Distorted Agendas in Washington and Jerusalem

A recent opinion piece in the NYT referred to “a disproportionately powerful minority driving an agenda that is out of step with most of the public they represent.” The writer’s focus was on a segment of President Donald Trump’s entourage who avidly pursue an anti-globalist, conservative social values agenda. (See Jonathan Mahler, “How the G.O.P. Fell in Love with Putin’s Russia,” 4/13/25.) But I was intensely struck by the writer’s formulation because of a parallel phenomenon in Israel. Israel has very few Putin lovers, but it is indeed plagued by “a powerful minority” driving an agenda out-of-step with public interests and sentiment.

In Israel, the “powerful minority” is the patchwork governing coalition assembled by Benjamin Netanyahu. That assemblage is composed of Likudniks adhering to ultra-nationalist positions, a bloc of two ultra-nationalist parties headed by Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, and an ultra-orthodox wing (the Haredim) composed of two Haredi parties, Shas and United Torah. My object here is to illustrate how the coalition embodies an agenda out-of-step with venerable liberal Zionist principles and inconsistent with current public interests and sentiment.

The first example of the current coalition’s distorted agenda is advancement of an ultra-orthodox religious perspective. Torah study is an integral part of that perspective. By itself, that is not problematic. But the Netanyahu coalition continues to tolerate Haredi resistance to introduction in public religious sector schools of a core secular curriculum critical to equipping people to function in the modern world. Enforced Shabbat observance is another religiously oriented item within the agenda. Again, not problematic by itself, but the ultra-orthodox are now crusading (you should pardon the expression) to impose their Shabbat values on the general public. The Israeli ministry of the interior is seeking to punish a newly opened mall for operating on Shabbat even though the surrounding Ramat Hasharon municipality has no objection to the mall’s operation.

By far the most objectionable item within the current coalition’s agenda is, of course, the continued drive to extend a Haredi (ultra-orthodox) exemption from military service. That exemption perpetuates the unconscionable burden on the non-Haredi sectors supplying personnel to the IDF. And it leaves the IDF with exhausted personnel struggling to perform critical military tasks on various fronts.

Another major item on the extremist minority’s agenda is expansion of Israel’s sovereign territory. Presently, this means annexation of all or a major part of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) where approximately 450,000 Jews now live, as well as Jewish resettlement in the Gaza strip looking toward ultimate annexation of Gaza. This impulse to annex Gaza helps account for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s rabid opposition to inclusion of the Palestinian Authority within any plan for post-war administration of the Gaza strip. And it accounts for the abbreviated euphoria of the Israeli far right when President Trump endorsed relocation of most of the Palestinians living in Gaza. Yet the broad Israeli public recoils from annexation of Gaza for a variety of reasons, including the ensuing economic and military burdens and the prospective violation of international norms banning confiscation of captured territory.

Coalition proponents of annexing the West Bank are promoting that agenda in various highly problematic ways. One tactic has been legalization of some previously banned settler outposts located beyond extant concentrations of Jewish presence. Another tactic has been reduced intensity in suppressing settler violence. A small minority of settlers are “hilltop youth” seeking to harass and expel Palestinian farmers or villagers from the proximity of Jewish outposts. Under the impetus of coalition extremists like Itamar Ben Gvir, the relevant Israeli police have become more lax in protecting such Palestinian victims. Police did not apprehend settlers who recently torched and vandalized a wedding hall in the village of Bidiya. Even worse, an IDF reservist platoon was observed vandalizing property during an operation in Dheisheh refugee camp (writing graffiti, overturning furniture, and trashing closets). The IDF disbanded the platoon and its commander was dismissed from service.

The last example of the distorted coalition agenda is its racist indifference or hostility toward Arab interests, whether those of the 2 million Israeli Arab citizens or of the close to 5 million Arab Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. The coalition is infected by a long racist heritage. Minister of Internal Security Itamar Ben Gvir, one leader of a coalition bloc of 14 ultra-nationalists, is the ideological descendant of Meir Kahane’s Kach party that was barred from the Knesset in 1988 because of its racist credo. Ben Gvir so admired Baruch Goldstein (convicted in 1994 for murdering 29 Palestinians and wounding 125 others at prayer in a mosque) that he once hung a picture of Goldstein in his political party’s office.

Ben Gvir and his supporters advance their racist agenda in various ways. In the West Bank, they promote discriminatory administration of residents’ benefits such as building permits in order to constrict Palestinian development and to advance their messianic vision of Israeli annexation of territory. And they are utterly indifferent to the West Bank settler misconduct perpetrated by the hilltop youth, even deeming the perpetrators praiseworthy defenders of Jewish interests. The Ben Gvir hostility to Palestinian interests in the West Bank has clearly impacted other coalition elements. Minister of Defense Yisrael Katz, while embracing administrative detention (incarceration without prompt judicial review) as a tool against Palestinian terrorists, recently decided to exclude Jewish terrorists (such as the notorious Hilltop youth) from the mechanism of administrative detention.

This synopsis of distorted conduct and policy on the part of the Netanyahu coalition shows why the NYT formulation about a “disproportionately powerful minority” driving an out-of-step agenda so resonated with me. Donald Trump’s cronies aren’t the only ones out of step with the general public’s interests.