The national elections in Israel on Tuesday saw PM Netanyahu’s Likud party lose several seats while welcoming a new centrist party onto the national stage. Unsurprisingly most correspondents in the English speaking media saw the move to the center as a sign of Israel changing its social, economic and foreign policies.

However, Yair Lapid, the founding chairman of the winning centrist party, Yesh Atid, differs from PM Netanyahu only in not having a receding hairline. Lapid is a free-marketer with a strong sense of patriotism. Unlike statist socialists like the ultra-orthodox Shas and Labor, Yesh Atid wants to draft the religious and abandon restrictions of construction.

The mad headless chicken running around for its next fix i.e. Israel social justice movement will be in for a rude awakening when they realize that Lapid is more Milton and less Stalin in his economic policies.

Considering that the social movement was loud and numerous, it is safe to assume that many voted for Lapid and not for actual socialist parties such as Meretz and Labor. Lapid got the middle class, the motor of the social movement. Little did they know, Lapid will liberalize Israel’s economy and not enslave it to the short-term demands of forty-something professionals living and semi-struggling in Israel’s cozy suburbia.

The other big winner in the elections was Naftali Bennett, the leader of the Jewish Home party with 12 seats. Bennett is a free-marketer and a welcomed addition to the Bibi-Lapid leadership. If the elections are any indication, Israel will continue to attract foreign investors willing to bet on the country’s ability to transform and reinvent itself – at least until the next elections.