On Thursday, Benjamin Netanyahu and the highest right-wing government in Israel’s history took office.
Even before being sworn in, the long-term Cabinet had gained marked notoriety. An organization of classical Jewish leaders met at the Israeli Embassy in D. C. to complain about Jewish supremacy and anti-LGBTQ policies favored by senior ministers in the new government. Meanwhile, the White House has already held a high-level assembly on its technique to Netanyahu and his decidedly intolerant distribution of coalition partners.
The star players of the new team tell the story. Itamar Ben-Gvir is the Minister of Public Security. In 2007, an Israeli court found him guilty of inciting 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 culprit of the 1994 Hebron massacre, hung in Ben-Gvir’s living room. Now Ben-Gvir is Israel’s most productive policeman. (In other law-and-order developments, Netanyahu’s son, Yair Netanyahu, has warned that those who brought his father to justice face the death penalty. )
Then there is Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, who supported the annexation of the West Bank and, with it, most of the land that would have constituted a long-term Palestinian state. Certainly, the concert is a prize of comfort. He had coveted the Defense Department but backtracked after Biden’s management signaled such a move would be unacceptable, likely because of discomfort with the prospect of direct engagement. (The two countries’ defense institutions have close ties and Israel is a major non-NATO ally. )
Enlisted in the army at the complex age of 28, Smotrich served just 14 months in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Said. Don’t expect Janet Yellen, the current U. S. Treasury secretary, to be able to do so. The U. S. Secretary of Defense, or retired Secretary of Defense, or Lloyd Austin, will meet with him anytime soon.
Anyway, Netanyahu and Smotrich have a difficult act to follow. The previous government led Israel to rank fourth on The Economist’s most recent list of active economies in 2022 (tied with Spain).
The duo’s task is confused through coalition agreements that tie the government to preferential investment for the ultra-Orthodox ultra-Orthodox school system. According to figures, secular Israelis pay six times as much in taxes, according to a government report. This is a typo.
In a similar vein, Moshe Gafni, an ultra-Orthodox member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, also argued that one part of Israel examines the Torah and the other part serves in the army.
Then Orit Struck, a member of the Knesset and an ally of Netanyahu, announced that devout Zionism, her party, would seek to revise the anti-discrimination law to allow hospitals to discriminate against homosexuals.
Apparently, he went too far and rebuked through Netanyahu. In fact, the Knesset has just selected Amir Ohana, a blatantly gay lawmaker, as its speaker.
On the other hand, Netanyahu hired Avi Maoz, a far-right politician with a history of anti-LGBTQ harassment, as his deputy minister. Maoz will also head the new Jewish National Identity authority. In this context, Israel looks more like a province of Red America, where foreigners are most demonized, “true Americans” are revered, blood and soil are paramount, and ostentatious religiosity can go hand in hand with hypernationalism.
At the right time, American conservatives embraced their hero. In an interview with Netanyahu, center-right commentator Bari Weiss did not raise the factor of his ongoing criminal trial, say a word about forming a government potentially willing to factor in a loose problem. thief release card. .
“How many leaders have returned from political death, not once, but twice?I came back here. He is: Why am I coming back? Said. BigArray indeed.
In the Washington Examiner, Netanyahu discussed the long term of Western alliances and ridiculed the United States for dealing with North Korea’s nuclear buildup. “It’s nothing compared to what Iran would be,” he said.
Netanyahu, however, skated on his stated commitment to continue relations with China. The three-time prime minister had reaffirmed in the past that Israel would “continue to negotiate with China” and Israel’s prominent political considerations of those of the anonymous “others. “
To say that the Netanyahu-led government can particularly replace Israel’s trajectory is an understatement. With Iran offering drones to Russia to assist in Putin’s war on Ukraine, however, don’t expect hasty action from Biden’s management. The president announced that management “hopes” to run with the new government. At the same time, Biden warned that he opposes policies “that contradict our mutual interests and values. “
But what for decades was a matter of unwavering bipartisan agreement, namely America for Israel, will become in the short term and perhaps a critical point of domestic politics, along with abortion and in vitro fertilization, guns and police funding, immigration and the South. frontier.
Israel’s new government is so excessive that the country’s own ambassador to France, Yael German, resigned after her oath and said, “I cannot lie to my soul and continue to constitute the policies” of a government that she says endangers the country’s way of life and its stated values.
For the American right, all is well with the Jerusalem government. For Democrats, he’s waiting and seeing.