A fair number of myths that had taken root in Israeli political discourse were debunked in these elections. The following are the five most important ones:

“The Israeli public has veered to the right”

The advantage of the right-wing bloc, which allowed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to form a government in 2009 and which was consistently maintained in all of the polls in recent years, provided the foundation for the emergence of one of the big myths that took over Israeli politics. The most absurd was that even the leader of the Labor Party, Shelly Yachimovich, attempted to lure the right throughout the campaign. Just two weeks before the end, when she realized she had made a mistake, she returned to her target audience on the left and discovered that much of it had voted with their feet and gone to other parties — Meretz and Hatenua. (We’ll come back to Yachimovich later, when we address the second myth that was shattered.)

In stark contrast with the predictions, the blocs tied and the election results demonstrate something that is quite incredible: Had the center-left voters not “wasted” their votes on small parties that did not cross the minimum threshold to enter the Knesset, the right-wing bloc would have dropped below 60 seats.