Israel and Palestine

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made something of an art form of cutting deals with small Israeli political parties, but his latest alliance has earned him denunciations from quarters where he has usually been able to count on unshakable support.

Mr. Netanyahu, his future imperiled by prosecutors and political challengers alike, has enraged Jewish leaders in Israel and the United States by striking a bargain with a racist anti-Arab party whose ideology was likened by one influential rabbi to Nazism. Even pro-Israel groups in the United States that prefer to air their disagreements quietly have issued public condemnations.

The furor has aggravated already fraught relations between Israel and Jews in the diaspora, undercutting American and European Jewry’s efforts to fight anti-Semitism at a time when it is on the rise on both continents.

The embattled Mr. Netanyahu, grasping for every potential vote, has turned to the extremist party Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power, whose leaders have a long history of expressing support for violence against Palestinians, expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories, and a ban on intermarriage or sex between Jews and Arabs.

The prime minister arranged for the organization to merge into a somewhat more mainstream party of religious Zionists, the Jewish Home. That pact, announced Wednesday, could easily catapult Otzma Yehudit from the disreputable fringe into Israel’s next governing coalition.

Otzma Yehudit’s leaders proudly call themselves disciples of Meir Kahane, the Brooklyn-born anti-Arab militant who served a term in Israel’s Parliament in the 1980s before his Kach party was outlawed in Israel and declared a terrorist group by the United States. He was assassinated in 1990.

Much as Kach did, Otzma Yehudit’s platform calls for annexing the occupied territories, rejecting a Palestinian state, expelling “enemies” of Israel — a euphemism for Arabs — and taking “ownership” of the Temple Mount. The site, in Jerusalem, is holy to both Muslims and Jews, and is overseen by Muslim clerics under Jordanian supervision.

The pact between Mr. Netanyahu and the Kahanists set off a predictable eruption from liberal Jewish groups like J Street and Americans for Peace, as well as the Union of Reform Judaism, which normally stays out of Israeli politics.

But the outrage was not limited to the left.

On Friday, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the American lobbying group known as Aipac, and the American Jewish Committee, both of which rarely weigh in publicly on Israeli politics, declared Otzma Yehudit’s ideas “reprehensible.” They vowed not to have any contact with its leaders even if they become part of the next government.

In an equally extraordinary step, Rabbi Benny Lau of Jerusalem, a pillar of religious Zionism, repeatedly assailed the merger over the weekend, warning on social media that “the defilement and destruction of the land serves as a guarantee for the loss of the land.”

Rabbi Lau lamented that the prime minister seemed concerned only with winning re-election, and, from his pulpit at the Ramban Synagogue, likened Kahanism to Nazism and its ideas to the Nuremberg Laws.

“The entry of the racist doctrine into the Knesset is the destruction of the Temple,” he wrote on Facebook on Sunday.

It's nice to see so many disparate groups uniting to condemn Netanyahu, his alliance with racial supremacists is shameful and deplorable.

The Board of Deputies has drawn mixed reactions over its failure to speak out against the decision of Israel’s PM to join forces with far-right forces.

In the UK, Tal Ofer, deputy on the Board, tweeted on Friday: “The @Boardof Deputies have said they don’t want to comment on political parties and candidates during elections.

“This is moral cowardice and the height of hypocrisy.

“The Board made statements when Trump was elected. They host hustings during elections, and even called on candidates to declare where they stand on Jewish issues.”

He continued: “Turning a blind eye to racism in Israel, and neither is sitting back as these views are encouraged into the mainstream and perhaps into a future government.”

In a letter to the Board, deputy Joe Millis wrote: “This party has leaders who call to expel non-Jews from Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, the banning of equality for LGBT people and the outlawing of mixed marriages.

“They will also forbid progressive Jews – who make up a majority of world Jewry and 30 percent of the Board – from having any foothold in the national homeland.

“Most of the party’s members are devotees of Meir Kahane, whose party was banned in Israel and whose sister organisation in the US, the Jewish Defence League, is proscribed in America as a terrorist group.”

He added: “I was told by [Board President] Marie [van der Zyl] that the Board doesn’t interfere in other countries’ elections. All well and good. However, this is not by any stretch of the imagination ‘interference’; this is expressing anger at the lack of morality of cosying up to a group which if it were a British party would be to the right of the British National Party and National Front.”

Millis asked van der Zyl and senior vice-president Sheila Gewolb: “Would you stay silent if the ruling Christian Democrats in Germany courted neo-Nazis? This is no different.

“How can the Board possibly be expected to be taken seriously on the immorality of Labour anti-Semitism, if it won’t speak out on the Israeli ruling party’s lurch to racism and homophobia in the Jewish state?

“It’s an open goal for every Corbynista who thinks the Board is acting on behalf of the Netanyahu government.”

But several deputies contacted Jewish news to back the president. Gary Mond, a deputy for JNF UJK, said: “It is, in my view, wholly wrong for the Board to get involved in any way whatsoever in the Israeli elections. Like most people, I personally condemn Otzma Yehudit, but believe it is for native Israelis alone to participate in the debate. It is not appropriate for the Board of Deputies, as a British communal body, to voice an opinion on this matter. To do otherwise would be regarding as inappropriate interference.”

Another deputy, Jacob Lyons, said: “Marie van der Zyl’s lack of comment should be applauded. It would be no more appropriate for her to criticise Prime Minister Netanyahu’s choice of coalition than it would be for her to criticise Prime Miniater May’s choice of coalition . AIPAC as a non-partisan organisation should take example from her and the Board’s leadership.”