YOU CAN’T MAKE PEACE WITH PEOPLE WHO JUST WANT YOU DEAD: The One Thing No Israeli Wants to Discuss: The decisive factor in next week’s election — and the reason for Benjamin Netanyahu’s durability — is a repressed memory.

No single episode has shaped Israel’s population and politics like the wave of suicide bombings perpetrated by Palestinians in the first years of the 21st century. Much of what you see here in 2019 is the aftermath of that time, and every election since has been held in its shadow. The attacks, which killed hundreds of Israeli civilians, ended hopes for a negotiated peace and destroyed the left, which was in power when the wave began. Any sympathy that the Israeli majority had toward Palestinians evaporated.

More than any other single development, that period explains the durability of Benjamin Netanyahu, which outsiders sometimes struggle to understand. Simply put, in the decade before Mr. Netanyahu came to power in 2009, the fear of death accompanied us in public places. There was a chance your child could be blown up on the bus home from school. In the decade since, that has ceased to be the case. Next to that fact, all other issues pale.

The left would bring the old days back, and people are smart enough to know that. Eventually, of course, they’ll forget and vote the left back in, and have to go through it all another time.