Golan, UTJ, and Double Standards
Netanyahu wants right wing voters to reject Bennett over Yair Golan’s inflammatory rhetoric. But Golan cannot translate his extreme views into policy, while Netanyahu’s Hareidi coalition partners, UTJ and Shas, both express open contempt for soldiers and miluim families and have successfully entrenched draft exemptions that undermine shared military service. If offensive partners disqualify Bennett, they should disqualify Netanyahu too. One coalition’s rhetoric is symbolic. The other’s rhetoric and policies have real consequences.
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The Golan Fear
If you’re a right-winger weighing your options this election, you may have already heard one of the more popular arguments against Naftali Bennett: his left wing associations.
In a previous post, I addressed the canard that Bennett is untrustworthy for sitting with the Raam party in his previous coalition. Another major obstacle that Bennett has to deal with is the prospect of coalition partners on the left, in particular Yair Golan.
I get it. I don’t like the guy either. He speaks in divisive, hyperbolic terms. He has repeatedly made inflammatory comments against IDF conduct in Gaza, if he’s not anti-religious he certainly comes off that way, and just last week he told supporters that “his” government would stop putting money into “the settlements.”
Because of foolish and offensive statements like these, Netanyahu wants right-wingers to disqualify Bennett by association. But while Yair Golan’s ideology is deeply problematic, it is also politically constrained. It lacks real leverage.
What Gets Overlooked
Netanyahu’s fans and detractors all agree that he’s a political magician. Getting voters to reject Bennett because of his association with Golan is a masterful sleight of hand. He directs your attention to Yair Golan’s inflammatory statements so you won’t notice the troubling positions of his own coalition partners, particularly Shas and UTJ.
Like most magic tricks, this one looks less impressive from behind the curtain.
Those Netanyahu considers acceptable coalition partners hold positions that should trouble any serious right wing voter. We could discuss education, religion and state, public safety, corruption, and more. But this is a blog post, not a book. So let’s focus on the issue that has come to the fore since October 7th: military service.
Reservists have been called up again and again, some serving hundreds of days, at enormous cost to their livelihoods, families, and mental health. Homefront command units have been repurposed for routine operational security duty. Training has been shortened or delayed. Soldiers have been retained longer than planned.
And yet, Netanyahu’s coalition partners have expressed open contempt for the idea that their constituents should contribute as soldiers in the IDF.
Aryeh Deri and Meir Porush have explicitly told their communities not to enlist. A prominent Rabbi among the UTJ leadership said “There’s no need to express gratitude to soldiers fighting in Gaza any more than to street cleaners.” When asked about the pain of reservists and their families, Housing Minister Yitzchak Goldknopf responded, “Their pain is theirs and our pain is ours.” Both Goldknopf and Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef have said that Hareidim would rather leave the country than serve in the IDF.
For a right-winger who views the IDF as a sacred mission, these statements are as repugnant as any hyperbolic statement from the far left. They represent a rejection of Zionist ideals.
So, if we are going to disqualify Bennett because someone on the edge of his political orbit says things that grate on our ears, why do we give a pass to a coalition that openly mocks the value of national service?
Noise vs. Leverage
It gets worse. Both camps traffic in inflammatory rhetoric, but there’s a vast difference in the effect such positions have on actual government policy.
While Yair Golan would ideally like to implement policies that would horrify your average right-winger, his coalition with Bennett and Liberman would span a vast ideological spectrum.He does not have the votes or the coalition math to fundamentally alter the status quo on Judea and Samaria or the Jewish character of the state. His statements play to his base, but even he knows that they cannot become operative policy under a Bennett led government. Even Yair Lapid pushed back against Golan’s “defund the settlements” comment, saying that of course we can’t remove funding from Israeli citizens.
Not so with UTJ and Shas.
Their rhetoric about IDF service is not empty posturing but the public face of a long-standing, disciplined policy agenda that they have successfully advanced. For years, they have conditioned their participation in government on legislation that preserves broad draft exemptions and on budgets that sustain institutions built around non service.
The so-called “draft law” currently being pushed is engineered not to integrate Haredi men into military service, but to formalize their exemption. It abandons criminal enforcement entirely, replacing it with weak economic sanctions that are easily offset by other coalition-directed funds. Even these weak measures are toothless: they only trigger if collective enlistment targets (set far below the actual 18-year-old cohort) are missed by more than 25%. Worse, the bill empowers an advisory committee to further lower these targets at will, effectively creating a “safety net” for non-service.
This agenda has real consequences, and Netanyahu has repeatedly spent political capital to protect it. When Yuli Edelstein refused to advance a draft bill he believed would entrench mass non-service, he was removed from his position. When UTJ and Shas threatened to freeze legislation or bring down the government over draft exemptions, Netanyahu prioritized their demands. These parties have secured billions of shekels in funding for community frameworks that sustain a lifestyle explicitly premised on not serving, even as reservists report for their third, fourth, and fifth rounds.
That’s the difference.
Yair Golan can shout into microphones, but he lacks the power and the coalition math, to implement his extreme positions. UTJ and Shas have used their leverage to shape law, budgets, and enforcement in ways that entrench inequality in national service. And Netanyahu has repeatedly chosen to underwrite it.
No Double Standards
Bennett routinely calls Haredim אחינו (our brothers) and emphasizes their potential to contribute to Israel’s future. This is not an attack on Haredim as individuals or as a community.
The point is narrower and more serious.
Netanyahu asks his voters to excuse the offensive rhetoric and behavior of Haredi political leadership because they are on the “right” team, while insisting that rhetoric from someone like Yair Golan permanently disqualifies Bennett because it comes from the “other” camp.
Right-wing voters should ask themselves whether that Us vs. Them framing actually serves their interests. Are your political priorities truly identical to Netanyahu’s? And is a standard being applied to Bennett that, if applied consistently, would also disqualify Netanyahu and his coalition partners?
Every coalition requires uncomfortable compromises. The question isn’t whether those compromises involve rhetoric that grates on us. It’s whether they produce concrete harm Israel’s ability to function, defend itself, and sustain shared responsibility.
By that measure, the comparison is not close.
Golan’s excesses are loud and irritating, but constrained by coalition reality and largely symbolic. The agenda of UTJ and Shas is disciplined, effective, and deeply consequential. It shapes law, budgets, and enforcement in ways that shift an ever-greater security burden onto fewer shoulders, with Netanyahu’s full political backing.
If coalition partners are grounds for disqualification, then outcomes, not rhetoric, must be the standard. Applying that standard honestly leads to a much harder look at the coalition Netanyahu has built, defended, and empowered, and at what right-wing voters are being asked to tolerate in the name of loyalty and coalition unity.
