Jewish Home's Merger with Meir Kahane's Disciples Is a Moral Error—but Not So Grave as One Might Think

Last week, Benjamin Netanyahu made a deal with the Jewish Home party—successor to the old National Religious party—in which he offered it seats in a future government if it agreed to form an electoral alliance with the extreme-right, Kahanist Otzma party. Part of his apparent calculus was that Jewish Home, the main religious-Zionist party, is a natural coalition partner for Likud, but, fractured by the recent defection of its erstwhile leaders, it is in danger of failing to receive the minimum number of votes required to get seats in the Knesset. By uniting with Otzma, Jewish Home can raise the chances that it will pass this threshold in the April elections, and thus help ensure that Netanyahu can form a majority coalition. Unsurprisingly, this move to help Otzma, which on its own would not have the votes to win a seat in the Knesset, has sparked condemnations ranging from the prudent to the hysterical. Shlomo Brody comments:

The Jewish Home party has made a moral error by creating a pre-election alliance with Otzma, an anti-Arab group that ascribes to the ideology of the late Meir Kahane. In doing so, Jewish Home will facilitate the entrance of a racist party into the Israeli parliament that will desecrate the name of the Torah and its genuine followers. The good news, however, is that despite its self-identified status as the party of religious Zionists, Jewish Home hasn’t really represented the broader religious-Zionist public for some time, and its mistake now may present an opportunity for renewal and rejuvenation within this sector. . . .

Much of the religious-Zionist public is largely integrated socially and economically within broader Israeli society and does not feel that its own interests need special representation. The religious-Zionist community serves in the army and workforce at the same rates as the general population, and many religious Zionists prefer integration in the political realm as well.

This is not to say that religious Zionists have abandoned Jewish Home. Some have loyally continued to vote for the party because they believe it will ensure government support for sectorial institutions and religious services. Equally important, they think it will maintain certain religious and Zionist values in the public sphere, including the teaching of the Bible and traditional Zionist values in Israel’s education system. The new head of the party, Rabbi Rafi Peretz, claims to want to continue this legacy. . . .

Yet what’s the point of a values-based ideological party if you are willing to partner with those whose values strongly clash with your own?

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel & Zionism, Israeli politics, Jewish Home, Meir Kahane, Religious Zionism

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF