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Who’s who in Israel’s new far-right government, and why it matters
(JTA) – As the sun set on the fourth night of Hanukkah in Israel on Wednesday, incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected to announce that he had successfully formed his new coalition government after more than five weeks of negotiations.
There are some asterisks: Netanyahu hasn’t officially signed any coalition deals yet with other parties (he has until 48 hours before the new government is seated Jan. 2 to do so), and some of his expected new partners are first demanding new legislation that has been delayed until after coalition talks.
But Netanyahu seems confident that he has formed a coalition that will grant him a comfortable majority in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Assuming he pulls it off before the swearing-in date, Israel seems set to welcome a new set of ministers who have set off alarm bells around the globe for their extremist beliefs and records.
Among the most worried observers are the U.S. government and Diaspora Jewish groups, who warn that, should these ministers get their way, Israel would be placing its status as both a pluralistic Jewish and democratic state at serious risk.
So what has everyone so concerned? Before the new government looks to be formally seated in January, here’s what you need to know about who’s set to take power in Israel.
Who’s in the new government?
Netanyahu’s coalition is full of incendiary characters hailing from Israel’s far-right and haredi Orthodox wings — including multiple fringe figures who until recently had been shunned by the country’s political mainstream, but who the incoming prime minister needs on his team in order to hold a governing majority (and attempt to dodge his own corruption charges).
Chief among them is Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, who will likely hold a newly created ministry position that gives him power over the state’s police force. A onetime follower of Jewish extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, Ben-Gvir has been convicted of incitement over his past support of Israeli terrorist groups and inflammatory comments about Israel’s Arab population. He has also encouraged demonstrations on the Temple Mount by religious nationalists that often lead to sectarian violence, leaving analysts worried about what he would do once placed in control of the state’s police force.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of Israel’s Otzma Yehudit party, and Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionist Party, attend a rally with supporters in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, Oct 26, 2022. (Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images)
In addition, the new government will include Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the extremist-aligned Religious Zionist party, who has been accused by Israeli security forces in the past of plotting violent attacks against Palestinians. Like Ben-Gvir, Smotrich will also likely be given a newly created ministership role in Netanyahu’s government to oversee Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank — a move which liberal groups say would lead to “de facto annexation” given his desire to expand settlements and deny Palestinian claims to the area.
Smotrich, who will additionally hold the position of finance minister, is also fervently anti-LGBTQ in a country that prides itself on its treatment of LGBTQ citizens. He has organized opposition to pride parades and compared same-sex relationships to bestiality.
He’s not the only incoming anti-LGBTQ minister: Avi Maoz, head of the far-right Noam party, has described himself as a “proud homophobe” and has called all liberal forms of Judaism a “darkness” comparable to the Hellenistic Empire that controlled the Jews in the Hanukkah story. (A leading Israeli LGBTQ group has invited him to attend a pride parade.) Maoz would headline a new “National Jewish Identity” education position with the power to demand certain content be taught in schools. He has said he wants to fight liberal attempts to “brainwash the children of Israel” with progressive ideology, aligning him with many figures on the American right today.
Another controversial figure in Israel’s new government is Aryeh Deri, head of the haredi Orthodox Shas party, who is set to become interior and health minister pending new legislation. Deri has been convicted of tax fraud and served 22 months in prison in 2002 — which would bar him from holding a ministry position, unless Netanyahu can pass a law allowing him to serve. (There are reports that Netanyahu’s party, Likud, may offer Deri the position of alternate prime minister if the court rules he cannot serve in the Cabinet.) Netanyahu himself is embroiled in a years-long corruption trial, and may be relying on his allies to help shield him from the consequences of an eventual verdict.
Who’s not in?
Not all Israelis are excited to see Netanyahu return to power. Hundreds of protesters recently took to the streets of Tel Aviv to object to his pending far-right alliance.
Government officials have also lashed out against him in the press. Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid, outgoing Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, outgoing Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai and a coalition of business executives are among the figures warning that the new laws, in the hands of the new government, would turn Israel into an illiberal state.
Benny Gantz — the outgoing defense minister and Netanyahu’s former rival-turned-unlikely-political-partner — had been floated as a wild card coalition contender in the wake of this fall’s election: A unity government involving his Blue and White party and Likud would reduce Netanyahu’s need to cater to far-right parties. But Gantz has not been mentioned in recent reporting on Netanyahu’s coalition negotiations.
How could the new government change Israel?
In some ways, it already has. As a precondition to some of his coalition deals, Netanyahu is pushing laws through the Knesset that grant new powers to his incoming ministers, allowing them expanded oversight of everything from law enforcement to Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The Shas party is also demanding an overhaul of the Israeli court system that would grant more authority over rabbinic judges and less oversight from secular ombudsmen, a move that legal observers in the country warn would cripple the judiciary and open the door to misconduct by rabbinic judges.
Netanyahu’s opposition bloc, which successfully ousted him in 2021 only to see its own coalition crumble a year later, is still in power through the end of the year and tried to delay Netanyahu’s moves with parliamentary gamesmanship this week. While they weakened some of the laws Netanyahu sought to pass, they seem to have failed to prevent the incoming PM’s ability to form a government.
Some figures in the new government also favor policies backed by the country’s Orthodox rabbinate that are hostile to much of Diasporic Jewry. Among the sweeping changes that could soon be on the table:
Removing the “grandchild clause,” a rule that allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to apply for Israeli citizenship, from the country’s Law of Return (haredi parties have promised to back off trying to change the Law of Return in the short-term);
Passing a law to no longer recognize non-Orthodox converts to Judaism as Israeli citizens, reversing a recent high court decision;
And scuttling long-in-the-works plans to create a permanent egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall.
How will this affect the Israeli-Palestinian peace process?
The answer many experts would give: What peace process?
With Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and other new ministers presenting themselves as openly hostile to Palestinian statehood, the chances of restarting viable negotiations for a two-state solution in the near future are slim to nil. Netanyahu continues to insist that any formal peace process would require the Palestinians to allow Israel to maintain some manner of security presence in the occupied territories, terms which the Palestinian Authority has strongly refused.
People gather to protest against the far-right upcoming coalition government led by Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Dec. 17, 2022. (Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
With a recent rise in violent attacks on Israelis and Palestinians alike forefront in citizens’ minds, security concerns were a foremost reason why Israel’s recent elections played out so well for the right wing. There is little incentive for the new government to engage in peace talks.
In addition, one of the carrots Netanyahu offered to his incoming coalition members was that the Israeli government would formally recognize a greater number of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which the international community consider to be part of an illegal occupation. Such a move would even further deteriorate relations with Palestinians and the international community.
Netanyahu’s discussions with other Arab nations, however, are continuing unabated. Seeking to build off of the success of the Abraham Accords, he recently hinted that Saudi Arabia may soon join the normalization agreements, urging the United States to formalize their own relationships with the Saudis.
What is the U.S. response?
The United States is certainly worried about the rightward direction Israel is headed in. President Joe Biden has often boasted of his decades-long “friendship” with Netanyahu, but that relationship is soon to be tested the further the Israeli leader embraces his coalition partners, some of whom the Biden administration has hinted it would refuse to work with directly.
Biden’s current strategy, insiders told Politico, is to work only through Netanyahu and to hold the prime minister responsible for any actions taken by his Cabinet. In interviews with American media, Netanyahu has insisted that he is still fully in control of his government.
Mainstream American Jewish groups including Jewish Federations of North America and the American Jewish Committee have stewed over Netanyahu and tried to reaffirm a commitment to “inclusive and pluralistic” policies in Israel, but they have publicly said they would wait until the new government was formed to make any judgments. Abe Foxman, former head of the Anti-Defamation League, has warned he “won’t be able to support” Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s vision for Israel.
Other groups, like B’nai Brith International and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, have characterized the new government as just the latest in a long line of Israeli governments they have successfully worked with.
Most American Jews are politically liberal, support a two-state solution, generally oppose Netanyahu and also highly prize the sense of egalitarianism that his new government has threatened to do away with. Any changes to the Law of Return, in particular, would be catastrophic for the relationship between Israel and American Jews, warns Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick Jacobs.
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American Jews can’t agree about anything — except Iran
Jews around the world have set aside their deep differences and come together in support of the protests in Iran.
“This never happens,” Rachel Sumekh, an Iranian-American nonprofit consultant in Los Angeles, told me. “You never had a coalition this diverse, because people get so stuck in politics.”
It’s easy to see why the protests — which began in response to a plunge in the value of Iran’s currency, and have ballooned into a widespread outpouring of rage at the Iranian regime — have drawn together all parts of the Jewish world. For the left, it’s a human rights struggle; for the right, it’s a chance for the regional balance to reset in favor of Israel.
But it’s difficult to say with certainty that unity between left and right, Zionist and anti-Zionist, will survive the tough decisions the protests will demand.
‘Progressives should care about human rights’
Since the 1979 revolution that brought the religious Islamic mullahs into power, Iranians have seen their rights and freedoms stripped away.
Millions took to the streets in the 2009 Green Movement to dispute a rigged election. Regime forces killed at least 550 protesters during the 2022 “Women, Life, Freedom” marches for women’s rights.
The brutality of the new crackdown has been on full display during the new protests; thousands are feared dead, with accounts of many killed by direct shots to the head. Amid that environment of fear and violence, protesters “deserve the support of progressives,” wrote Peter Beinart, an outspoken anti-Zionist, in his Substack newsletter, “because progressives should care about human rights.”
Many on the left are leery of supporting a cause that may lead to U.S. military intervention — or one they see as covertly backing Israel’s interests.
That may explain the silence of many so-called human rights activists who have stayed mum. But Jews are bucking that trend. “I have anti-Zionist Jewish friends who are posting in support of Iran, even though they know the base doesn’t like it,” said Sumekh.
Beinart, who has written that he “no longer believes in a Jewish state,” reminded his hundreds of thousands of followers of something that, well, should be pretty obvious.
“It’s as wrong to give countries a pass when they brutally violate human rights because they’re anti-American,” he said in a posted video, “as it is to give them a pass when they brutally violate human rights, because they’re pro-American.”
Not ‘death to Israel,’ but ‘long live Iran’
For many Jews, any revolt against Iran’s theocratic government is personal. The majority of the 60,000-odd Jews who lived in Iran at the time of the 1979 revolution fled, settling mostly in Israel and the United States. In both countries, those exiles have become integral to the Jewish community.
Some have family still in Iran, where about 15,000 Jews remain. In sharing their culture, stories and concerns, they have made Iranian freedom a tangible and pressing Jewish cause.
Plus, an overthrow of the regime could be a reason for relief in the Jewish state. The Iranian opposition, said policy analyst Karim Sadjadpour on the Call Me Back podcast, “is trying to replace, ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel’ with ‘Long Live Iran.”
The human rights issue matters to the right as well. But Israel’s staunchest supporters are also hoping for the downfall of a regime that has sworn to achieve Israel’s destruction.
Iran has funded the terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas and pursued a missile and nuclear weapons program that threatened and attacked Israel — even at the cost of crippling Iran’s own economy. The regime also funneled funds to Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian government in Syria, which served as a conduit to supply weapons to Hezbollah.
Republican Jews are saying a successful regime overthrow would expiate the original sin made by Democratic President Jimmy Carter, whom they blame for not supporting the Shah of Iran during the 1979 revolution, which swept the mullahs into power.
President Donald Trump, to them, is the anti-Carter. Trump has publicly supported the protesters, and threatened to use American power to protect them. Trump has not ordered any military intervention, but on Tuesday he posted a message on his Truth Social platform, “KEEP PROTESTING! TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!”
As Elie Cohanim, Trump’s former deputy envoy to combat antisemitism, said on Fox News, Trump is the first president to threaten the Iranian regime that if they kill protesters, “we’re going to hit you hard and we’ll hit you where it hurts.”
‘We actually have the same enemy’
If the U.S. does intervene militarily, the Jewish response is likely to be less unified.
We have been bitterly divided over Iran policy in the past. Slightly more than 60% of American Jews supported the 2015 agreement then-President Barack Obama spearheaded to limit Iran’s nuclear development, but the opposition was organized and vocal, leading to deep fissures in the community.
Those cracks may reappear if America intervenes militarily.
“When the United States gives itself the right to intervene militarily in the internal affairs of another country,” Beinart cautioned, “that emboldens other powers, China and Russia in particular, to do exactly the same thing.”
Yet many liberal American Jews backed Trump’s decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025. Those strikes made “Israel, the Jewish people and the world safer, ”Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, told the Forward at the time.
What will decide the extent to which Jews agree on the wisdom of intervention? Probably the duration of any operation; a long-term involvement in Iran would likely be much more controversial than any quick, one-time strike.
A worse outcome, said Sumekh, would be for Trump to attempt to negotiate with the regime, ultimately leaving it in place. The mullahs would likely use negotiations as a way to buy time and reassert control, making waste of the rare opportunity for real change.
It is too early to tell if the courageous Iranians facing bullets and batons will bring down their repressive regime. And should that happy day come to pass, we will surely find ways to argue over who should get credit, who should get blame, and how we can best help a free Iran repair its economy and find stability.
But for now, Jews know that overthrowing the regime is the most important goal. Iranians deserve liberation, and that freedom will be beneficial for the entire Middle East, if not the world.
“Through what’s happening right now, people can finally understand and see the connection between the Iranian people and the Jewish people and the people of Israel,” Natalie Sanandaji, an Iranian-Israeli survivor of the Nova massacre, said in a video posted to X, “They can see that not only are we not enemies, but we actually have the same enemy, the Islamic regime of Iran.”
The post American Jews can’t agree about anything — except Iran appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish creators made a satirical cartoon. Then the Mississippi synagogue arson supsect shared it
Stephen Spencer Pittman, who confessed to setting fire to Beth Israel Congregation in Mississippi, shared a cartoon on Instagram mocking Jews on the day of the attack. What Pittman may not have realized: He was sharing a satirical cartoon made by Jewish creators.
The video clip Pittman posted shows a character named Princess Clara, who spots a Jewish caricature holding moneybags. She exclaims, “A Jew in our backyard! I can’t believe my Jew crow didn’t work!” The camera pans to a scarecrow with a sign that reads “Tips, please.” Princess Clara then pushes the figure into a swimming pool, adding, “You’re getting baptized right now.”
That clip came from the cartoon Drawn Together, an animated parody of reality TV shows and cartoon tropes, which aired on Comedy Central from 2004 to 2007. Its creators, Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein, were both raised in Jewish families in Bergen County, New Jersey. Jeser has described himself as coming from an ardently Zionist family.
Pittman reposted the cartoon from an Instagram account that had been sharing the same clip daily for upwards of 90 days and had shared other antisemitic content. The clip has also been used to justify attacks on Jews: In December 2024, someone posted the cartoon as the thumbnail and closing footage on a video of Hamas executing an alleged Israeli collaborator. The Forward also found the clip shared in antisemitic contexts on social media going back to 2023.
Had Pittman shared the next piece of dialogue in the episode, the satire would have been more evident.
“I can’t swim!” the character, wearing peyot, or sidelocks, and a kippah, yells out.
“Don’t worry, you’re a Christian now! Jesus will be your life preserver!” Princess Clara responds.
A Jesus character then says, “Look at that heeb pretending to drown. Ha, those Jews kill me.”
Deliberate offensiveness is arguably the whole point of Drawn Together which, in addition to caricaturing Jews, includes stock characters that stereotype the LGBTQ community, Black community and nearly every other protected class. They all share a house in the show, and the friction of their dynamics, as in Big Brother, is played for laughs. The original tagline for the show, a play on the one from MTV’s The Real World, was “Find out what happens when cartoon characters stop being polite … and start making out in hot tubs.”
While critics have at times accused the show of straying from satire into cruelty, its intent to be parody is clear.
“Most of the racism on the show is coming from people who are so obviously stupid about it; it really isn’t that threatening,” actor Jess Harnell, who voices the character Captain Hero, a toxically masculine riff on Superman, said in commentary accompanying the show’s DVD.
Jeser and Silverstein did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment.
The show also found itself embroiled in controversy in 2010, when Comedy Central created an online game titled “I.S.R.A.E.L. Attacks!” The game was based on Drawn Together: The Movie, with a female robot character who attacks people. The film features Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane voicing the character “I.S.R.A.E.L.,” which stands for Intelligent Smart Robot Animation Eraser Lady, and a character named “Jew Producer” — inspired by Jeser and Silverstein.
The game drew backlash from Honest Reporting, a pro-Israel media watchdog, and the Anti-Defamation League, which cited “offensive antisemitic and anti-Israeli stereotypes.” Comedy Central took down the game.
But Jeser defended the movie as parody and said people should watch the whole film before casting judgment — the character “I.S.R.A.E.L.,” he said, actually ends up saving the day.
“It’s less a comment on Israel and the world than a comment on the silliness and stupidness of the characters on the show and their unwarranted fears of the unknown,” Jeser told Jewish Standard at the time, later adding, “The last thing we wanted to do was make fun of everyone but not ourselves and our own people. Laughter’s the best medicine, and we’re all very sick and need more of it.”
PJ Grisar contributed writing and reporting. Andy Carvin contributed reporting.
The post Jewish creators made a satirical cartoon. Then the Mississippi synagogue arson supsect shared it appeared first on The Forward.
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Iran Warns of Retaliation if Trump Strikes, US Withdraws Some Personnel From Bases
Flames engulf cars following unrest sparked by dire economic conditions, in a place given as Isfahan, Iran, Jan. 9, 2026, in this screengrab from Iran’s state media broadcast footage. Photo: IRIB via WANA(West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
The United States is withdrawing some personnel from bases in the Middle East, a US official said on Wednesday, after a senior Iranian official said Tehran had warned neighbors it would hit American bases if Washington strikes.
With Iran‘s leadership trying to quell the worst domestic unrest the Islamic Republic has ever faced, Tehran is seeking to deter US President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to intervene on behalf of anti-government protesters.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States was pulling some personnel from key bases in the region as a precaution given heightened regional tensions.
Britain was also withdrawing some personnel from an air base in Qatar ahead of possible US strikes, British media reported. The British defense ministry had no immediate comment.
“All the signals are that a US attack is imminent, but that is also how this administration behaves to keep everyone on their toes. Unpredictability is part of the strategy,” a Western military official told Reuters later on Wednesday.
Two European officials said US military intervention could come in the next 24 hours. An Israeli official also said it appeared Trump had decided to intervene, though the scope and timing remained unclear.
Qatar said drawdowns from its Al Udeid air base, the biggest US base in the Middle East, were “being undertaken in response to the current regional tensions.”
Three diplomats said some personnel had been told to leave the base, though there were no immediate signs of large numbers of troops being bussed out to a soccer stadium and shopping mall as took place hours before an Iranian missile strike last year.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene in support of protesters in Iran, where thousands of people have been reported killed in a crackdown on the unrest against clerical rule.
Iran and its Western foes have both described the unrest, which began two weeks ago as demonstrations against dire economic conditions and rapidly escalated in recent days, as the most violent since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that installed Iran‘s system of Shi’ite clerical rule.
An Iranian official has said more than 2,000 people have died. A rights group put the toll at more than 2,600. Other reports have said the number could be 12,000 if not higher.
Iran has “never faced this volume of destruction,” Armed Forces Chief of Staff Abdolrahim Mousavi said on Wednesday, blaming foreign enemies.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot described “the most violent repression in Iran‘s contemporary history.”
Iranian authorities have accused the US and Israel of fomenting the unrest, carried out by people it calls armed terrorists.
IRAN ASKS REGIONAL STATES TO PREVENT A US ATTACK
Trump has openly threatened to intervene in Iran for days, without giving specifics. In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, he vowed “very strong action” if Iran executes protesters. He also urged Iranians to keep protesting and take over institutions, declaring “help is on the way.”
The senior Iranian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tehran had asked US allies in the region to prevent Washington from attacking Iran.
“Tehran has told regional countries, from Saudi Arabia and UAE to Turkey, that US bases in those countries will be attacked” if the US targets Iran, the official said.
Direct contacts between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff have been suspended, the official added.
The United States has forces across the region including the forward headquarters of its Central Command at Al Udeid in Qatar and the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
GOVERNMENT DOESN’T SEEM NEAR COLLAPSE, WESTERN OFFICIAL SAYS
The flow of information from inside Iran has been hampered by an internet blackout.
The US-based HRANA rights group said it had so far verified the deaths of 2,403 protesters and 147 government-affiliated individuals, dwarfing tolls from previous waves of protests crushed by the authorities in 2022 and 2009.
The government’s prestige was hammered by a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign last June – joined by the US – that followed setbacks for Iran‘s regional allies in Lebanon and Syria. European powers restored UN sanctions over Iran‘s nuclear program, compounding the economic crisis there.
The unrest on such a scale caught the authorities off guard at a vulnerable time, but it does not appear that the government faces imminent collapse, and its security apparatus still appears to be in control, one Western official said.
The authorities have sought to project images showing they retain public support. Iranian state TV broadcast footage of large funeral processions for people killed in the unrest in Tehran, Isfahan, Bushehr and other cities.
People waved flags and pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and held aloft signs with anti-riot slogans.
President Masoud Pezeshkian, an elected figure whose power is subordinate to that of Khamenei, told a cabinet meeting that as long as the government had popular support, “all the enemies’ efforts against the country will come to nothing.”
State media reported that the head of Iran‘s top security body, Ali Larijani, had spoken to the foreign minister of Qatar, while Iran‘s top diplomat Araqchi had spoken to his Emirati and Turkish counterparts. Araqchi told UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed that “calm has prevailed.”
HRANA reported 18,137 arrests so far.