The way The New York Sun looks at what appears to be a dramatic victory by Prime Minister Netanyahu in today’s election is as part of a broader story. It involves not only Israel but all of the freedom countries. It echoes Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s triumph in the campaign for Brexit. The dynamic at work in the two elections may turn out to presage a victory by President Trump in the election that is gathering in America.

Results in Israel’s vote — its third in the past year, after two earlier contests failed to produce a government — appear, finally, to have put Mr. Netanyahu within reach of a mandate. It’s all the more astonishing because it comes as the incumbent premier is about to stand trial on criminal charges of bribery. Yet early returns show that Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party appears to be within a seat or three of a majority in the Knesset.

If confirmed, that would put Mr. Netanyahu in the pole position to seek to put together a government by trying to win over from other parties one or more Knesset members. He could even seek coalition partners from the main opposition bloc, known as Blue and White. The betting is that Mr. Netanyahu will be able to do that. No newspapermen are predicting otherwise, though final results are due only Wednesday.

One cloud over all this remains Mr. Netanyahu’s trial. The liberal daily Haaretz reckons in a headline that, with the indictment outstanding, “Netanyahu’s comeback puts Israel on course for a constitutional crisis.” Voters were prepared to give Mr. Netanyahu such a commanding plurality, Haaretz’s correspondent suggests, “because they trust his leadership more than they trust Israel’s legal system.” And the opposition leader.

That’s a helluva note, in our opinion. If it leads to an unprecedented fifth term for Mr. Netanyahu, already Israel’s longest serving premier, it would amount to a rebuke to, among others, Senator Bernard Sanders. He just used a nationally televised Democratic debate in Charleston to call Mr. Netanyahu a “racist.” The error could yet damage Mr. Sanders’ bid for the nomination or the vote in November.

Which brings us back to the broader story of which we see Israel as a part. It involves in Britain, Israel, and America, three countries in which the liberal elites are at absolute loggerheads with populist — and popular — leaders. In Britain, it looked for a while like they would foil Brexit and might even prefer a leftist Labor party infected with anti-Semitism. They even tried to hit Mr. Johnson with an appeal to the Supreme Court.

The elites won that fight, too, humiliating Mr. Johnson and defeating his effort to prorogue parliament. Yet, when push really came to shove at the polls, Mr. Johnson, in a populist campaign, won a resounding victory. Something similar appears to be happening in Israel, though the nature of Mr. Netanyahu’s victory isn’t quite as resounding as Mr. Johnson’s and the legal tiff isn’t the benign business of constitutional interpretation.

The pattern repeats itself — plus some — here in America in the case of Mr. Trump, who has views similar to those of Messrs. Johnson and Netanyahu and who is being attacked by deep state actors and other elites who feel threatened by his populist program. In America, too, the opposition has resorted not only to the criminal or constitutional courts — or both — but also, for crying out loud, impeachment.

Of the three, it’s hard to reckon which has been in the more dire predicament or which political showdown is more like a rugby scrum. It’s not hard to see, though, that should Mr. Trump prevail, the three are natural allies in the leadership of the freedom wing of the emerging world in the 21st Century. So we’ll be hoping that the final tally works out in Mr. Netanyahu’s favor and that he will finally get to form a working government.

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Drawing by Elliott Banfield, courtesy of the artist.