Monday morning quarterbacking after elections

The day after the morning after Israel’s elections, everyone in Israel has advice for the winners:

• The Jerusalem Post calls on Kadima head Tzipi Livni and Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman to "put country first" and join a national unity government under the stewardship of Benjamin Netanyahu. "Change radically or die," Jerusalem Post columnist Larry Derfner tells the Labor Party. "For the Zionist Left, then, this is a moment of opportunity. We have to become a movement again with principles, with leaders who can inspire, and with the goal of winning power and leading the country in a new direction, and to do this, we need a big political party." Join Kadima and make history by carrying out the peace process, a Post Op-Ed tells Lieberman.
   
• The advice continues in Ynet with actor and late-night host Yair Lapid, in an open letter to new Knesset members, urging them to take the job seriously.
   "Despite the lack of clarity about the next government, one thing is becoming painfully clear – the entire left-wing bloc has suffered a crushing defeat in the election," begins an editorial in Thursday’s Ha’aretz. Israel’s left got what it deserved, Ha’aretz correspondent Israel Harel writes. 

• The national religious public lost the elections and lost big because they were not inclusive enough and able to accept a wider breadth of opinions, Temple Institute Director Yehudah Glick writes in Ha’aretz.

• Livni beat the left and was beaten by the right, Ha’aretz columnist Ari Shavit writes.

• Malls were the biggest winners on Election Day, Ynet reports.

• The Left did not crumble, Ynet columnist Uri Misgav asserts, while a Ynet Op-Ed urges Netanyahu to keep leftist parties out of his government.

• Reaction in the pan-Arab media to Israel’s election results were predictable, the Jerusalem Post reports. 

• Election day was a "Yom Kippur for the Left," says Jerusalem Post columnist Gil Troy, echoing a Meretz official.

"As Israel’s critics around the world and at home mourn this ‘rightward shift’ and the rise of the ‘ultra-nationalist’ Lieberman, as they fret about dimming prospects for a two-state solution, instead of further demonizing the country they should apologize, in the true spirit of Yom Kippur. The rightward shift resulted from the failure of the Left’s ideas at home – and the betrayal by liberals from around the world."

• Jerusalem Post correspondent and columnist Herb Keinon analyzes the coalition calculus of saying ‘no’ to America.