Calev Ben-Dor argues four changes have transformed the Israel Right: Benjamin Netanyahu’s need for political survival overpowering his more statesmanly strategic side, Likud’s increasingly nationalist anti-liberal bent, the ascendancy of religious Zionism’s more parochial, radical wing, and the mainstreaming of neo-Kahanism in the form of Itamar Ben Gvir. The result is the constitutional, political and social crisis now tearing the country apart.
Introduction
The megaphone could be heard from my living room. At the nearby junction, where two signs normally hang – ‘Prime Ministers are only replaced at the ballot box’ on one corner and ‘Committed to the Declaration of Independence: Resist!’ on the other – stood horses, riot police and an armoured crowd control vehicle. Approximately one hundred metres in one direction was the noisy anti-government demonstration. To the other, just behind the police, was the prime minister’s residence. It was the evening before the Supreme Court began hearing a petition on overruling a Knesset-legislated Basic Law. PM Netanyahu was reportedly mulling announcing a compromise on the right-wing’s government’s entire judicial reform plan, but neither his allies nor opponents believe in his sincerity.
During the Supreme Court hearing on the ‘Reasonableness Limitation Law’, passed by the Knesset, the government’s lawyer suggested the Declaration of Independence was a hastily-scribbled note – at most a recommendation rather than binding on future generations. The day after that, Knesset speaker Amir Ohana pledged that the Knesset would not ‘submissively allow itself to be trampled’ by a potential ruling striking down the law, and suggested setting up a new court to handle ‘constitutional matters that exist despite the fact that Israel has no constitution.’ Meanwhile thousands of protestors have sought to disrupt Netanyahu’s trip to the US. Neither the government nor demonstrators look like standing down. How did we get here? This essay seeks to map out the processes behind the rise of Israel’s ‘New-Right’ wing that dominates the current coalition.
Redefining what right-wing means
If right-wing is territorially hawkish and sceptical of trading land for peace – as it has traditionally been in Israeli circles – it will be impossible to understand why figures such as Moshe Yaalon, Benny Begin, President Ruby Rivlin, ex-Likud minister Gideon Saar, former head of the Shin Bet Yoram Cohen and countless others oppose the proposed changes to the judicial system. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be essential to determining Israel’s future. But it is near-irrelevant to understanding its present political turmoil. The frames of reference have shifted.
‘Today’s division between right and left-wing in Israel is not between territorial hawks and doves,’ Gayil Talshir an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, tells Fathom, ‘but over the priority they give to the terms Jewish and democratic’. During a conversation in her book-filled office on campus, Talshir argues that over the last decade the right had moved ‘from national-liberal’ which sought to balance the two, ‘to nationalist anti-liberal’ which sought to prioritise Israel’s Jewish character. Yoaz Hendel, a (right-wing) former minister in the Bennett-Lapid government, drew a different distinction, between a Zionist right-wing and a post-Zionist right-wing. The former ties itself to the state’s institutions. The latter attacks and undermines them.
Both have in mind the current coalition, comprised of Netanyahu’s Likud, Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism, the Haredim of Shas and UTJ, and Itamar Ben Gvir’s Jewish Power. Changes in many of these groups, as well as within Netanyahu himself have created a New Right in Israel, the consequences of which are beginning to be seen.
The global context
One writer who uses the phrase ‘New Right’ is Anne Applebaum, who describes new trends within European and American right wing groups. Such groups have ‘little in common with most of the political movements that have been so described since the Second World War’ she tells Fathom in a zoom conversation from her home in Poland. In her book Twilight of Democracy, Applebaum refers to a specific kind of right-wing – sometimes terming it the ‘new right’, or ‘new national conservatism’ or ‘Neo-Bolshevik’. She argues that classic conservatives – such as British Tories, American Republicans, East European anti-Communists, German Christian Democrats, and French Gaullists ‘all come from different traditions, but as a group they were, at least until recently, dedicated not just to representative democracy, but to religious tolerance, independent judiciaries, free press and speech, economic integration, international institutions, the transatlantic alliance, and a political idea of “the West.”’
Yet today, the new right no longer wants to conserve or preserve what exists. ‘In the United States and the United Kingdom, the new right has broken with the old-fashioned, Burkean small-c conservatism that is suspicious of rapid change in all its forms’ Applebaum says. ‘The new right is more Bolshevik than Burkean: these are men and women who want to overthrow, bypass, or undermine existing institutions, to destroy what exists … They believe that institutions are in permanent decline and that only radical change can fix it.’
In his 2020 essay, The Strange Case of Israeli Conservatism, one of Israel’s leading conservative thinkers Assaf Sagiv, argues that Israel’s right-wing has drawn inspiration from a different source, that of the mid-20th Century brand of American conservatism influenced by public intellectual William F. Buckley Jr. This movement, writes Sagiv, ‘cultivated anti-establishment tendencies, which repeatedly brought it closer to the brink of the populist abyss.’ Sagiv sees worrying comparisons. ‘The conservative movement in Israel is following almost the same path and has already had time to repeat the same disastrous mistakes, and all this at a much faster pace.’[1]
It is unlikely even Sagiv imagined that three years later we would have a coalition happy to blast the IDF – the ultimate Israeli ‘institution’ – as an agent of the deep state, and seek to remake the Supreme Court in its image.
The changes that created the Israeli New Right
This coalition and its plans reflect a convergence of four connected but independent changes that have occurred in Israel in recent years. Some – Benjamin Netanyahu’s need for political survival overpowering his more statesmanly strategic side, Likud’s increasingly nationalist anti-liberal bent, and the ascendancy of religious Zionism’s more parochial, radical wing – are not new. Rather, like a carefully calibrated eco-system now out of sync, small changes within the religious Zionist community, Likud, and its leader have created an imbalance with significant consequences.
The fourth change, the mainstreaming of neo-Kahanism in the form of Itamar Ben Gvir, results from a toxic combination of Netanyahu’s political expediency and cynicism with the public’s attraction to an anti-establishment figure promising ‘security’ and ‘governance’ (for more on this see Fathom, The Rise of Itamar Ben Gvir). It’s too early to predict how Ben Gvir’s rise will affect Israeli society in the long term. Yet in the short term he constitutes a major cog in a government composed of different groups historically opposed to the Supreme Court coalescing under a Prime Minister facing criminal corruption charges.
This New Right coalition subsequently utilised critiques – often legitimate – by conservative organisations and individuals about the court overreaching its authority in order to push through far more maximalist and radical proposals to strengthen the executive and legislature over the judiciary. For journalist and best-selling author Yossi Klein Halevi, some of the academic discussions failed to fully understand the phenomenon of the New Right. Those organisations too often ‘treated the question of judicial reform like a graduate seminar that was divorced from the brutal reality of a corrupt and extremist government,’ he tells Fathom. Whatever merit there might have been to some of their ideas they allowed themselves to be used by cynical and self-serving politicians who couldn’t care less about improving Israeli democracy – quite the opposite.’
(For more on the debate over Israel’s judiciary see The Fathom Debate: Judicial Reform in Israel).
Change 1: Mr. Bibi overpowers Dr. Netanyahu
In the lead up to the third round of elections in 2021, Likud ran a campaign presenting Netanyahu in one corner facing off against a number of others – Ahmed Tibi, Yair Lapid, Avigdor Lieberman, Benny Gantz, Naftali Bennett. The viewer saw Netanyahu at the UN pointing to secret Iranian nuclear sites, signing normalisation agreements with the UAE and Bahrain, and organising the delivery of shipments of lifesaving Corona vaccines. ‘Many politicians’, the campaign stated, ‘one leader’.
That was Netanyahu’s calling card. Experienced, strategic, careful; friends with Modi, Trump and Putin (when that was still an asset); presiding over economic growth and Israel’s Start Up Nation. Yes, he may have uttered divisive (and inaccurate) comments from time to time – the Arabs are being bussed to the polls, the left has forgotten what it means to be Jewish, the deep state is persecuting him. He was a Jekyll and Hyde figure – the strategist and inciter. But when all was said and done, he had his hands on the wheel. And he was a responsible driver.
Recently however – and Netanyahu-watchers differ as to whether this began in 2015, 2019 or later – he changed. He is not the same Bibi. He is arguably the country’s greatest politician. But he has increasingly embraced illiberal forces, prioritised his political survival over the country, and lost control over his party and allies.
For example, he welcomed Ben Gvir into mainstream politics and shepherded the odious triple alliance with Smotrich and the (mis-named) Noam (pleasantness) party to ensure no right wing votes went to waste. Since returning to the Prime Minister’s seat, the person who prided himself as ‘Mr. Economy’ and ‘Mr. Security’ has cancelled the need for core subjects in Haredi schools and green-lighted billions of dollars to Haredi political parties. He also fired his Defence Minister for raising questions about the security consequences of the judicial reform. Faced with a choice between maintaining the IDF’s resilience and advancing the judicial reforms Netanyahu has chosen the latter.
Then there are the voices in his ear. ‘There is a battle of influence over Netanyahu between [pragmatic] Ron Dermer, [ideologue] Yariv Levin, and [fiery] Yaakov Bardugo,[2] warns Talshir. Impossible to ignore, too, is the marked growth of influence of his son Yair, who alternates between advising his father, castigating the IDF Chief of Staff, tweeting about alien reptiles, George Soros and deep state conspiracy theories, and defending himself in court against libel and defamation suits.
Policy U-turns to alleviate political headaches are common. The excruciatingly long-negotiated 2016 Kotel compromise was shelved after Haredi objections. Netanyahu initially condemned Elor Azaria, the soldier who shot and killed an already neutralised Palestinian assailant in what Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon described as an utter breach of IDF values and code of ethics. Yet his attitude to the soldier reversed following criticism from keyboard warriors. In 2018, a UN brokered compromise to grant temporary residency status to some 15,000 African asylum seekers (with another 15,000 to go to other western countries) was shelved within a few hours on Yair’s advice who had taken the temperature of social media. This is how decisions seemingly get made.
Netanyahu promised Biden he would have his hands on the wheel of his Kahanist-annexationist-Haredi-government. But he seems unable (or unwilling) to rein in his ministers. Bibi-ism, what Sagiv describes as ‘wild, unrestrained populism’ now reduces Netanyahu’s own room to maneuver and compromise. ‘Netanyahu may have created the Bibi-ist tiger,’ Talshir tells Fathom, ‘but he can no longer control it.’
Broadly, Netanyahu’s statesmanship has been overtaken by political expediency – Mr. Bibi now controls Dr. Netanyahu. What seemed to bother Meridor most about Netanyahu during his conversation with Fathom was the prioritisation of the PM’s personal political standing. ‘It’s not that Netanyahu is unpatriotic. But just as Brutus in Shakespeare says, “it’s not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more”, so it’s not that Netanyahu loves Israel less, he just loves himself more.’
The Caesar reference was particularly poignant. In Simon Sebag Montefiore’s immense The World: A Family History he tells of how before running for office, Julius Caesar wrote to his mother that his ‘heavy debts meant that it was either election or prison.’ Netanyahu worries he is caught in a similar dilemma. He was a well-known defender of the courts, but his corruption trials mean he fears it’s either power or prison. After so many political U-turns he is mistrusted across the political spectrum. His judicial problems have helped destroy his judiciousness.
Change 2: Likud: From liberal-national to illiberal nationalist
‘Netanyahu’s crime against Israeli politics,’ Klein Halevi tells Fathom ‘is that he not only legitimised the far-right but turned the Likud into a far right party.’
The slow and painful erosion of Likud’s mamlachti [3] DNA has been striking. One anecdote relates to the so-called Ministerial Forum of Seven. It held dozens of meetings between 2010-2012 to discuss and debate issues critical to Israel’s national security such as Iran’s nuclear programme. Headed by Netanyahu, the senior ministers – several of whom were Likud MKs – had accumulated over a hundred years of experience in the security world.
The Forum no longer exists. Its more formal alternative, the Security Cabinet – which includes Smotrich and Ben Gvir – rarely meets. When it does, Netanyahu desperately tries to exclude Ben Gvir, who despite being National Security Minister, is considered more adept at Tik Tok videos than measured policy. Perhaps most significantly, the Likud members of that Forum, Benny Begin, Meridor and Yaalon, all subsequently left the ruling party and criticised its direction. Yaalon lamented that radical and dangerous officials had taken over Likud. Begin said the party was behaving haughtily and arrogantly, charging Netanyahu with using his position to solve his personal and legal problems. Meridor bemoaned that the party’s nationalism had completely overtaken its liberalism.
Over time, the balance within the party has shifted. Many MKs have taken increasingly extreme positions towards the opposition and state institutions – the courts and attorney general, the media (including the public broadcasting corporation) the police, the Bank of Israel, and increasingly the IDF (notably very few of today’s Likud MKs served in senior positions within the military).
Eight Likud MKs recently called for the easing of conditions of Amiram Ben-Uliel, who is serving life sentences for murdering three Palestinians; Public Diplomacy Minister Galit Distel Atbaryan accused (without any shred of evidence) Germany, Iran and the US of funding the anti-government demonstrations; May Golan (who previously claimed rape was part of Eritrean culture) blamed the High Court for allowing the ‘rape of women and robbery of the elderly’ by rejecting petitions against the deportation of asylum seekers; Justice Minister Yariv Levin claimed the court sought ways to be lenient with rapists and defended the lives of terrorists over the IDF; Shlomo Karhi took a break from promoting changes to public broadcasting to strengthen the pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 in order to tell IDF reservists opposed to the government to go to hell; David Amsalem called for a trial of former and current heads of the Supreme Court for an attempted coup, adding that soldiers who refuse reserve duty should be dealt with ‘the way mutinous soldiers should be dealt with’; Nissim Vaturi – of ‘some parents try to make their sons gay by giving them dolls to play with’ fame – said IDF soldiers had been killed because of an alleged American arms embargo; Miri Regev termed Tel Aviv’s Kikar Medina ‘a stronghold of terror’ after an ad-hoc protest against Sara Netanyahu at the beauty salon and accused the Shin Bet of trying to carry out a coup.
In the eyes of Likud MKs, air force pilots, once considered every Jewish mother’s dream (there is a famous saying of hatovim letayis, ‘the best to the airforce’), have suddenly become a privileged Ashkenazi elite that excluded the periphery from its ranks the moment they aired criticism against the government.
Speaking to Fathom the day after the Knesset passed its legislation on curbing the Court’s use of its ‘reasonableness’ doctrine to strike down government decisions, Klein Halevi bemoaned the ‘transformation of a quintessential democratic movement into an anti-democratic party in a way not dissimilar to the debasement of the Republican party under Trump.’ Indeed, channeling their own inner ‘alternative facts’ narrative, Likud MKs celebrated the ‘600,000’ pro-government protestors who attended ‘the largest demonstration ever in Israel’ (estimates put the crowd at 100,000 – 200,000, similar numbers to the weekly anti-government demos).
Then there is Israel’s very own version of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Talli Gotliv. Granted, no Rothschild-sponsored space lasers have (yet) been blamed. Rather her ire has been directed at senior IDF officials – of being part of the ‘deep state’ and working with terrorists; the Attorney General – for having blood on her hands for violence in the Arab sector; the Shin Bet – for leaking details of ministers’ whereabouts to protestors; and the Governor of the Bank of Israel – for warning about the economic repercussions of the judicial reforms.
‘I doubt many of the Likud MKs would describe themselves as liberal’, Meridor laments. ‘Instead of fighting on behalf of the legal system or human rights, only the nationalist component remains in Likud, and with it comes hatred towards elites and leftists.’ Sometimes these MKs even say the quiet parts out loud – their plans to appoint ‘loyal’ supreme court judges, fire the Attorney General, ensure the government oversees the media, appoint friends to key positions with huge budgets and maybe even postpone the date of elections and ban Arab parties from running. It’s what Talshir ominously calls the ‘Hungary Model’. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that Netanyahu’s flirtation with Hungary’s Victor Orban has turned into a full blown bromance.
Likud’s structure of primaries (while more democratic than several other parties) actually incentivises this type of rhetoric. Many of the more vociferous MKs initially gained a realistic slot on the party slate by being eligible for regional lists, or spots reserved for women – both of which require significantly less support from the Likud Central Committee than those forced to be elected via national lists.[4] In the next election they will be forced to fight for a place on the national lists and need a 300-400 per cent rise in support. Without national name recognition they will have to find an alternative career.
Similar to Facebook’s algorithm, the Likud Central Committee too-often rewards those who generate provocation and outrage. This is one way the party of Menachem Begin morphed into that of Gotliv and Amsalem. When a friend of mine recently met Menachem’s son, Benny, he recounted how he was getting used to being called a leftist.
Change 3: The ascendancy of a more tribal, parochial religious Zionism
Compounding changes within Netanyahu and Likud is a shift within the religious Zionist community. While generally territorially hawkish, the religious Zionist public spans a wide spectrum – from those who term the Pride Parade a gathering of ‘perverts’ and ‘beasts’ on the one hand, to religious LGBT members on the other; and from rabbinical leaders who demand full annexation of the biblical heartland to a West Bank Rabbi who met with Sheikh Yassin and believed the Holy Land should be shared.
In recent years, the religious Zionist public were offered a political choice – Naftali Bennett or Bezalel Smotrich. In his lifestyle and positions, Bennett represented a type of territorially right-wing but socially-culturally engaged group of religious Zionists. He was observant but had married a secular woman, Orthodox but happy to fly to Pittsburgh after the synagogue massacre to stand alongside his Reform ‘Jewish brothers’. He was the former spokesperson of the Yesha [an acronym for Judea and Samaria] Council but lived in the middle to upper class suburb of Raanana. On a variety of social issues – homosexuality, the role of women, how religious people should approach secular (or left-wing) Israelis – he was relatively liberal. Bennett was heavily critical of the Supreme Court and judicial activism. But when his ally Ayelet Shaked was Justice Minister, she succeeded in appointing conservative judges by working within the system.
Bennett disagreed with the Zionist left, but viewed them as patriotic and potential allies. Smotrich, who advocates West Bank annexation and views Jewish particularism in its most narrow, segregationist and exclusionary manner, took opposite positions. ‘Smotrich is a product of the disengagement from Gaza,[5] which radicalized a large part of the community’ suggests Klein Halevi. Indeed, to this self-defined ‘proud homophobe’ living in Samaria, leftists represented the decadent, secular, universalist West. His camp’s solution to the Supreme Court was to (metaphorically?) bring a D9 bulldozer to destroy it. The Smotrich camp sees liberal values as ‘endangering the soul of the nation and the destiny of the Jewish state to be a Kingdom of priests and holy nation [as commanded in the Torah]’ Rabbi Shlomo Brin, a teacher at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Gush Etzion told Fathom.
Bennett sought to open religious Zionism’s horizons. His dream party included different types of Israelis (his first party was notably called Bayit Yehudi, meaning Jewish Home). He sought out a political alliance with Ayelet Shaked, a secular woman from Tel Aviv and the famous Mizrachi ex-footballer Eli Ohana. Smotrich meanwhile found success by creating a more tribal, inward looking, parochial party.
While the March 2021 Israel’s elections saw Bennett and Smotrich garner similar support (although Bennett subsequently became PM and Smotrich floundered in opposition), the results of the November 2022 elections found Smotrich’s brand of religious Zionism ascendant. Whether this was due to a change amongst the religious Zionist public – and here the Arab riots in mixed cities in May 2021 and Bennett’s alliance with Mansour Abbas are significant – or simply due to the vacuum left by Bennett’s timeout from politics and his successor Shaked’s meagre chances of passing the threshold, is difficult to know. (for more on this see Fathom Journal, ‘Politically homeless’: Yamina voters tell their story)
Yet while the ultimate battle for the future of religious Zionism in Israel is not over, it’s clear that Smotrich’s brand – strengthened by Ben Gvir’s charisma and anti-institutional message – is very much in the ascendance. It’s notable that Smotrich sought to monopolise the name ‘Religious Zionism’ by using that term for his party’s name.
The Haredim facilitate a perfect storm
Haredi leaders have sought to stay away from the forefront of the judicial battle. And the extent of the Haredi public’s support of the right-wing views of Smotrich and Ben Gvir is arguable.[6] But Shas and UTJ displayed remarkable commitment to Netanyahu during the election cycles and time in opposition, and now it’s payback time. In complete contradiction to economic logic, this involves demanding (and receiving) huge sums to yeshivot, a free pass from learning core subjects, and ideally an override clause or Basic Law for Torah study that would facilitate Haredi youth evading IDF service and continuing their studies on the tax payers’ dime. The same day the Court discussed the Reasonableness Limitation Law, the government announced cuts to the health, education, defence, welfare and Housing and Construction Ministries – including subsidies for rent, daycare centers, loans and the Holocaust Survivors’ Authority – in order to provide more money to the Haredi sector. Haredi society may not have significantly changed. But it has found a natural place in the convergence of the New Right.
A (right-wing) counter perspective
While the reality of these four changes – Netanyahu’s decision making, the politics of Likud MKs, religious Zionism’s focus and Ben Gvir’s popularity – has been widely accepted, the reasons underlying them have not.
For some on the right, Netanyahu is irreplaceable, a victim of a political witch-hunt. ‘When Netanyahu won against the odds in 2015 and Trump won in 2016’, Adi Arbel, the director of The Civil Society Forum tells Fathom, ‘the “left” realised that it would be impossible to win via the ballot box. It is then that pressure began to build on the Attorney General to indict Netanyahu.’ Some within the right were not surprised when the judges in Netanyahu’s criminal cases reportedly told the prosecution that a bribery case would be hard to prove (they said nothing about the fraud and breach of trust parts). To them it had been a stitch up from the beginning, a form of political lawfare by the minority to replace a popular PM.
Likud may have changed too, but it’s more Netanyahu’s rivals who played a central role. ‘[Menachem] Begin’s Likud was a combination between the national-liberal Cherut and Mizrachim from the periphery,’ says Arbel. ‘The moment that Lieberman, Saar and others got fed up with Netanyahu and created their own parties, they took a chunk of Ashkenazi more liberal right-wing votes with them. Today’s party is simply Likud without the Herut part.’ Based on this reading, it’s ‘Gideon Saar who (unwittingly) deconstructed what Begin created. There were always camps within Likud,’ Arbel notes, ‘and some of those camps left.’
What about the coalition’s annexationist-Kahanist partners? That’s primarily the fault of the ‘just not Bibi’ strategy hatched by Lapid and his allies which meant Netanyahu – now denied any other possible coalition partners – had no choice but to swerve rightwards to get to 61. The centre-left’s political strategy also put off some right-wingers who were not particularly besotted with Netanyahu but believed the left (and his former right-wing allies like Saar) were trying to topple him. For them it was an identity issue. ‘When the “left” decided to boycott Netanyahu’, Arbel notes, ‘they forced the liberal right to choose between its right-ness and its liberalness. The result was Netanyahu and his allies winning.’ With half the country boycotting him, Netanyahu’s only viable coalition was Haredi, territorially maximalist and Kahanist.
Towards a constitutional crisis
In any event, the changes outlined above have created the perfect storm for judicial legislation and has brought the country to the verge of a constitutional crisis. Neither the government nor demonstrators look like stopping. Where we go from here is anyone’s guess. Israelis may be about to discover what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. It is unlikely to be pretty.
[1] Sagiv also argues that the American movement ‘had unique characteristics that gave it a radical bent,’ and possessed a dogmatism and militancy that are be incompatible with the classical conservatism tradition. He believes that while the American conservative movement experienced impressive achievements, ‘the path it chose led to a decline and caused heavy damage to the political culture of the United States.’ See Asaf Sagiv, The Strange Case of Radical Conservatism (Hebrew), Hazman Hazeh, May 2020.
[2] Dermer is a conservative longtime ally of Netanyahu and served as his former ambassador in Washington. Considered more moderate on the issue of reforming the judicial system, he currently serves as Minister of Strategic Affairs and has been involved in negotiations at the President’s Residence over a compromise. Justice Minister Yariv Levin is an ideologue who has been critical of the Court for over two decades and presented a far-reaching package he has shown no interest in reining in. Yaakov Bardugo is a fiery broadcaster and journalist with close links to Yair Netanyahu.
[3] A particularly difficult word to translate, mamlachtiyut was created by David Ben Gurion as a type of statism, or an ideology that sees state institutions as sacrosanct. It also suggests seeking the ‘general common good’ or ‘society as a whole’ rather than focusing on tribal priorities.
[4] Vaturi for example garnered a meagre 4,500 votes in the primaries but gained 21st place because his residence was listed as being in the north (hence running on a regional slot). Gotliv, who received 10,700 votes gained 25th place which was reserved for a new woman.
[5] The disengagement from Gaza was initiated, planned and implemented by a right-wing Likud-led government under Ariel Sharon, in which Netanyahu was a senior minister. Yet in the current rhetoric, much of it is blamed on the court and the ‘left’. Discussing Netanyahu’s attempt at keeping his seat in the cabinet while playing to his right-wing base, TV commentator Amnon Abramovich once said that Netanyahu supported disengagement ‘in the Government and in the Knesset but opposed it in corridors and the television studios.’
[6] A Haaretz cartoon cast Itamar Ben Gvir as the pied piper attracting a stream of Haredim towards his brand of nationalistic toxicity as Haredi leaders look on worriedly. There has certainly been a (marked?) rise in the support gained by Ben Gvir and the Religious Zionism party. For example in Beitar Illit, a large Haredi settlement, support for Ben Gvir or Smotrich went from 4.85 per cent in April 2019 to 10 per cent in March 2021. In Bnei Brak, a Haredi city near Tel Aviv the party went from 2.29 per cent support in April 2019, to 4.42 per cent in March 2022. At the same time, a huge majority continue to vote for Haredi parties UTJ and Shas.
