In many election campaigns, the parties issue platforms, and candidates give speeches and make promises that everybody knows they won’t be able to keep. Politicians often take advantage of voters’ short attention span to pass economic measures at the start of a term on the assumption they'll be soon forgotten. If election campaigns are like masquerade balls, the morning after the election is when the masks come off. It is then that governments have to make choices to realize policies. The full consequences of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to call elections within five months of those held in April are still to be determined, but it is clear that it has caused some politicians to be caught with their masks off, exposed in their embarrassment.

Netanyahu himself has been exposed more than anyone, as he now has to deal with having promised not to work to prevent his own trial but having been found to be doing just that from the moment he thought he would be able to form the next government. In fact, his Likud party has reportedly been trying to advance immunity legislation to help him while trying to assemble a government. On the left, significant opposition to Labor party leader Avi Gabbay has been exposed, and a public quarrel has broken out among Blue and White leaders over cooperating with the Arab parties. Netanyahu’s attempt to form a government with whoever was willing to join him, at any price and under any condition, has exposed the disgrace of the Likud. 

All told, however, in no corner of the political map has exposure been as revealing as in the religious camp. The divisions that have characterized this camp since its founding as the Ha-Mizrahi movement in 1902 have now been exposed to the light. 

Ha-Mizrahi was established after the Zionist Congress decided to support secular Zionist education. The religious Zionists wanted the Zionist Federation to stick to lobbying for the right to create a Jewish state, leaving the question of life and education in that state to be decided outside the diplomatic necessities. The decision in favor of secular education by the majority of delegates of the congress — who had a clear secular orientation and were concerned about Jewish educational institutions being religious in character — was a slap in the face to devout delegates. As a result, led by Rabbi Yitzhak Yaakov Reines, religious Jews founded Ha-Mizrahi as a movement focused on safeguarding their interests within the Zionist framework, in which they were a minority.