Naftali Bennett, who is on track to become Israel’s 13th prime minister within days, is easily labeled — religious hard-liner, ultranationalist and settler leader on the one hand, high-tech millionaire, special-forces operative and political wunderkind on the other. Most of these labels, on closer scrutiny, don’t really apply. At least not fully. Bennett at 49…
The unity government taking shape in Israel is complicated, but it is not doomed. New leadership means new opportunities to create real change. There is a chance that the new government — which includes diverse ideological groups, is younger and more liberal than previous governments, and is not committed to the grave mistakes of Netanyahu…
Israelis who wish to end the seemingly infinite tenure of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have in recent days pinned their hopes on a new idea: the prospect of a national-unity government led by Naftali Bennett, a former defense minister who heads the right-wing Yamina party. In theory, this Bennett-led government would be non-ideological, and the…
After three elections in less than a year changed neither Israel’s prime minister or the generally conservative and religious makeup of its government, Israeli voters head back to the ballot box on Tuesday for yet another referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership. This time, Netanyahu’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic will be a central issue, and…
The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations is planning to host Zoom calls in the coming weeks where the leading candidates for prime minister in Israel’s March 23 elections will speak directly to the top leaders of the group’s 53 member organizations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to accept the invitation, a…
It’s no secret that American Jews and their Israeli counterparts have less in common with every passing day. But where you locate the source of that chasm depends on which side of the Atlantic you’re standing on. For American Jews, Israel’s dispossession of Palestinian civil rights, the monopoly of the ultra-Orthodox over religious matters, and…
Among the many inversions of the Trump presidency, perhaps none is weirder than the spectacle of Naftali Bennett, the ultranationalist Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister, downplaying anti-Semitism. Up until now, Bennett seemed to see anti-Semitism rising everywhere around him: in Poland, to which he cancelled a trip in February; in the BDS movement, which he called…
(JTA) — Far right wing Israeli minister Naftali Bennett defended President Donald Trump against critics who have tied Trump’s rhetoric to the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. “Using the horrible anti-Semitic massacre to attack the president is unfair, it’s wrong,” Bennett told JTA in a phone interview Tuesday. “He condemned anti-Semitism in the strongest possible words. Clearly…
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