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Netanyahu’s new government could lose a critical constituency: American conservatives
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The op-ed was typical of the Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page, extolling the virtues of moderation in all things.
The difference was that the author of the piece published Wednesday, Bezalel Smotrich, has a reputation for extremism, and the political landscape he was imagining is in Israel, not America.
Experts who track the U.S.-Israel relationship say the op-ed had a clear purpose: to quell the fears of American conservatives whom Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long cultivated as allies and who may be rattled by his new extremist partners in governing Israel.
Those partners include Smotrich, the Religious Zionist bloc leader and self-described “proud homophobe” whom Israeli intelligence officials have accused of planning terrorist attacks — and who was sworn in as finance minister in Netanyahu’s new government Thursday. They also include Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has been convicted of incitement for his past support of Jewish terrorists, who will oversee Israel’s police.
The presence of Smotrich, Ben-Gvir and their parties in Netanyahu’s governing coalition has alarmed American liberals, including some in the Biden administration. But insiders say conservatives are feeling spooked, too.
“The conservative right was with [Netanyahu] and now he seems to be riding the tiger of the radical right,” said David Makovsky, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who just returned from a tour of Israel where he met with senior officials of both the outgoing and incoming governments. “And I think that is bound to alienate the very people who counted on him being risk-averse and to focus on the economy.”
In his op-ed published on Tuesday, two days before the new Israeli government was sworn in, Smotrich sought to persuade Americans that the new government is not the hotbed of ultranationalist and religious extremism it has been made out to be in the American press.
“The U.S. media has vilified me and the traditionalist bloc to which I belong since our success in Israel’s November elections,” he wrote. “They say I am a right-wing extremist and that our bloc will usher in a ‘halachic state’ in which Jewish law governs. In reality, we seek to strengthen every citizen’s freedoms and the country’s democratic institutions, bringing Israel more closely in line with the liberal American model.”
The op-ed is at odds with the stated aims of the coalition agreements; whereas Smotrich says there will be no legal changes to disputed areas in the West Bank, the agreements include a pledge to annex areas at an unspecified time, and to legalize outposts deemed illegal even under Israeli law. He says changes to religious practice will not involve coercion, but the agreement allows businesses to decline service “because of a religious belief,” which a member of his party has anticipated could extend to declining service to LGBTQ people.
Netanyahu has alienated the American left with his relentless attacks on its preference for a two-state outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he perceives as dangerous and naive. (He also differs from them on how to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.) He has instead cultivated a base on the right through close ties with the Republican Party and among evangelicals, made possible in part because he has long espoused the values traditional conservatives hold dear, including free markets and a united robust Western stance against extremism and terrorism.
But his alliance with Smotrich and others perceived as theocratic extremists may be a bridge too far even for Netanyahu’s conservative friends, who champion democratic values overseas, said Dov Zakheim, a veteran defense official in multiple Republican administrations.
“Traditional conservatives are much closer to the Bushes, and Jim Baker and those sorts of folks,” he said, referring to the two former presidents and the secretary of state under the late George H. W. Bush.
Jonathan Schanzer, a vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the op-ed was likely written at Netanyahu’s behest with those conservatives in mind.
“The Wall Street Journal piece was designed to appeal to traditional conservatives,” he said. “It was designed to send a message to the American public writ large that the way in which Smotrich and perhaps [Itamar] Ben Gvir have been described is based on past utterances and not necessarily their forward-looking policies.”
The immediate predicate for the op-ed, insiders say, was likely a New York Times editorial on Dec. 17 that called the incoming government “a significant threat to the future of Israel” because of the extremist positions Smotrich and other partners have embraced, including the annexation of the West Bank, restrictions on non-Orthodox and non-Jewish citizens, diminishing the independence of the courts, reforming the Law of Return that would render ineligible huge chunks of Diaspora Jewry, and anti-LGBTQ measures.
Smotrich in his op-ed casts the changes not as radical departures from democratic norms but as tweaks that would align Israel more with U.S. values. He said he would pursue a “broad free-market policy” as finance minister. He likened religious reforms to the Supreme Court decision that allowed Christian service providers to decline work from LGBTQ couples.
“For example, arranging for a minuscule number of sex-separated beaches, as we propose, scarcely limits the choices of the majority of Israelis who prefer mixed beaches,” Smotrich wrote. “It simply offers an option to others.”
In the West Bank, Smotrich said, his finance ministry would promote the building of infrastructure and employment which would benefit Israeli Jewish settlers and Palestinians alike. “This doesn’t entail changing the political or legal status of the area.”
Such salves contradict the stated aims of the new government’s coalition agreement, Anshel Pfeffer, a Netanyahu biographer and analyst for Haaretz said in a Twitter thread picking apart Smotrich’s op-ed.
“Smotrich says his policy doesn’t mean changing the political or legal status of the occupied territories while annexation actually appears in the coalition agreement and his plans certainly change the legal status of the settlements,” Pfeffer said.
Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said foreign media alarm at the composition of the incoming government was premature.
“I suspect that the vast mass of people will maintain the support that they have for Israel because it hasn’t got anything to do with the passing of one government to another and has everything to do with the principle that Israel is a pro-American democracy in a region that’s pretty important,” she said.
That said, Pletka said, the changes in policy embraced by Smotrich and his cohort could alienate Americans should they become policy.
“I think a lot of things can change if the rhetoric from Netanyahu’s government becomes policy, but right now, it’s rhetoric,” she said. “What you tend to see in normal governments is that they need to make a series of compromises between rhetoric that plays to their base and governance.”
Pletka said Netanyahuu’s stated ambition to expand the 2020 Abraham Accords to peace with Saudi Arabia would likely inhibit plans by Smotrich to annex the West Bank. In the summer of 2020, the last time Netanyahu planned annexation, the United Arab Emirates, one of the four Arab Parties to the Abraham Accords, threatened to pull out unless Netanyahu pulled back — which he did.
“It’s not just the relationship with the United States,” she said. “This might alienate their new friends in the Gulf, which, at the end of the day, may actually have more serious consequences.”
Netanyahu has repeatedly sought to relay the impression that he will keep his coalition partners on a short leash.
“They’re joining me, I’m not joining them,” he said earlier this month. “I’ll have two hands firmly on the steering wheel. I won’t let anybody do anything to LGBT [people] or to deny our Arab citizens their rights or anything like that.”
Zakheim said that Netanyahu, who is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, from 1996 to 1999 and then from 2009 to 2021, has proven chops at steering rangy coalitions — but there are two key differences now.
Netanyahu wants his coalition partners to pass a law that would effectively end his trial for criminal fraud, and so they exercise unprecedented leverage over him. Additionally, Netanyahu in the past has faced the greatest pressure from haredi Orthodox parties, who are susceptible to suasion by funding their impoverished sector. That’s not true of his new ideologically driven partners.
“If you look at his past governments, he has really never been forced into real policy decisions by those to the right of him,” Zekheim said. “Now he’s got a problem because these 15 or so seats of those to his right are interested in policy, not just in money.”
Makovsky said Netanyahu appears to be leaving behind a conservatism that was sympathetic to the outlook of its American counterpart.
“His success has been that he’s a stabilizer. He’s risk-averse. He’s focused on the prosperity of the country, with high-tech success. He’s the one to be seen as the tenacious guardian against Iranian nuclear influence,” he said. “And those are things people could relate to. Now, it just seems like he’s just throwing the playbook out the window.”
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Jewish groups at Penn sound alarm over federal lawsuit seeking information on Jewish employees
(JTA) — The Trump administration is facing sharp criticism from Jewish groups at the University of Pennsylvania over its lawsuit demanding personal information on Jewish staff members.
The complaint, filed last week by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Pennsylvania federal court, claims that the school “refused to comply” with a subpoena from the commission as it investigated allegations of antisemitism on its campus.
The subpoena sought contact information for Jewish employees who had filed a discrimination complaint, belonged to Jewish groups on campus, or were part of the school’s Jewish studies program.
“Identification of those who have witnessed and/or been subjected to the environment is essential for determining whether the work environment was both objectively and subjectively hostile,” the complaint read.
The EEOC first began investigating the university in December 2023, the same month that the school’s then-president, Liz Magill, resigned amid scrutiny over her refusal to say that calls for the genocide of Jews violated the school’s code of conduct.
Penn is not the first school hit by a probe for Jewish contacts. In April, professors at Barnard College received texts from the federal government asking if they were Jewish as part of the EEOC’s review. In September, the University of California, Berkeley said it had provided the names of 160 individuals involved in cases of antisemitism.
While Penn remained largely unscathed by the Trump administration’s sweeping federal funding cuts to elite universities over allegations of antisemitism, the school had $175 million in federal funding suspended in April over an investigation into a transgender athlete on its swim team.
In response to the Trump administration’s lawsuit, a Penn spokesperson told the New York Times that the school had “cooperated extensively” with the EEOC but said the school would not cooperate with the request for contact information for Jewish employees.
“Violating their privacy and trust is antithetical to ensuring Penn’s Jewish community feels protected and safe,” the spokesperson said.
In a joint statement on Friday, the school’s Hillel and MEOR chapters said that while they “recognize and appreciate the EEOC’s concern for civil rights,” they were “deeply concerned that the EEOC is now seeking lists of individuals identified as Jewish.”
Hundreds of Penn affiliates also signed onto an online petition voicing their support for the school’s refusal to turn over employee’s personal information.
“Across history, the compelled cataloging of Jews has been a source of profound danger, and the collection of Jews’ private information carries echoes of the very patterns that made Jewish communities vulnerable for centuries,” said the statement, which was posted on Instagram.
The post Jewish groups at Penn sound alarm over federal lawsuit seeking information on Jewish employees appeared first on The Forward.
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Local politician named Adolf Hitler Uunona poised for reelection in Namibia
(JTA) — As voters in a small Namibian constituency head to the polls on Wednesday, they are expected to reelect a local politician with a striking name: Adolf Hitler Uunona.
Uunona, 59, is a member of the South West Africa People’s Organization, the county’s left-leaning ruling party since it achieved independence from South Africa in 1990.
He was first elected as councillor for the Ompundja constituency, which is located in the Oshana Region of Namibia, in 2004, and won reelection bids in 2015 and 2020.
Following his election in 2020, which he won with 85% of the vote, Uunona told local outlet The Namibian distanced himself from his unfortunate namesake, saying he “didn’t have a choice” in his name.
“My father gave me this name Adolf Hitler, but it does not mean I have Adolf Hitler’s character or resemble that of Adolf Hitler of Germany,” Uunona told The Namibian. “Hitler was a controversial person who captured and killed people across the globe. I am not like him.”
Under German colonial rule from 1884 to 1915, Namibia adopted the use of some Germanic first names still used in the country today.
From 1904 to 1908, the German empire committed a genocide against the country’s Ovaherero and Nama people, killing roughly 70,000. Since Germany officially recognized the genocide in 2021, Namibian leaders have pushed for reparations, an effort that remains underway.
German influence was long felt in Namibia after the colonial period ended, with some areas of the country home to Nazis who fled Germany after World War II. A 1976 New York Times article chronicled how some German-Namibians still greeted each other with “Heil Hitler.”
Uunona is expected to win his seat again this year, according to forecasts from the country’s electoral commission.
The post Local politician named Adolf Hitler Uunona poised for reelection in Namibia appeared first on The Forward.
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Global Court Decisions Spark Outrage as Antisemitic Crimes, Attacks See Reduced Sentences
Pro-Hamas demonstrators marching in Munich, Germany. Photo: Reuters/Alexander Pohl
Court rulings around the globe are raising alarm bells as judges in Germany, Australia, and France have overturned or reduced sentences for individuals accused of antisemitic crimes, sparking public outrage over the leniency shown in such cases.
For the first time, a local court in Germany has allowed antisemitic slogans calling for Israel’s destruction and denying its right to exist to be chanted at a pro-Palestinian demonstration, despite concerns that such calls incite hatred and violence, according to the German newspaper Bild.
The Higher Administrative Court in Münster, a city in North Rhine-Westphalia in western Germany, issued an expedited ruling overturning a previous ban that had restricted protests to prevent participants from disrupting public order and inciting violence.
The ruling came after local police had imposed restrictions on an anti-Israel demonstration scheduled for Saturday in Düsseldorf, a city that had drawn more than 5,000 registered participants.
Prior to the protest, local law enforcement had prohibited demonstrators from chanting slogans that deny Israel’s right to exist and promote hatred — including “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” “There is only one state: Palestine 48,” and “Yalla, yalla, Intifada!” The first two slogans call for the Jewish state’s complete destruction, to be replaced by “Palestine,” and the third phrase calls for violence against Jews and Israelis.
However, the court ruled that “denying the State of Israel’s right to exist does not in itself constitute a criminal offense.”
Instead, the court emphasized that “a critical examination of the founding of the State of Israel and the call for a peaceful change of the existing conditions” is protected under the right to freedom of expression.
With this ruling, the ban on “There is only one state: Palestine 48” was lifted, even though the slogan calls for the annihilation of Israel, established in 1948.
But “Yalla, yalla, Intifada” and “From the river to the sea” will remain banned, the first for its potential to incite violence and the second as a slogan associated with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
In a separate and controversial ruling thousands of miles away, a man who set fire to a synagogue in Melbourne while worshippers were inside received a lenient sentence after an Australian court ruled that his actions were the result of mental illness rather than antisemitism.
On Monday, an Australian magistrate ruled that 35-year-old Angelo Loras was not driven by antisemitism but by a severe psychotic episode caused by his failure to take schizophrenia medication when he set fire to a local synagogue, with more than 20 worshippers inside sharing a Shabbat meal.
Earlier this year, Loras pleaded guilty to arson and recklessly endangering lives after pouring flammable liquid on the front door of the East Melbourne Synagogue and setting it alight, though no one was injured. This attack was one of three suspected antisemitic incidents across Melbourne over the weekend of July 4–6.
At the time, government officials and Jewish leaders denounced the attack as a clear hate crime.
With this ruling, Loras was given a four-month prison sentence — less than the 138 days he had already spent in custody — and was also ordered to continue schizophrenia treatment for 20 months and perform unpaid work. He will be eligible for release on Monday.
Meanwhile, a local court in France has dramatically reduced the sentence of one of the two teenagers convicted of the brutal gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl, citing his “need to prepare for future reintegration.”
More than a year after the attack, the Versailles Court of Appeal retried one of the convicted boys — the only one to challenge his sentence — behind closed doors, ultimately reducing his term from nine to seven years and imposing an educational measure
The original sentences, handed down in June, gave the two boys — who were 13 years old at the time of the incident — seven and nine years in prison, respectively, after they were convicted on charges of group rape, physical violence, and death threats aggravated by antisemitic hatred.
The third boy involved in the attack, the girl’s ex-boyfriend, was accused of threatening her and orchestrating the attack, also motivated by racist prejudice.
Because the girl’s ex-boyfriend was under 13 at the time of the attack, he did not face prison and was instead sentenced to five years in an educational facility.