One could write an entire book about the new Netanyahu cabinet. Here just a few remarks.
The result of the 2022 Israeli Knesset election announced Netanyahu’s comeback. On December 21, less than half an hour before the deadline to form a new cabinet ended, Israel’s longest serving prime minister (1996-1999, 2009-2021, December 29, 2022-?) announced that he had managed to form a new coalition. On December 29, Netanyahu’s government secured 63 votes out of the 64 the right-wing coalition controls in the 120-seat Knesset.
The price for Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s (*1949) return to power is heavy: Israel’s new government is moving further to the right with the extremists of the Religious Zionist Party, represented by Itamar Ben Gvir, the leader of the Jewish Power (Oztma Yehudit) party, fellow settler Bezalel Smotrich as well as Noam leader Avi Maoz, entering the cabinet.
The government includes other shady politicians such as the co-founder and leader of the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas, Aryeh Deri, as well as Bibi himself, a man accused of favors, fraud, breach of trust, bribery and corruption. Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial is still not over. There is a strong case regarding Bibi receiving for instance inappropriate favors from Israeli business tycoons. Recorded conversations document that Netanyahu was trying to strike a deal with Arnon Mozes, chairman and editor of the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, discussing legislation that could weaken Yedioth‘s major competitor, Israel Hayom — owned by Netanyahu friend and supporter Sheldon Adelson! — , in exchange for favorable coverage by Yedioth, generally critical of Netanyahu back then. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. During his career, Benjamin Netanyahu made many other shady moves — and got away with it so far. On the other hand, during his years in office, the start-up nation Israel prospered, that’s one of the reasons why some voters have been ready to close one or even both eyes regarding Bibi.
After his appointment as minister, Itamar Ben Gvir announced that he would continue his visits to the Temple Mount at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City. He regularly stirs up tensions between Muslims and Jewish extremists, for instance by visiting the Al-Aqsa mosque compound. Itamar Ben Gvir is a long-time advocate of altering the Temple Mount status quo, which offers Jews only limited time slots to visit the holy site, where Muslims are allowed to pray, but not Jews. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that he will not allow such a change, and the — legaly not binding — coalition treaty includes a clause stipulating that the status quo “with regard to the holy places” will not be touched. In reality, in recent years, the status quo has already been partly eroded because some Orthodox Jews pray at the site, withouth the Israeli police intervening.
More importantly, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are supremacists for whom Israel and Palestine are one country, which belongs to the Jews. Their plans for Israel offer no space for Palestinians, or at least not on a equal level with Jewish Israelis. Smotrich lives in a house built on illegally occupied land in the West Bank.
Itamar Ben Gvir was a follower of the late Orthodox Rabbi Meir Kahane, an American-born extremist whose party was banned from Israeli politics in the 1980s after repeated attacks by members of his party on Israeli Arabs; before that, he served one term in the Knesset. Both Kahane’s party as well as its American counterpart, the Jewish Defense League, are considered terrorist organizations by both Israel and the United States; Rabbi Meir Kahane was assassinated in New York City in 1990 by El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian-born U.S. citizen, who was later involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. For Meir Kahane, Western, liberal democracy was incompatible with a Jewish state because of its equal rights for all citizens, regardless of racial or religious origins. In short, he wanted to establish a racist, Jewish theocracy.
Bezalel Smotrich has advocated a shoot-to-kill policy for the Israeli military dealing with Palestinians throwing stones at them. In June 2019, when he hoped to be appointed minister of justice, Bezalel Smotrich stated that he wanted to “restore the Torah justice system” aka establish a Jewish theocracy. In November 2022, The Times of Israel reported that Bezalel Smotrich spread the wild conspiracy theory that the Israeli secret service Shin Bet had radicalized and incited the far-right extremist Yigal Amir to kill the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
The situation is extremely explosive because Itamar Ben-Gvir is the new national security minister, controlling the police, which also operates in the territory occupied by Israel since 1967, and Bezalel Smotrich, who in in favor of annexing the occupied territories, is now in charge of Israeli settlement policy in the West Bank.
Itamar Ben Gvir has already been convicted of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization. Bezalel Smotrich has also been accused of racism towards the Israel’s Arab population, of homophobia and more.
Avi Maoz is the leader of Noam, a tiny, far-right Orthodox Jewish faction within the Religious Zionist Party. He campaigned against LGBTQ rights; he called to ban gay parades in Israel. In addition, he is opposed to women serving in Israel’s Defense Forces (IDF). In Benjamin Netanyahu’s new cabinet, Avi Maoz is partly in charge of Israel’s national education system as well as deputy minister of the newly created department called “Jewish identity”. In December 2022, The Times of Israel reported that Avi Maoz had said he wished to change Israel’s Law of Return to exclude non-Jewish grandchildren of Jews and recognise only Orthdox conversions to Judaism for migration. Needless to say that the homophobic Avi Maoz is on a collision course with liberal Jews both in Israel as well as in the United States.
Another “colorful” member of Netanyahu’s new government is Aryeh Deri, the leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party; Shas is an acronym for “Shomrei Sepharad”, that is “the Guardians of Spain”, a party largely representing Israeli Jews with Middle Eastern and North African backgrounds. Aryeh Deri resigned from the Knesset in January 2022 as part of a plea deal to avoid jail for “minor” tax offenses, but now his back as a minister. In addition, Aryeh Deri has already spent some 22 months in prison from 2000 until 2002 because he had accepted $155,000 in bribes during his first term as interior minister in 1992/93. Aryeh Deri was born in Morocco. He and his supporters claim that the accusations against him are based on his background. Although it is true that, in the past, Sephardi Jews have partly been discriminated in Israel, the problem with Aryeh Deri has nothing to do with him being born in Morocco. He is simply a crook, indicted for “committing fraud, breach of trust, obstructing court proceedings, money laundering, and tax offenses” in 2018, charges strangely dropped by then AG Avichai Mandelblit in 2021 with the exception of the tax offenses. Because Aryeh Deri resigned, no decision was made in early 2022 on whether the offenses amounted to “moral turpitude”, which would have barred him from running for office for 7 years. Now he’s back as a minister in Netanyahu’s cabinet.
A special Netanyahu “joke” is the fact that, in two years, Aryeh Deri will take over as finance minister as part of a rotation deal with Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich. Two shady politicians will head Israel’s Ministry of Finance.
At the end of 2022, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, Israel’s population had reached almost 9.656 million people, of whom 73.6% were Jewish and 21.1% Arab. Therefore, it’s not only illegal but also practically impossible to exclude such a strong minority from power, rights, a future.
Supremacists and settlers such as Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are pushing for more West Bank settlements, which are illegal under international law. Almost half a million Jewish settlers try to create facts on the ground, ignoring Palestinian rights as well as the fact that Muslims will remain there neighbors in and around Israel for generations to come. You can’t change geography. The agressive settler policy is not the path towards a peaceful future.
As in 2020, Benjamin Netanyahu continues to do whatever it takes to avoid prison. He offered the supremacists, extremists and extreme-right vast concessions to obtain judicial immunity and/or to have his corruption trial cancelled. Israel’s former Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit was none other than Netanyahu’s former cabinet secretary (!) and probably did not push the corruption case hard enough although, in 2019, after a three-year investigation, he put forward three charges of fraud and breach of trust as well as one charge of bribery. But Bibi’s trial is still not over. Benjamin Netanyahu and his government already put pressure on Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, in office since February 7, 2022. She is opposed to the new coalition’s plans to overhaul the legal and judicial system.
Already in 2020, the presumably corrupt Benjamin Netanyahu did pretty much anything to avoid prison by forming a government moving to the right. At the end of 2022, he has lost all shame. He has no backbone. When the previous prime minister Ehud Olmert was indicted, Benjamin Netanyahu publicly asked him to step down. Olmert stepped down in 2009 and, in 2012, was convicted and ended up in a prison cell. Given all the evidence that is out there, that seems to be the logical future for Bibi, if the rule of law prevails.
Last, but not least, let’s not forget that it was Benjamin Netanyahu who was instrumental in having the extreme-right politicians Itamar Ben Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, Avi Moaz and others form the Religious Zionist Party to make it together over the 3.25%-threshold to enter the Knesset. Bibi succeeded. The Religious Zionist Party with its three factions ended up as Israel’s third largest party in the November 1, 2022 legislative election with a staggering 10.83% and 14 seats. But Netanyahu is now prisoner to the demands of several extremists.
In Netanyahu’s cabinet serve 31 ministers, of whom only 5 are women. Among them is Idit Silman, the new Minister of Environmental Protection. She used to be a member of the Yamina party, which led the previous Bennett government. On April 6, 2022 Idit Silman left the ruling coalition majority for religion-related decisions and actions by the government. As a consequence, then Prime Minister Naftali Bennett lost the majority in the Israeli parliament. The consequence were early elections. Then-opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu gave Idit Silman a reserved spot on the Likud’s slate. Honi soit qui mal y pense?
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photograph: US State Department. This photo is in the public domain.
Article added on January 2, 2023 at 19:57 Swiss time.
