a coalition, refused to back down on the bill's terms, while ultra-Orthodox parties claimed they have already yielded enough ground. MK Avigdor Lieberman wrote on his Facebook page that Likud holds responsibility for the repeat election because of its refusal to vote on bill to...

Imagine if Israel's prime minister Bibi Netanyahu had been defeated in yesterday's elections. You have to think Morning Joe would have heralded the news at the very top of today's show. That's big news, when the "right side of history" prevails. Instead, they led with major-league baseball and Brexit chaos. When she eventually got around to reporting Bibi's win, a bitter Mika Brzezinski sounded like she was sucking on lemons. Mika emphasized the negative, and made unsubtle, sarcastic analogies to President Trump. Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s conservative prime minister for the past decade, and his chief rival, Benny Gantz, a centrist former military chief, emerged neck and neck from a tight race in Tuesday’s parliamentary election, according to preliminary results. But by early Wednesday, with most of the votes counted, Mr. Netanyahu appeared poised to win a fourth consecutive term in office, and a fifth overall. A count of the broader blocs needed to form a coalition government gave Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party a clear advantage over Mr. Gantz’s Blue and White.