Tag: Religious Zionism

NEW YORK (JTA) — An American Orthodox Jewish group is defending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to work with a far-right political party. It is the first statement by a major American Jewish organization defending Netanyahu’s decision. Last week, Netanyahu orchestrated an agreement between the extremist Jewish Power and Jewish Home, a religious Zionist party. “We understand what Prime Minister Netanyahu did, and he did it to have ministers of the national religious and national union parties in his coalition.” The statement stands in contrast to an alphabet soup of major Jewish groups that have condemned Jewish Power — from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to the American Jewish Committee to the Anti-Defamation League. “You have to take into consideration all of the ramifications and all of the concerns.” With Netanyahu’s intervention, Jewish Home agreed to include on its slate in April’s elections Michael Ben-Ari and Itamar Ben-Gvir, self-professed followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who advocated the expulsion of the Palestinians from territories controlled by Israel and a near theocratic state of the Jews. Netanyahu would need the support of successful right-wing parties in addition to his own Likud to form a government. The Young Israel statement likened Netanyahu’s decision to the 1993 vote on the so-called Oslo II accords, when a left-wing government relied on votes from Arab-Israeli political parties to secure passage of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. That argument echoes one made Saturday by Netanyahu himself on Twitter. The ZOA statement did not discuss the actual positions of Jewish Power, except to say at one point that its critics were engaging in “Nazi-name-calling against Jewish candidates.” “It is also mystifying that these Jewish-American groups condemned Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for encouraging small right-wing Israeli parties to merge, so that Israeli voters on the right are not disenfranchised,” the ZOA statement reads, telling other American Jewish groups to “direct their condemnation to those who oppose the State of Israel, and are truly racist and reprehensible, and a danger to the Jewish people and the Jewish State.” The Young Israel statement also contrasts with statements condemning Jewish Power from the Reform and Conservative Jewish movements. RCA responded that it doesn’t comment on Israeli politics.

Kahane called for Arabs to be expelled from Israel, and his Kach party had a history of harassing Israeli Arabs. Kahane served time in prison both in the United States and Israel. “This dangerous phenomenon will pass because no public figure or member of Knesset supports it,” Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir once said about Kahane, according to Haaretz. But several major American Jewish groups, as well as Israeli public figures, are opposing the move as an endorsement of the extremism once rejected by previous Israeli governments. But what Prime Minister Netanyahu has done, because he’s desperate, because he’s in an increasingly tight political race, is open the door to evil.” A chorus of centrist and liberal American Jewish organizations opposed the merger this week. “This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, keen to shore up his electoral position, orchestrated the unification of the extreme right-wing party Otzma Yehudit (‘Jewish Power’) with the National Union so that it could enter the Knesset in a consolidated right-wing bloc,” read a statement by eight groups, including the New Israel Fund, J Street, the National Council of Jewish Women and the Reconstructionist movement. “We are outraged that right-wing political parties and their leadership have reversed course and opened the door for Kahanists to enter into the Israeli political mainstream.” No major right-wing Jewish groups have condemned the merger. “We understand what Prime Minister Netanyahu did, and he did it to have ministers of the national religious and national union parties in his coalition.” Most American Jewish groups also opposed Kahane’s activities in the United States and Israel in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. That same year, with Kahane’s party poised to win more than 10 seats in elections, it was banned from running due to its racist platform — at the urging of Likud. Regardless, Ben-Ari will only be elected this year if his party wins enough votes to have five seats in Knesset.