Two hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accompanied by his wife Sara, entered the hangar at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds on Jan. 5, giant TV screens were already flickering, showing a series of images carefully selected by the prime minister and his aides. Though the event opened the Likud's election campaign, the party did not appear in the images presented. They featured the one and only star — Netanyahu, for whom the race is personal — with world leaders, his wife and children and the Israel Defense Forces chief of the general staff at his side. US President Barack Obama, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and US Secretary of State John Kerry all appeared, one after the other. It was as if the last six years with the Likud leader at the national helm had not been bad enough for Israel’s foreign policy, as if those years had not been characterized by the ongoing deterioration of Israel’s international status.

It would not be a long shot to assume that none of the distinguished gallery of world leaders, unwittingly mobilized on behalf of the Likud election campaign, will shed any tears if Netanyahu goes home after the upcoming parliamentary elections, slated for March 17. What they think of him they have already made known in private talks leaked to the media. Be that as it may, it seems that the event held in a hall packed with Likud members was taking place in a parallel reality. Anyhow, the troubled relations between the United States and Israel were the last thing on the minds of the attendees.

The glaring disparity between reality and the impressive presentation offered by Netanyahu — who is marketing himself as the darling of world leaders — was aptly reflected in the condemnatory statement issued by the US State Department just as Netanyahu was delivering his speech. The United States declared that it opposed Israel's decision to freeze tax funds due to the Palestinian Authority, as a punitive measure in response to the Palestinian bid to join the International Criminal Court in The Hague. And if that statement had any effect on the audience, it was only to strengthen the standing of the Likud chairman as a leader who would not balk at confronting the major power in the world to protect the interests of Israel.

Netanyahu arrived at the opening evening of his election campaign following a dreamy week, as far as he was concerned. Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman's party, Yisrael Beitenu, was wallowing in the recently exposed corruption scandal, and its standing in the polls was steadily eroding, while the Shas Party continued to be engaged and torn apart in internal power struggles. At the same time, against all forecasts, Netanyahu had managed in the Likud primaries to cut down the dominant far-right representation in the party’s list. His accomplishment is notably illustrated by the demotion of Knesset member Moshe Feiglin to a lower place on the list — this, after decadelong and quite successful efforts on the part of Feiglin and his associates to make the Likud into an even more radical and messianic party.