Hard right turn in Israel could spell trouble for freedom everywhere

Far-right populism in Western democracies has waxed and waned over the past several years. But at the start of 2023, it is resurgent in Israel, with potentially dangerous consequences for Israel itself, for the international order, and for stability in the world.

When Benjamin Netanyahu was ousted as Israeli prime minister a year ago, many saw it as a bookend to Donald Trump’s electoral defeat in the United States — a turn away from the populist right by one of America’s strongest allies. Now, after a year of political squabbling, Netanyahu is back in that post, thanks to a political coalition that is giving Israel the most hard-core right-wing government in its history.

Before last month’s election, Netanyahu allied himself with extremist religious Zionists, who are now the third-largest group in the Knesset — the Israeli parliament — and the second-largest in Netanyahu’s coalition, despite having a voter base that amounts to about 12% of the Israeli electorate.

Its most visible leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was convicted of inciting racism and having ties to an extremist organization in 2007. He has called for stripping Arab Israelis of citizenship and for their expulsion from the country. Recently, in an attempt to rebrand himself as more moderate, he amended his proposal to instead call for expelling all “disloyal” Israeli citizens, whether Arabs or Jews. He once had a photo of Baruch Goldstein, the terrorist who gunned down 29 worshippers in a mosque in a 1994 massacre in Hebron, on display in his living room.

Ben-Gvir is now Israel’s national security minister, which places him in charge of the country’s police force.

His ally Belazel Smotrich, the new minister of finance, combines anti-Arab racism (among other things, he has urged segregating Jewish and Arab women in maternity wards and opposed classifying Jewish settlers’ attacks on Palestinians as terrorism) with outspoken homophobia, calling gay pride parades an “abomination.” 

Other members of the current government include a man convicted of tax fraud and another who opposes not only gay rights but women serving in the Israeli military.

There are urgent concerns that the new government will escalate tensions with Palestinians by legalizing Israeli settler outposts in the West Bank — possibly sparking an armed conflict. Perhaps no less disturbing, the government is pushing for legal changes that would fatally dilute judicial independence by allowing a simple majority in the parliament to override High Court rulings and increasing political control over judicial appointments.

It also seems that one legal priority of the new government is to get still-pending corruption charges against Netanyahu dismissed.

Not only Israeli leftists but people across society — including the military — have expressed deep concerns about the country’s future. As Tel Aviv blogger Vivian Berkovici has written, the fears are about “the normalization of extremism, corruption and government conduct that does not align with fundamental democratic principles.” There are unmistakable parallels to the Trumpist right in America, which is likely to be emboldened by a similar drift by a close ally.

Whatever its flaws, Israel has long been a key member of the community of democracies — and an outpost of the free world in the Middle East. Its commitment to secular governance and equal rights has long existed in an uneasy balance with its nature as a Jewish state, in both the ethnic and the religious sense. If the new government tips the balance away from secularism and democracy, it could be bad news for freedom everywhere. 

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a cultural studies fellow at the Cato Institute, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.