For several months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been battling the soon-to-be-launched Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation. During one of the highlights of this saga, Education Minister Naftali Bennett lashed out at Netanyahu, saying, "You're talking like the Herut Party [mother party of Likud] back when Mapai [mother party of the Labor Party] was still in power … except this time, you've been in power for 40 years. Stop whining!"

Bennett made these remarks during a testy July 2016 Cabinet meeting. Netanyahu was trying to shut down the new broadcasting corporation, claiming that it was controlled by the left. In his vitriolic response, Bennett targeted Likud ministers, who claimed, one after the other, that public representation within the new entity was discriminatory (against the Likud). The most outspoken of these was Minister of Culture Miri Regev. She wondered what was the point of the new corporation, if it wasn’t to be controlled by the Likud.

Bennett's remarks were lost in the heat of the debate, where they were intended as a political attack against his rivals. Nevertheless, they were an expression of a deep insight, which deserves further consideration. How is it possible that leaders and supporters of the Likud, which has governed the country for most years since the electoral revolution of May 17, 1977, still claim to face discrimination by the left-wing media and still fight against the legal elites, which they claim to be dominated by the "left"? Why do they still act as if they are the underdog and not the ruling party?

This month marks 40 years since the electoral revolution, which changed the face of Israel forever and brought an end to Mapai domination of the country's political scene after 29 years. The pragmatic left-wing party had formed all of Israel's governments from independence (1948) until that night, when the Likud, headed by Menachem Begin, took power after many long years in the opposition. Since then, Labor only won two elections: in 1992, when Yitzhak Rabin won, and again in 1999, when Ehud Barak came to power briefly. Other than that, the various iterations of Mapai and Labor, once a large and robust left-wing party, has been on the decline and unable to return to power.