After reports in US media that Biden said he would hold Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “personally responsible” for actions by the far-right members of his coalition government, American Jewish leaders have also reportedly told Israeli officials that extremist policies of the type those coalition members intend to push is likely to weaken support for Israel among the Jewish diaspora.
According to the most latest reports, a meeting happened earlier this month between Shuli Davidovich, the head of the Israeli Foreign Ministry bureau for the diaspora, and the leaders of several large American Jewish organizations at the center of the pro-Israel community in the US.
Defining Jewish Identity
At the top of their list of concerns were proposals by two of Netanyahu’s right-wing extremist coalition partners - Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party and Itamar Ben-Gvir of Otzma Yehudit - that would seriously hinder access to Israeli citizenship by members of the Jewish diaspora, for whom the Jewish State claims it exists to protect. The proposals would change the Law of Return by restricting the definition of a sufficiently Jewish heritage, and would disqualify non-Orthodox Jews from citizenship.
In Israel and among Jews worldwide, Orthodox is the largest denomination, but among American Jews, just 10% are Orthodox, while 18% are Conservative and 35% are Reform. Another 30% describe themselves as “non-Denomonational.” Orthodox Jews, who rejected most or all of the 18th century Jewish Enlightenment, are less likely to see non-Orothodox Jews as correctly following Jewish law, or to recognize non-Orthodox conversions. By comparison, about half of Israeli Jews describe themselves as Orthodox.
Israeli law presently recognizes Jews and non-Jews who have at least one Jewish grandparent and their spouses as being eligible for Israeli citizenship. A court ruling last year also said that Reform and Conservative converts would be recognized as Jews for purposes of citizenship, if they are performed in Israel. The ruling divided Israeli Jews, with some hailing it as a victory for pluralism, and others decrying it as inevitably changing Israel’s Jewish character.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have both been described as “Jewish Supremacist” and, in addition to their restrictive approach to Jewish identity, also support annexation of the West Bank and the removal of Palestinian Arabs from the country. The Israeli military has governed the West Bank since it was seized from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War, in spite of repeated protests by the United Nations that the seizure and subsequent colonization of the territory with Jewish settlements is illegal.
30 September 2022, 21:32 GMT
The duo and their two closely-related parties have also been denounced for their anti-LGBTQ views, in a country that commonly holds itself up as an island of social tolerance in the Middle East.
Wheeling and Dealing
The two became part of Netanyahu’s government after extracting considerable concessions from the Likud leader, who was tapped by Israeli President Isaac Herzog last month to form a government in the wake of the latest Knesset elections. Still, Netanyahu’s majority is paper-thin, giving even one-man factions like that of Avi Maoz, the leader and only MK of the far-right Noam party, leverage over policy decisions.
According to Israeli media reports, Maoz reached a deal with Netanyahu on Wednesday for him to head a Department of Consciousness of the Jewish State inside of the Prime Minister’s Office for Jewish National Identity. That’s in addition to taking over control of Nativ, an organization responsible for processing Jewish immigration from former Soviet states.
At the top of Maoz’s agenda is restricting immigration eligibility requirements to align with Orthodox definitions of Jewishness, and pushing anti-LGBTQ legislation in the Knesset, including borrowing a page from American conservatives by going after LGBTQ-inclusive school curricula.
In the officially atheist Soviet Union, antisemitism was outlawed, but the practice of the Jewish religion was also heavily discouraged, as was emigration to Israel, and by the time of the USSR’s dissolution by internal forces in 1991, the vast majority of Soviet Jews did not identify as religious. Since 1991, about 72% of those Jews from former Soviet republics who have settled in Israel did not meet Israeli standards for Jewishness, according to government data, and would not have been allowed to emigrate according to Maoz’s and Smotrich’s standards.
Mitigating Blowback
The US Jewish leaders who met with Davidovich in early December reportedly emphasized that such policies were especially likely to alienate younger Jews, who are already less supportive of Israel than prior generations. They also warned of potentially embarrassing situations in which American Jews might demonstrate in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC - or even fly to Jerusalem to protest.
Netanyahu has attempted to distance himself from some of his far-right partners’ positions, including upbraiding members of Religious Zionism who promoted discrimination against LGBTQ Israelis. He also told American news outlets that he “doubts” the Jewish identity laws will be changed.
When Netanyahu’s new government is sworn in on Thursday, Ben-Gvir will be the new minister of national security, with power over the police and border guard units stationed in the West Bank, and Smotrich will be the new finance minister and will share power in the Defense Ministry, including over the military bureau responsible for governing the West Bank.