In the aftermath of the Israeli election in February, which brought to power a government coalition that includes the extreme rightist Avigdor Lieberman, now Israel’s foreign minister, an Israeli friend whose sympathies had always been with the left said to me in a resigned, cryptic way, “It’s sad, but it does not change anything; we have no one to talk to anyway.” He gave me approximately the same answer when I referred to the need to change Israel’s electoral system based on proportional representation, which produces weak majorities at best and near-paralysis at worst.