BENNETT IN SYDNEY: ‘The only way forward is a unity government; we need a grand compromise’

Former Israeli PM told a UIA fundraiser on Sunday that he opposes the government’s judicial reforms: ‘they’ve taken it too far; they don’t fix the problem, they make it worse'.

“You all know there is a mega-crisis going on in Israel. It’s probably the biggest domestic crisis Israel has had.”

Naftali Bennett, who was Israel’s prime minister until the middle of last year, was relatively candid about the roots of Israel’s civil crisis and equally forthcoming about how to solve it, when he addressed a UIA fundraising event at Sydney’s Randwick Racecourse on Sunday night.

Speaking to an audience of 1200 people in an evening themed around Israel’s young military muscle and helping Ukrainian refugees, Bennett ranged across a wide range of subjects – from getting Vladimir Putin to promise he would not have Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy assassinated, to his government’s achievements, to dealing with Iran - in an address and Q&A that lasted nearly an hour.

But he also devoted much of his address to the dramatic situation enveloping Israel at the moment – the growing wave of civil protests and disobedience over the government’s proposed judicial override legislation, which would allow the government to appoint whoever it wants to be a judge and grant the government authority to overrule the Supreme Court rulings – effectively undermining the rule of law.

Predictably, he did not mention the personal and political benefits these changes could bring for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: the possibility of changing laws and appointing judges to help him avoid conviction and jail time for the multiple corruption charges he is facing.

Instead, Bennett focussed on the rise of identity politics. He said that over the past few years two distinct tribes had emerged. One tribe is “first Israel - Ashkenazi, secular, liberal, centre-left” - and the other is “second Israel - Likud, traditional, Sephardim.