Published: 6 January 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Advocacy bodies have uttered only vague words of ‘concern’ but the question of defending Israel despite its government has become a divisive debate in closed rooms around the world.
“We seek to strengthen every citizen's freedoms and the country's democratic institutions and to bring Israel more closely in line with the liberal American model.”
These soothing words were not those of Ben-Gurion or of Begin in the past, expressing their admiration for the values of the American Revolution of 1776, but were part of a surprising op-ed by Bezalel Smotrich last week in the Wall Street Journal. The leader of the 'Religious Zionism' party made it clear that he felt very hard-done-by, indeed outraged, that he should have been labelled an extremist and vilified in the US media.
Once any disbelief had wafted away into the ether, many observers asked why Smotrich had written such an article, which was at total variance with his well-publicised incendiary views. It was written perhaps not so much as a response to a critical New York Times editorial in mid-December, but due to a deep-seated fear that Netanyahu's broad coalition of support in the US — Republicans, evangelicals, acquiescent Jewish organisations and Haredi Jews — was beginning to fragment.
With the appointment of the trio of Smotrich, Ben-Gvir and Maoz to government, the comfort of stability that Netanyahu had previously exuded had been thrown to the winds.
When revered US establishment figures such as Abe Foxman and Alan Dershowitz murmured sentiments of concern about the incoming Israeli government, Netanyahu must have become increasingly worried that his conservative base of supporters in the US was about to defect.
Smotrich was viewed as the more acceptable face of this controversial trio — representing religious Zionists, promoting high-tech and private enterprise while bashing American antisemites and Left-wing enemies of Israel.
Clearly the ascent of the radical Right from the fringes to the heart of government has unnerved many Right-wing US Jews. While the "usual suspects” on the Left have indeed been vocal, they have been joined by others who hitherto have remained silent.
