David Remnick reports from the Saban Center gala this weekend for the New Yorker, and says that Israel’s leadership is a rightwing trainwreck.

Olmert also violated the rules of the conference by dragging something that was off the record onto the record. He accurately, if generally, described how, earlier in the day, Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago and Obama’s former chief of staff, had spoken angrily and bluntly about the way Netanyahu has repeatedly betrayed the friendship of the United States, lecturing Obama in the Oval Office and now, after the U.S. had underwritten the Iron Dome anti-missile system, supported the operation in Gaza, and voted Israel’s way in the U.N., embarrassing the Obama Administration by taking punitive actions against the Palestinian Authority. After describing Emanuel’s remarks, Olmert went on to agree with them.

Olmert was unflinching in his criticism of Netanyahu. “This government is not dedicated to the cause of peace in a realistic way,” he said. “The most important thing for a prime minister,” he said, any Israeli prime minister, is to create two states for two peoples.

What was striking was that Israeli politics is now utterly dominated by Netanyahu, Lieberman, and an increasingly rightist coalition. And, demographically, the Israeli electorate is only getting more conservative.