Similarly, Bush and the right adopted a strong defense + preemptive approach to Islamist terrorists, whereas the left thinks it can negotiate with Islamists and with other totalitarians.

Domestically, both the left and the right in Israel tend to approach socialistic policies - the Kibbutz movement and the early European immigrants tended to be socialists in their economics. I suspect there are differences - I think that historically the left (Labor) looked more after the Ashkenazim, whereas Likud championed the economic interests of the Sephardim. The smaller parties tend to champion other groups, such as Russian Jews, Orthodox, Arab, etc. Nonetheless, they all tend to favor governmental interventions and fight over their pieces of the pie.

Then if I understand Gringrich, he’s saying that the Democratic and Republican leadership and substantial numbers of their member have favored big government etc, even though they disagree on military and defense issues, and he’s putting Bush in that group.

There thus seem to be some interesting similarities between Bush and Netanyahu.