Published: 18 February 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU has made it very clear that he will go to any length to guarantee the election victory that could bring him a reprieve from his corruption trial, and maybe even keep him out of jail if he is found guilty.
But this time he has stooped lower than ever before. This time, he has put political expedience above even the most basic moral inhibitions and fundamental norms of democratic behaviour.
Netanyahu needs a large right-wing victory to build a stable coalition. He knows that if small right-wing parties run alone, may not pass the electoral threshold of 3.25 percent of the total vote; running together, they have a better chance.
As he has done before, Netanyahu has worked behind the scenes to encourage these smaller parties to run together. This time, he horse-traded with Religious Zionism, a new, three-faction slate, headed by Bezalel Smotrich from the National Union, the Kahanist Otzma Yehudit party led by extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the ultra-Orthodox and proudly homophobic Noam party, which has been accorded the sixth seat on the party's Knesset slate.
But now he's gone even further. He has signed what is known as a "surplus agreement" with Ben Gvir. This vote-sharing agreement means that if the party passes the threshold, but still has "extra votes" that don't total up to an additional Knesset seat, those votes will be transferred to another party.
So if Religious Zionism gets four seats (the threshold minimum) but still has some seats "left over", they will go to the Likud. Together with "left over" seats that the Likud might have, that could mean an extra seat for the Likud, which could be decisive if it's a close race.
Netanyahu has formally, ideologically and publicly aligned himself with some of the most racist, homophobic, supremacist, misogynist politicians that Israel has ever known
Moreover, if one or two of the Likud cabinet ministers resign from the Knesset in accordance with the "Norwegian Law," (according to which ministers are allowed to give up their positions as Knesset members in order to enable a different member of their party slate to take their spot.), then the number of people in politics who support Netanyahu will be even larger.
As part of the agreement, Netanyahu has promised to have representatives of Religious Zionism in any government that he forms.
Surplus agreements are common in Israeli politics, and several parties have come to similar arrangements for the upcoming March 23 elections. They are usually signed between parties that are politically or ideologically close.
Which means that Netanyahu has formally, ideologically and publicly aligned himself with some of the most racist, homophobic, supremacist, misogynist politicians that Israel has ever known.
Noam is a fringe, rabidly anti-Reform (Progressive) Judaism and anti-LGBTQ rights party, and has advertised itself under the slogan, "A Normal Nation in our Land". According to the slate agreement, their representative is sixth on the list, which, according to the polls, is unlikely. It is even more unlikely that its presence in Israeli politics would be mentioned, if not for the newly brokered slate.
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Bezalel Smotrich has served in the Knesset since 2015. He has served as Minister of Transport, and is founder of Regavim, an organisation that monitors and pursues legal action against construction by Palestinians, Bedouins and other non-Jews.
In 2006, he helped organise the "Beast Parade" as part of protests against the gay pride parade in Jerusalem. (He later expressed regret about this incident, but has continued to refer to the march as an abomination and accused LGBTQ organisations of controlling the media and silencing conservative views).
He has tried to promote legislation so developers in Israel should not have to sell homes to Arabs, has referred to Reform Judaism a "fake religion," and has called for segregation of Arab and Jewish women in hospital maternity wards. He says he wants to turn Israel into a theocratic Halachic state, and that the country should run as it did "in the days of King David".
Until Netanyahu helped create the Religious Zionism slate, "what to do with Smotrich" was prominent on the political agenda, since more mainstream right-wing leaders, including Naftali Bennett from the Yamina Party, did not want to include him on their slates because of his views.
Yet, it is Ben-Gvir and his Kahanist Otzma Yehudit ("Jewish Power’) party – which AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group in Washington, DC, has referred to as "racist and reprehensible," that is most problematic.
Netanyahu has promised that Ben Gvir cannot be in the cabinet, because he is ‘not fit’ to be a minister. The next day, Ben Gvir was interviewed on TV, smiling smugly. He knows just how much Netanyahu might need him
Otzma Yehudit and Ben Gvir are directly inspired by the legacy of Rabbi Meir Kahane and his Kach party. Kahane, who founded the Jewish Defense League in the United States in the 1960s, preached a radical, violent form of Jewish nationalism, which he brought with him when he came to live in Israel in 1971. After several unsuccessful attempts, he landed a seat in the Knesset in 1984, after receiving 1.2 percent of the vote (The minimum threshold law had not yet been passed at that time.)
In the 1980s, Israel’s Central Elections Committee identified Kahane and Kach as “manifestly racist” and disqualified them from running for office. Kahane was assassinated in November 1990, while visiting the United States.
A few years later, the Israeli government made Kach officially illegal under Israeli anti-terrorism laws for inciting violence against Arabs and praising Baruch Goldstein’s horrific murder of 29 Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. The US State Department has listed Kach as a foreign terror organisation since 1997.
Ben Gvir, 44, became a follower of Kahane in his teens and has built quite a name for himself. Even the army wouldn't take him, and he was rejected from compulsory conscription because of his extremist views.
In 1995, he was seen on Israeli TV only a few weeks before Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, proudly holding up the emblem of Rabin's car, and jeering into the camera, "We got to his car, and we'll get to [Rabin], too."
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Ben Gvir has been arrested numerous times for run-ins with the police, organising illegal demonstrations, disrupting the public order. Having completed law school (initially, the Bar Association refused to allow him to take the bar exam, but relented under appeal), he is the go-to lawyer for suspects in Jewish terror cases and hate crimes in Israel.
He is particularly allied with, and has defended, Benzi Gopstein, the head of the anti-miscegenation group, Lahava, as well as two of the teens who were convicted in the 2015 arson attack in the West Bank village of Duma, which killed three members of the Dawabshe family, including an 18-month-old infant.
Is it even worth trying to draw a distinction between racists like Smotrich and supremacists like Ben Gvir? Maybe Smotrich, taut and attractive, dressed in well-fitting suits, with a well-trimmed beard, is just more palatable than pudgy Ben Gvir, who is always seen in his trademark wrinkled white shirt, poorly-fitting, often dirty pants.
After all, both of them affirm a definition of Judaism based on Biblical interpretations of hate and violence. Both of them believe that vengeance, rather than justice, is the only conclusion to be drawn from Jewish history.
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And yet, I do believe there is a qualitative difference. Otzma Yehudit and Ben Gvir are a toxic amalgam of American racism and Israeli violent hyper-nationalism. In the past, rabbis and others who supported Kahane did not admit to this out loud.
Support for Kahane and his legacy was a line in the sand that Israeli politics would not cross. Maybe that line was blurry, or fuzzy, and even, at times, hypocritical, but at least we knew that there was something that was beyond the pale. But now, Netanyahu has encouraged, supported and incentivised Kahanism.
On Israeli TV, Netanyahu promised that while Ben Gvir can be in the coalition, he cannot be in the cabinet, because he is "not fit" to be a minister or even head of an influential Knessett committee.
The next day, Ben Gvir was interviewed on TV, smiling smugly. He knows just how much Netanyahu might need him if he wants to stay out of jail. And besides, his manner revealed, Netanyahu has already given him something that is almost as important as a ministerial position – legitimacy and a place at the political table.
READ MORE
Why Is AIPAC staying silent on Netanyahu’s latest electoral deal with racists and homophobes? (Haaretz)
Two years ago, AIPAC and AJC howled at Netanyahu’s alliance with neo-Kahanists. This time, though, no comment. American Jews ‘won’t be particularly shocked or outraged by anything he does at this point,’ says Israel Studies expert Dov Waxman
Soon-to-be first Reform rabbi in Knesset envisions ‘new deal’ with Haredim (Times of Israel)
Gilad Kariv, who rose through Labor’s ranks while flying his movement’s flag, calls for carrot/stick approach to ultra-Orthodox and thinks his party will again lead the centre-left
Twenty Arab party activists quit Israel's Labor, taking aim at newly elected chairwoman (Haaretz)
A former minister slams Labor leader Merav Michaeli's pick of Tel Aviv-based candidate for Arab slot on party list, deliberates teaming up with other parties
Election panel asked to bar Israeli Arab Labor Party candidate (Haaretz)
The committee will discuss a request to disqualify Ibtisam Mara’ana for comments she made on social media
Photo: Netanyahu and Itama Ben-Gvir on an election poster (Ofer Vaknin)
