The stock market voted its confidence in Benjamin Netanyahu’s appointment as Minister of Finance with a considerable rise. More surprisingly, most economic movers and shakers and many media pundits echoed this confidence, a crowd not usually friendly to Netanyahu (before every election our so called “Captains of the Economy” gather to raise funds for Labor).

Everyone praised Netanyahu’s abilities, and even the fact that he has a very definite economic philosophy, a belief in free markets that usually sends shivers through their spines, since so many of them profit from the Israeli monopolies that are anathema to free markets.

Many of us watched with wonderment your conciliatory gesture toward Histadrut Chairman MK Amir Peretz. The populist Peretz, who has tried to exploit the layoffs in your bank, Hapoalim, to make political hay, actually represents the highest paid and most regressive public monopoly unions. To advance their interests, he sacrifices the employment prospects of the unemployed and lower paid workers. Peretz published big posters in which you were depicted “laughing all the way to the bank” while the families of your laid off workers were shedding tears. Still, you agreed to hand him a small victory by rescinding some of the layoffs.

Having had assisted in the founding of Shinui—I volunteered as a non-party member to manage its US fundraising from its launching in 1974 to its electoral triumph as the united Dash in 1977—I was dismayed, like its many erstwhile supporters, by its failed promise and surprised by its renewed hope.

Common wisdom has it that Shinui’s spectacular gain—from 6 to 15 seats—was due to two major factors. First, the mounting anger at the shenanigans of Orthodox politicians, who in their hubris believed they could play the political extortion game without paying a price, and kept demanding for their constituents ever growing privileges, especially exemption from army service that most Israelis could not stomach. Second, the disenchantment of most Israelis with the left, and its stubborn clinging to its Oslo fantasies and its denial of the disastrous reality it has created.

Tuesday’s landslide victory establishes the brilliant general Ariel Sharon as Israel’s most consummate politician as well. Should he be true to his pledges, articulated in his first 2001 victory speech, to reform the ailing Israeli economy, Sharon may also establish himself as Israel’s greatest social and economic reformer.

There are already those who try to minimize the scale of Sharon’s victory by pointing to the low voter turnout (less than 65%) in Tuesday’s elections. And indeed, as Israeli voters have grown more sophisticated, and as bitter experience has taught them to treat the promises of politicians and government with growing skepticism, more and more of them express either cynicism or disgust. This is not entirely bad. Israeli voters are at long last losing their blind faith in government and are expressing their disapproval of the fact that politics in Israel has become more dirty and brutal than it is in other democracies.