On Thursday, Benjamin Netanyahu and the most right-wing government in Israel’s history took office.
Even before it was sworn in, the Cabinet-to-be had attained marked notoriety. A gaggle of mainstream Jewish leaders met at the Israeli embassy in D.C. to complain about the Jewish supremacist, and anti-LGBTQ policies favored by high-ranking ministers in the new government. Meanwhile, the White House has already held a high-level meeting to determine its approach to Netanyahu and his decidedly illiberal cast of coalition partners.
The new crew’s marquee players tell the story. Itamar Ben-Gvir is the public security minister. In 2007, an Israeli court convicted him of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization. His penchant for extremism earned him an exemption from military service. Until recently, a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, the perpetrator of the 1994 Hebron massacre, hung in Ben-Gvir’s living room. Now, Ben-Gvir is Israel’s top cop. (In other law and order developments, Netanyahu’s son, Yair Netanyahu, intimated that those who put his father on trial should face the death penalty.)
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Next up, Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, who has supported annexing the West Bank and, with it, the bulk of land that would have comprised a prospective Palestinian state. To be sure, the gig is a consolation prize. He had coveted the defense ministry, but faced pushback after the Biden administration signaled that such a move would be unacceptable, presumably out of discomfort with the prospect of direct engagement. (The defense establishments of both countries share close ties, and Israel is a major non-NATO ally.)
Drafted into military service at the ripe old age of 28, Smotrich served only 14 months in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). “It’s true, I didn’t get to be a combat fighter… but I was in the nerve center of the army,” he explained. Don’t expect Janet Yellen, the current U.S. treasury secretary, or Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary and a retired general, to meet with him anytime soon.
Regardless, Netanyahu and Smotrich have a tough act to follow. The prior government led to Israel placing fourth on The Economist’s most recent list of top-performing economies in 2022 (tied with Spain).
The duo’s task is complicated by coalition agreements that bind the government to preferred-funding for the haredi ultra-Orthodox school system. By the numbers, secular Israelis pay six times more in taxes, according to a government report. That is no typo.
In that same vein, Moshe Gafni, an ultra-Orthodox member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, has also argued that half of Israel should study Torah and half serve in the army. Someone is definitely going to get the short-end of the stick.
Then there’s Orit Struck, a member of the Knesset and a Netanyahu ally. She announced that Religious Zionism, her party, would seek to revise anti-discrimination legislation to effectively permit hospitals to discriminate against gays.
Apparently, she went too far and earned a rebuke from Netanyahu. Indeed, the Knesset just selected Amir Ohana, an openly gay lawmaker, as speaker.
On the other hand, Netanyahu tapped Avi Maoz, a far-right politician with a history of LGBTQ-baiting, as a deputy minister. Maoz will also head the new “National Jewish Identity” authority. Against this backdrop, Israel appears more a province of red America—where outsiders are more frequently demonized, “real Americans” are venerated, blood and soil are made paramount, and ostentatious religiosity can go hand in hand with hyper-nationalism.
On cue, U.S. conservatives have embraced their hero. In an interview with Netanyahu, the center-right commentator Bari Weiss failed to raise the issue of his ongoing criminal trial, let alone say a word about his forming a government potentially amenable to delivering a get-out-of-jail-free-card.
“How many leaders have come back from political death, not once, but twice? I’ve come back. The question is: What am I coming back for?” he declared. Great question, indeed.
Over at the Washington Examiner, Netanyahu discussed the future of Western alliances and derided the U.S. for standing flat-footed in the face of North Korea’s nuclear build-up. “That is nothing compared to what Iran would be,” he opined.
Netanyahu, however, skated over his stated commitment to continue pursuing relations with China. The three-time prime minister had previously reiterated that Israel would “continue to work with China,” and distinguished Israel’s policy concerns from those held by unnamed “others.”
To say that the Netanyahu-led government could significantly change Israel’s trajectory is an understatement. With Iran providing drones to Russia to help Putin’s war against Ukraine, however, don’t expect any precipitous moves from the Biden administration. The president announced that the administration “looked forward” to working with the new government. At the same time, Biden warned against policies “that contradict our mutual interests and values.”
But what was for decades an issue of steadfast bipartisan agreement—that being U.S. support for Israel—will for the near term and possibly longer become a domestic political flashpoint—along with abortion and in vitro fertilization, guns and defunding the police, immigration and the southern border.
Israel’s new government is sufficiently extreme that the country’s own ambassador to France, Yael German, resigned immediately after its swearing-in, saying, “I cannot make a lie of my soul and continue to represent policies” of a government that she says endangers the country’s existence and its stated values.
For the American right, all is well with the government in Jerusalem. For the Democrats, it’s wait and see.
