1. It’s Wednesday, March 18, 2015.

2. The first full day of spring is Saturday. However, it’s a cold, blustery day here in the New York area, and there’s a chance of measurable snow this weekend. I’m sure winter will end someday. Hopefully before next winter starts.

3. When people vote, whether it’s here in the United States or in a country such as Israel, they can do it one of two ways: they can vote their hopes or they can voted their fears.

“Hope” seems to be a word alien to Benjamin Netanyahu, except when he hopes for his own political survival. There was not a trace of hope in his speech to the U.S. Congress warning that any deal President Obama makes to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons will be a bad one.        

And in the election campaign just concluded, he offered no hope that Israel will find the peace it deserves. Instead, he reneged on his pledge to consider some form of self-government for Palestinians, and told his countrymen that Arab citizens of Israel were conspiring against him.

This might explain some of the animosity between Netanyahu and President Obama: The American president sees problems to be solved. The Israeli prime minister sees solutions to be feared.

A plurality of Israelis voted their fears and not their hopes on Tuesday, just as Americans voted their fears in November when they let meatballs such as Tom Cotton have a voice in the U.S. Senate. That’s sad, but it’s how these things work.

Those of us who hope can only hope for the best — that the United States and the group of five nations reach an acceptable agreement with Iran, and those who are afraid that such an agreement is a better alternative than a war.