Earlier this month, the senior Knesset member Gideon Sa’ar left the ruling Likud party to establish a new one, called New Hope. Last week, Ze’ev Elkin—an immigrant from the USSR with unimpeachable right-wing credentials and a reputation as a gifted political tactician—announced that he is joining Sa’ar in the upcoming March elections. Elkin, until now a loyal supporter of Prime Minister Netanyahu, has thus sacrificed a guarantee of a cabinet position in a Likud government for the uncertain prospects of a new political venture. Haviv Rettig Gur observes:

Last month, David Miller, a sociology professor at Bristol University, attracted the attention of the Anglo-Jewish press with a rant about the supposed danger posed to civic and campus life by Zionists. Such rhetoric is nothing new for Miller, who has argued—in his academic work as well as in other contexts—that campus Jewish societies are in the employ of a nefarious “Israel lobby,” and that interfaith activities involving Jewish and Muslim communities are “a Trojan horse for normalizing Zionism.” He is likewise convinced that Bashar al-Assad’s mass slaughter of his own people is a hoax perpetrated by a similarly nefarious conspiracy. Unsurprisingly, David Hirsh observes, Miller also believes complaints of anti-Semitism are Isra made in bad faith.