Diaspora leadership must be candid about its disillusion with Netanyahu

With the next election in Israel now only two months away, the desire of the far right to remain in power has become more explicit and more bizarre. The Minister for National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, recently proposed that 30 to 40 Palestinians in Gaza be “eliminated” every night. While this is expected from Ben-Gvir, the vaudeville Kahanist, less attention has been paid to the warm welcome that the Likud has offered to defecting members of his party.

Almog Cohen represented Ben-Gvir’s party in the Knesset until 2025 before falling out with him. He was noted for supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine and opposing gay pride parades. He argued that the protective Iron Dome against missile attacks encouraged containment of the enemy rather than direct confrontation. In a deleted social media post, he wrote about “the streets of Gaza being washed by rivers of blood”.

In mid-August, Netanyahu granted him an exemption from Likud’s seniority regulations so that he could run in the party’s internal elections two weeks ago. He came eighth in the election and thereby gained a safe seat in the next Knesset.

In general, the far right within the Likud did exceedingly well in these internal elections, as did the proposers and architects of the “judicial reform” in 2023 who wished to remove the oversight of the Israeli judiciary and the checks and balances in political life.

Today the Likud styles itself as a populist party rather than the centre-right one of a decade ago. Netanyahu has facilitated this radicalisation of his party and clearly sees the function of Almog Cohen as a bridge to the other parties of the far right. The entry of these peripheral parties into Netanyahu’s coalition in 2022 did not take place simply out of necessity but also out of design.