When the weather is bad, then that actually means the social and maybe the psychological cost of going to the polling station goes up.

Netanyahu’s bloc will have more discipline, but to save his skin he’ll rely on religious fanatics and extremists. The country is on tenterhooks, fearing that divisions exacerbated by recurring elections may spin into violence.

Americans are broadly supportive of democracy in the abstract. But at the same time, they may not have well-developed views about exactly what it means.

This is far from the first time a nuclear-armed state has attacked a nonnuclear state, nor is it the first time a nuclear state has used its nuclear arsenal to backstop coercion or aggression.