Yet most of the voters then recklessly rejected all admonitions. Ehud Barak enchanted them with sweet fantasy that may as well have come from cyberspace. He focused on unemployment and on the old woman in the hospital corridor to divert attention away from portents of existential peril. He was going to put the smile back on our collective face and make our lives so much more blissful. Illusion sure beats reality, which is why we optimistically keep grabbing for that elusive brass ring.
Dire warnings are definitely unwelcome killjoys.
Hence, in the previous race the electorate shrugged them off as no more than expected campaign propaganda. They were a lot more than that. This was regarded as a preposterous charge, if not an outright smear. It was therefore duly dismissed. Early in that contest the Likud cautioned that Labor had elected its most dovish, left-leaning Knesset list ever and that the man who'll oversee negotiations with the Palestinians for Barak will be Yossi Beilin.