Standard disclaimer:

The below is written from an expressly right wing (Betar, Moldbug) point of view.

Several of these points overlap almost in their entirety, but I included multiple ways to say similar things because a variety of perspectives can be helpful.

Political realignments

Coalescing of the Israeli right (1960s through 1980s)

Merging of the old Liberal Party and others from the General Zionists with the Etzel and Lechi veterans of Herut, along with some discontented leftists into the Likud bloc, which later became the Likud party.

Religious zionism (post 1967)

Before the late 1960s, the religious zionist movement was primarily allied to the labor zionists who wielded power: in exchange for their votes and cooperation, they were authorized to exercise some influence in some areas of civic life, and a religious-secular status quo was recognized. After the late 1960s, religious zionism largely realigned with the Israeli right, a process that continues today, and left wing religious zionists are a vanishing minority.

Failure of the Left (1992-2005)

After a long period of electoral stalemate, the left returned to power after the 1992 elections, though they did not win more votes than the right, by successfully forming a governing coalition. The 1992-6 government of Rabin, Peres, Beilin, and Sarid implemented a radical far left agenda that the Israeli public did not choose, the cornerstone of which was the Oslo accords, which restored a terrorist organization that Israel had thoroughly defeated militarily, armed them, and gave them diplomatic legitimacy, territory and autonomy. This led directly to the Oslo war, costing thousands of lives, and Israelis are not yet prepared to forgive the left that caused these problems.

Corruption

The Israeli left is not fundamentally much more corrupt than the Israeli right, but the left has always enjoyed more power, and thus has had more opportunities to be corrupted. Therefore, a majority of Israeli corruption scandals fall into two categories: either leftists using public resources to enrich themselves at the country’s expense (Dollar Accounts, Greek Islands; Holyland, Yadlin); or the left using public resources to get the right to push through the left’s agenda (The Stinking Maneuver, Goldfarb and Segev, Big Bang). The anti-corruption / good government sentiment in Israel first took off in response to leftist outrages and aligned nicely with a view that leftist leadership was decrepit and useless.

Ideological crystallizations

Conquest and settlement (post 1967)

Though there was always a certain religious-endtimey undertone to the zionist undertaking – exile and redemption, ingathering of the exiles, revival of Hebrew – these foci were often downplayed in favor of diplomacy, fundraising, agriculture, and social engineering and defense. But suddenly, after June 1967, Jews for the first time were allowed to return, under the protection of a Jewish army, to places like Tel Rumeida and Gush Etzion and Shomron, fulfilling the biblical prophecy “… and the sons will return to their frontier.” It’s not an accident that the Hebrew words translated internationally in English as “settlement” and “occupation” actually mean “inheritance” and “conquest” respectively. Today there is a significant minority for whom Yom Yerushalayim is vastly more significant than Yom Ha’atzmaut, and a population that has taken to the hilltops and remains outside the control of the state. Gush Emunim was immensely influential in making this religious revival a reality.

Economic liberalization (post 1980s)

Leftists everywhere, upon seizing any amount of power, use it to solidify their control. In Israel, the personal-political power network at the heyday of leftist hegemony extended from the Mapai and Mapam parties to the Histadrut consolidated labor federation to Bank Hapoalim to youth movements / sports clubs like Hashomer Hatzhair and Hanoar Ha’oved to newspapers like Davar to the various Kibbutz movements – and that’s not even counting organs that were officially part of the state apparatus, such as channel 1 and Galatz. Given enough time, rubbish institutions fail on their own, and when they fail hard enough and repeatedly enough, normal people begin to realize that they were fundamentally flawed. Economic liberalization has not progressed smoothly in Israel, but Netanyahu was easily the best finance minister the country has ever seen; taking power away from the left to use protektzia means that the right has a significantly greater opportunity to compete on a level playing field.

Yom Kippur War aftermath (post 1973)

Military adventurism, McClellanism and utter arrogance has long been a dangerous tendency of the Israeli left, that promotes generals like Yitzhak Rabin, Amram Mitzna, “Fuad”, and Ehud Barak to positions of senior leadership. If Israel’s stunning victory in the Six Day War established a myth that, despite Auschwitz borders, Israel was unbeatable, the comedown from that high after the Yom Kippur War shook the nation to its very core. The feeling of despair at losing a war made Israelis grow up a lot as a society, beginning to judge both their leaders and their enemies on human terms. Every Israeli understands and remembers exactly who was in charge when disaster struck. Meanwhile, 1973 cast 1967 in a new light, and many shed their haughty tones, even going to the other extreme and expressly viewing the Six Day War literally as a miracle, a sign of God’s direct intervention in human affairs.

Demographic shifts

Birthrates

The Jewish population of Israel as a whole has slowly been increasing its birthrate – even secular Jews who have never set foot inside a synagogue and who can not complete the sentence that begins with the words “שמע ישראל” – while the Arab and Muslim birthrate of Israel proper, Yesha and the surrounding countries plummets. This process has effectively wiped out the demographic threat in a generation. Meanwhile, within Israeli society, the Haredi birthrate is astonishingly high – right at a time when haredim are finding ways to assimilate into the society by doing various forms of military service, getting a formal education, working and paying taxes, living in settlements because the land is cheaper, making some kind of peace with zionist ideology, etc. Overall, there’s a high correlation between the “best” parts of Israeli society and the parts that reproduce the most.

FSU immigration (post 1990)

In the early 1990s, Israel’s population was between four and five million; throughout that decade, the country took in between one and two million immigrants from the former Soviet Union, leading to an enormous cultural shift: Russian-speaking Israelis tend to be disproportionately better educated than the average Israeli, less religious (and specifically anti-clerical), distrusting of political incumbents, opposed to territorial compromise with enemies, opposed to socialism, opposed to corruption, opposed to exemptions for military service, proud of their Russian cultural heritage, and in favor of strong leadership. For a few election cycles they appeared to be voting as a bloc, but that behavior has begun to recede as their absorption into society progresses. They have been instrumental in bringing Yvet into national prominence and importance.

Mizrahi ascendance (post 1977)

Despite the long hegemony of the ashkenazi-dominated Mapai party, a plurality of Israeli Jews are mizrahim, who tend to be poorer, less educated, less polarized religiously, less tolerant of Muslim/Arab dysfunction, more opposed to territorial compromise, and more “vibrant.” While the mizrahi-haredi party Shas has long been the most corrupt institution in Israel, the mizrahi voting public is far to the right of its leadership in most political terms, though they are more likely to support entitlements and the economic system that provides them. A disproportionate number of Likud voters are mizrahi, as are a disproportionate number of “traditional” Jews; ashkenazim are more divided neatly into either haredi or religious-zionist or secular. Every election the Israeli right has won was with the help of the mizrahi public; whenever the left returns to power, it is because they have been able to convince mizrahim to vote for Shas, which can be bought easily and cheaply, rather than Likud.

American Jewish hardcore (post 1960s)

American Jews are a tiny minority in Israel, and concentrated in just a few areas. Like the vast majority of Jews who declined to leave Babylon a few millennia ago, most American Jews prefer the comfort and relative safety of life in a country that has shown them more love than any other society in history. But just like Ezra and Nehemia in their day were the crème de la crème who led a small vanguard to return and took charge when they arrived, the very best American-born Jews are the ones who move to Israel and have been extremely influential in organizing and galvanizing right wing movements there. Examples: David Ha’Ivri (who is active on twitter), Baruch Marzel, Chaim Richman, Hillel Halkin, Shlomo Riskin, Baruch Goldstein, Meir Kahane, Yisrael Medad (also active on twitter), Yishai Fleisher (not born in America, but raised there). Nefesh b’Nefesh has been instrumental in shining a spotlight on people like this.

Geopolitical realities

End of the Cold War (post 1990s)

Egypt (until the 1970s) and Syria were client states of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and their belligerence towards Israel was fueled by typical agitprop along with money, weapons, and training. One of the reasons Israel could not be allowed to win a truly decisive victory in any wars fought before the 1980s was that the Americans were terrified of getting drawn into direct conflict with the Soviets in the near east. After the Cold War ended and Russian support for rejectionist Arab irredentism diminished dramatically (often in the face of pan-Arab nationalism getting swallowed whole by Islamic fundamentalism), the biggest opponents of Israel outside the Muslim world turned out to be effete European nobodies who seem to think that hating Israel can save them from their own demise. Though the European left continues to fund diplomatic- NGO- and military-jihad against Israel, their efforts become less and less effective as their motives become more and more clear.

This may also be a useful place to point out that the Israeli deep right and the European deep right have everything to gain by a cooperative alliance. Today, mutually exclusive ethno-nationalisms are entirely compatible, irrespective of what happened seventy years ago, seven hundred years ago, or two thousand years ago.

Abandonment by American Jews (post 1980s)

Americanism – the notion that the United States could be a kind of new Zion for Jews the way that Persia, Spain, and Germany once were – was made defunct in May 1948, very much to the displeasure of the Reform movement that detested zionism. In the second half of the twentieth century, helping Israel became core to the American Jewish identity. But by a generation ago, it had already become clear that the huge majority of American Jews had virtually no Jewish identity whatsoever, and were content to assimilate into the gentile majority on the basis of reinventing Judaism as a kind of mainline protestantism. Losing their partnership with American Jews, Israeli Jews have had to make difficult decisions about addressing their problems themselves, and there are positive signs that it may be working.

Evangelical Christians (post 1980s)

The fourth great awakening revitalized American protestantism, aligning with the American new right and forming a core of movement conservatism. For eschatological reasons, Christian zionism took off, but it’s hard to overlook the solid socio-cultural affinity of Israeli Jews and American Christians who were on the same side in the Cold War, who remain on the same side on the global war against jihad, who don’t care for the European Union or the United Nations, who like guns and families with lots of children and who give a lot of money to charity. In a lot of ways, as much as this alliance is weird and verges on the inappropriate, it is a match made in heaven, and evangelicals have been for Israel a wholesome substitute for American Jews.

Arab/Muslim dysfunctions (forever, especially after 2011)

The best thing that ever happened to Israel was having Arabs for enemies. The Arab world was already a mess before 2011 – poor, uneducated, backwards, corrupt, feckless, incompetent – but since then, Islam has descended into a hopeless internal conflict with no end in sight, consuming millions. The Israeli right said all along that territorial compromise could not work, because giving control to Arafat meant giving it to Rantisi and Yassin, which meant giving it to Bin Laden. Nobody denies now that it’s true: the left’s platform is impossible to implement in this era.

Recent advancements

Bloody conflicts (post 2000)

A generation of Israelis who grew up during the 1990s and were indoctrinated by propaganda like the Song of Peace had a very rude awakening when, beginning in September 2000, they started seeing their friends and family members shot, blown up, stabbed, lynched and run over by their “peace partners.” That generation, which should have been the most leftist in Israeli history if leftism had actually been successful, turned into the most nationalist after getting sick of the carnage, the sirens, and the funerals: further right than their parents, their teachers, their rabbis, their politicians, and their military officers, they demanded vengeance. That generation now is performing reserve military service, marrying and raising children, starting business, and voting.

Military leadership (current)

As in any western military, Israel’s general staff is filtered for political loyalty, which means that non-leftists find it nearly impossible to become generals (Effie Eitam, a rare exception to this rule, grew up as a secular kibbutznik and became religious as an adult). The mid-level officer corps, however, has become thoroughly dominated by knitted kippah wearers, the most militant and nationalist constituency in Israeli society. In part this is because religious zionism considers it a positive religious obligation for every Jewish man to perform military service to the best of his ability, and in part it is because the national religious camp stresses high social cohesion, commitment, and excellence. Generations ago, kibbutznikim like Effie Eitam played this sort of role; today, when secular leftist boys from the Tel Aviv suburbs are drafted, they are often taking orders from, and following into battle, religious and right wing officers.

End of European Jewry (current)

The last European Jewish community of any significance is in France, though most of them are just the cousins of Moroccan and Algerian Jews who moved to France instead of to Israel. This community is being wiped out before our eyes, a process to which Houellebecq alluded in Submission. The French Jews in Israel tend to be disproportionately religious, well educated and right wing like American Jews, but with the attitudes towards Arabs of the average mizrahi. They have not yet had the opportunity in time or numbers to make major impact, but they will in the next generation.

Smartphones and social networking (current)

Almost everything written about Israel in the foreign press is a lie, and the truth is reported only when it can be distorted to make Israel look bad. For the longest time, this was generally known in Israel but not fully understood: the average Israeli might not realize fully how his country was being described, or might not find out until much later, or might not believe that it really was that bad. But it was that bad, and with the rise of internet journalism and social networks like Facebook, Israelis see every day, with their own eyes, the lies and slander being told about them – and it makes them angry. Meanwhile, in the age of iPhones and WhatsApp, Israeli soldiers are going into combat with the ability to communicate instantly, from the front lines, exactly what they’re seeing to their friends and family members who are at home, trekking in India, or studying in Europe. The discrepancy between facts and lies has led directly to the kind of cognitive dissonance that leads people to rethink everything.

Strong personalities (post 1977)

Personalities matter, and specific decisions made by individual people matter. In the past few generations, there has been a severe deficit of leadership on the Israeli left, which appears to be widening rather than shrinking. Compare:

Begin vs. Rabin

Menachem Begin led the Etzel, formed the Herut party and Likud, and became the champion of the mizrahim. Yitzhak Rabin was an apparatchik who ordered his men to fire on Begin, who had a nervous breakdown when leadership was critical, who resigned due to a corruption scandal, who was pulled into Oslo against his will, and who as prime minister had to organize demonstrations to support his own government’s policy.

Shamir vs. Peres

Yitzhak Shamir led the Lechi and refused to budge. Shimon Peres is widely reviled for the self-serving manner in which he changes opinions and stabs others in the back.

Netanyahu vs. Barak

Binyamin Netanyahu, after a short term in the 1990s, came back to political life and showed that he could be a successful finance minister and foreign minister. Ehud Barak, after a short term in the 1990s, made a lot of money on the lecture circuit and has reappeared in political life primarily to take pot shots at others.

Sharon vs. Mitzna

Ariel Sharon unleashed the military and ran for office on a platform of no surrender (though he did surrender). Amram Mitzna affected an intellectual tone and ran for office on a platform of surrender.

Feiglin vs. ???

Moshe Feiglin led a movement to take over the Likud party within, which was so successful that Sharon and his cronies had to leave, all in the name of steadfastness and decency. There has never been a left wing leader in Israel with the moral clarity and humanity of Feiglin.