If Israel has voted for change today it is not for change of the political map – it’s for a change of the political system. Whatever one might think about the outcome of this election, it is clear to most observers that this can’t continue: political parties should not rule with less than one quarter of the mandates. A Prime Minister can’t seriously make policy when he (or she) has to compromise with so many parties over so many issues just to maintain his coalition.

Israel has not voted for any of the parties. It did not vote for any of the ideologies. It did not vote for something – but rather against: those voting for Livni voted against Likud’s Binyamin Netanyahu. Those voting for Israel Beiteinu and Avigdor Lieberman voted against the ruling elites.

But they also voted against the political system. Lieberman made a name for himself as the scary candidate promising to change the relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel. However, Lieberman has many other important items on his agenda and one of them is the need to change the system and give the Prime Minister more power (those fearing him tremble when they think of the prospect of a more powerful Prime Minister Lieberman). This longstanding desire for system change is the tempting promise Kadima is now dangling in the hope that Lieberman might grab the achievement he can get – the achievement he’ll be able to take credit for.

The speakers of Kadima have a simple message to Lieberman: with Kadima and Labor you can have this success – with Netanyahu you can’t. Netanyahu, they say, is committed to other parties, namely, the religious parties, and will not be able to implement such change. One Kadima Minister went even further, suggesting that Lieberman join the coalition until this change is completed, and promised that another election round will be scheduled when this is done.

Labor’s Ehud Barak also dedicated a significant portion of his election night speech to the need to better the system. Of course, that’s a more understandable position when it comes from a losing party. Yet again, Kadima and Lieberman, both on the winning side of this day also sing the same tune – and I think they will have another important supporter: the public.

The rise of the Israel Beiteinu (Israel is Our Home) Party in this Israeli election cycle has finally made it to the pages of the New York Times:

In 1978, when he was 20, Mr. Lieberman immigrated to Israel from Moldova, then a Soviet republic, and he lives in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Popular with the country's so-called Russian vote, he is vocal about the threat from Iran and advocates swapping areas of Israel that are heavily populated by Arab citizens for parts of the West Bank that are populated by Israeli Jews.

A timely appearance as Lieberman and his colleagues, according to all polls, are now the hottest political commodity in Israel's politics. But while Lieberman's policies and their impact on Israel and its relations with its neighbors are now extensively discussed in Israel and beyond, there's also a "Jewish angle" to be taken into account. That is -- Lieberman as the "great alienator". His rise might give even more credence to claims that Israeli Jews and American Jews are growing apart, and might help accelerate trends already in play in these complicated Israel-Diaspora relations.

It is an open secret that liberal American Jews have turned their attention in growing numbers to the plight of Israeli Arabs, and are now contributing more than ever to causes related to the advancement of this minority within Israel. Almost two years ago, I wrote about dilemmas emanating from this strange alliance of American Jews and Israeli Arabs:

Thirty percent of the money the NIF distributes is channeled to activities aimed at promoting the Arabs of Israel, to raise them to an equal status. This is a central part of the important objective of "a Jewish and democratic state." This is also a significant matter for the American Jewish community, which is a minority itself. 

And while there were some setbacks along the way, allocating money to better the relations of Jewish and Muslim citizens of Israel has remained one of the more popular causes for American Jewish funders. It is also an issue many American Jews identify as a moral cause, and has the potential of making them less comfortable with Israel's society and culture.

Enter Lieberman: if polls are correct, what American Jews will see in Israel is the growing power of a party seen by most of them -- rightly or wrongly -- as racist toward Arab citizens. Lieberma's platform, of course, is more nuanced and complicated than just being "racist" (which he claims it isn't). Nevertheless, I can hardly envision a narrative that will not make Lieberma's political achievement a nuisance and an embarrassment to the average American Jew. Thus, the stage is set for yet another show of differences:

American Jews will wonder about the nature and the morality of the "Jewish state".

Israeli Jews -- if they even notice American reluctance -- will look at their American brothers thinking that their simplistic naiveté makes prevents them from understanding Israel's tough reality.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.  And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

I don’t think many serious people will argue that doing good for the world is, well, good. That feeding the hungry, if possible, is desirable. It is also not a novelty to espouse the Wilsonian message of the need not to be indifferent “to suffering outside our borders” (it’s called “Wilsonian” for a reason).

But I’d like to take issue with the last sentence of this paragraph, because I think that at the end of the day it all comes down to this: has the world really changed? And if it did, how?

Obama didn’t elaborate on this “change” assertions – he similarly avoided explaining his message of “change” during the campaign. It is essential to understand what kind of change Obama sees in the world, since he builds around it his call for America “to change with it”. How can one adapt oneself to changes around the world, when one doesn’t understand how the world has changed?

Like many leaders before him, Obama crafted a message to the crowds, and like many before him he tends to see the world as if everything has started afresh when he was elected. The world has changed when the first Bush was in office (end of the Soviet Empire). It has changed under Clinton (the internet), it has changed under the second Bush (9/11) – and going backwards we can easily find changes in every term of every president. Some bigger changes, some smaller changes. We see them as they happen, and we try to figure out what impact they will have in the future, and we try to adapt accordingly, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so.

The problem I have with Obama’s message is that I don’t know what change in the world he talks about. It must be something new – otherwise, why would Obama bother talking about things that we already know. And it must be something related to changes in other countries that also require change in American behavior – that’s the whole point of mentioning it.

I can try and guess what he means: maybe it’s really the war on terror, and his assumption that making the world safer will only be possible if other nations are more prosperous and less hungry. This is also an idea as old as the American republic – almost a cliché - and it’s also a matter for debate: it is not really clear whether prosperous countries are inherently less dangerous to the world than poor ones. Case in point: Iran. Case in point: Saudi Arabia. Of course, one can also find less well to do environments serving as fertile ground for despair and terror: Somalia, Afghanistan, Gaza, Egypt.

But since both prosperous areas and not-so-prosperous areas serve as launching pad to terrorists and agents of instability, one has to ask oneself if it’s really the hunger, or something else that makes the world dangerous. A reasonable conclusion – also not new – is that the real reason for such diseases is lack of democracy and corrupt leadership or chaotic atmosphere. Gaza – leadership which doesn’t care about the people. Somalia – no leadership. Afghanistan – same. Egypt – autocratic regime. Etc Etc.

And of course, this doesn’t mean that feeding the hungry can’t be an end of itself for many other reasons. Reasons mainly categorized as “idealistic” rather than “pragmatic”. That’s why I always thought that Obama’s message of pragmatic government – Hillary Clinton called it – has limits. As I wrote here:

[A]t the end of January, when the Obama administration has to start making decisions, its pragmatism will only help if there’s a framework of ideas and beliefs guiding it toward the right decisions. It is the pragmatic means that Obama hopes to be able to use–but there also has to be an end.

If Obama’s idealism is one that’s guiding him toward feeding the hungry around the world – I’m all for it. However, the world hasn’t changed in that respect, and if it did, it’s probably for the better: less hungry today than it was yesterday. But if Obama is trying to tell us that feeding the hungry will be the way with which he intends to fight dangerous, bad people – there’s reason to doubt the receipt, and even in these days of justified but rather mind-numbing celebration -- also worry about the future.

Israelis have become so accustomed to the idiotic reaction by world leaders whenever Israel goes to war, that we now get a sense of satisfaction from the mere fact that such reaction is not totally one-sided. One Israeli paper has had a headline today saying: "Europe refrains from one-sided condemnation of Israel." Hurray!

Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni explained today that "[t]he international community understands that Hamas is an extreme Islamist organization that spreads its hatred in the entire region, which is being supported by Iran. And the international community needs to understand that this is the translation of the right of Israel to defend itself, that there is no other alternative and we are doing what we need to do in order to defend our citizens."

But does it really understand?

The much admired President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy - no doubt a better friend to Israel than his predecessors, and someone who does understand the need to fight against terror - has called today for "an immediate stop to the firing of rockets on Israel and to the Israeli bombings in Gaza and calls for all parties to use restraint." The not-as-much admired British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has said: "I am deeply concerned by continuing missile strikes from Gaza on Israel and by Israel's response today."

To be fair, these statements do show a predisposition by European leaders to "understand" that deterioration was caused by Hamas' decision to allow - or more accurately orchestrate - rocket fire into Israel. Thus, they preach first for "stop to the firing of rockets" and only then to "Israeli bombings." But one has to wonder: why the mention of Israel? Why the concern about Israel's legitimate response to the daily rocketing of its civilians? Why only the reviled US administration has the courage and the clarity to respond to the Gaza operation without feeling the need to engage in linguistic acrobatics?

"The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza," [State Secretary Condoleezza] Rice said.

Middle East complications aside, it is, sometimes, as simple as that.

Teaching this semester in the battle-tested Sapir College, near the town of Sderot, I had an interesting experience last week. It is a course in journalism, and Monday morning I have to groups to deal with -- one is a larger group of students I need to familiarize with "journalism's basics" (in college they still believe there's such thing), the other one is the smaller group learning the more advanced "news editing" course.

I have warned them all in advance that there's going to be a lot of America-oriented material in this course, because these are the topics I'm dealing with on a daily basis. They weren't quite happy with it -- American means reading material in English -- but agreed to play along. That is -- until they realized that by "America" I often mean "American Jews."

We had a show of hands this past Monday. About 80% of my young, eager to please, enthusiastic, curious, fun-loving Israeli students think American Jews are, well, boring. Not personally boring, just generally so. If they were to decide what to do with them, journalistically speaking, they'd ignore them. And these, mind you, are the journalism students: so, in a short while, some of them will get to decide.

One of them, not long ago, had to write an assignment on some Americans visiting Israel. "It is the most boring piece I've ever written," he complained. These visitors were so happy to be in Israel, impressed with its achievement and with its people, so positive. There was nothing to talk about, no questions to ask, no issues to debate. How can one write a piece about such good people?

I asked him to give me the outline of his questioning. It was almost anti-Semitic in nature. All he wants to know -- meeting Jews -- is about money. How much do they have, how much will they give to Israel, and to what causes, will the financial crisis make them give less, did they give a lot in the past.

This reminded me of an article published last week in the Jerusalem Post -- a story detailing the extent to which Israeli media has ignored the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities, even though it was taking place in Jerusalem this year:

Coverage in the Hebrew media of the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities, the umbrella body that represents billions of dollars of annual charity donations from hundreds of thousands of North American Jewish households, was generally limited to policy speeches given at the conference by Israeli politicians.

See the problem here?

I think my students, instinctively, do.