Israelis in Pittsburgh react to new Israel government coalition
“This is a coalition of people who have common interests,” he said. “They’re not going to give it up for some political fights. They know exactly what they have."
Even before Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in late December that he formed a coalition government, critics derided it as the most far-right governing bloc in the history of the country. Concerns including the weakening of the country’s Supreme Court, changes to the Law of Return, a further push into the West Bank, the rights of the LGBTQ+ community and Arab-Israelis were only some of the issues causing anxiety for many, in and out of the country.
The new coalition pieced together by Netanyahu has been in place for nearly two months and Israelis across the globe have seen the first fruits of the new alliance.
Pini Sofayov, an Israeli living in the South Hills, said he “loves” the new government, and said the anxiety surrounding it is the result of propaganda from the political left.
Israel, Sofayov said, needed changes, including to its high court. The Supreme Court — whose justices are appointed by a small judicial committee, and not elected — has controlled the country, not the government, and needs to be checked, he said.
Minorities, he added, enjoy far greater protections in Israel than in neighboring countries.
“[Minorities] have to be worried if they’re going into Gaza or into the Palestinian territory,” Sofayov said. “They’re running away from there. Israel is the most-friendly country for gay people, in the world.”
Those on the left “don’t know how to lose,” he said, and don’t understand Middle East politics.
“If you don’t show strength over there, it’s all over,” Sofayov said. “It’s the rule of the desert: If you don’t show strength and muscle, you will be run over. Israel has to come to peace through strength, not weakness.”
Meir Aridor left Israel in the early 1990s for the United States. He believes the idea of peace through strength is an illusion and thinks that Netanyahu has spent the last quarter-century working to ensure a two-state solution will not happen.
“The people who say out loud that we should annex the West Bank now in the government are the most powerful partners of Netanyahu,” Aridor said.
The new coalition, he said, believes if Israel annexes land and builds settlements, Palestinians in the territories will leave or be pushed to other areas.
“For the last month, the Netanyahu government has pushed as much as it can to destabilize the Palestinian Authority,” he said, adding that the result will be an ungovernable area.
“If we push it to the brink, no army in the world can save us,” he said.
Aridor believes the Supreme Court has complicated the plans of the government.
Those living in the West Bank, he said, have access to the court, something that the coalition wants to eliminate. Once that is changed, he said, the bloc will have the ability to make any change it desires, especially since the country has no written constitution.
Netanyahu, Aridor said, believes he has found a magic solution to the Palestinian conflict: signing peace treaties with the surrounding Arab countries it. This, he said, is folly because “they don’t want the Palestinians either.”
Israeli Abby Schachter has lived in the United States for nearly three decades. Netanyahu’s establishment of peace agreements with Israel’s neighbors is a fulfillment of campaign promises he and the Likud party made to the Israeli people, she said.
It’s remarkable, she said, that the prime minister and his governing partners are working to keep the promises they made during the campaign.
“It’s very unusual for democratically elected officials, especially leaders, to do exactly what they said they would do when they get elected, but they’ve done that, and I think it’s an incredible feat,” she said.
Another campaign promise made by multiple parties, she said, was reform of the Supreme Court and the judiciary.
“Nobody is arguing that nothing should be changed,” she said. “I don’t know that you could find a single reasonable person that said the Supreme Court, that the judiciary, doesn’t need to be changed.”
Even those who oppose what the government is doing, she said, agree that the judiciary must be reformed.
Schachter said no Western democracies look like Israel in terms of the power of the judiciary over the executive and legislative branches.
And while she believes that reasonable people can hold differing opinions about issues like the Supreme Court, she doesn’t think all the rhetoric used during the campaign was that of reasonable people.
“I was in Israel in October, and I can tell you that the slogans I saw at election rallies in Tel Aviv included wishing death on Bibi Netanyahu,” she said. “Those calls for his death have just increased. I would say that is a serious problem, too, and a threat to democracy in Israel.”
All Zionists, she said, should oppose using violence as a tool against duly elected officials.
Like Sofayov, Schachter believes the left has misrepresented the political situation in Israel. In both Israel and America, she said, the left uses “scare tactics” to frighten people into believing things that aren’t true.
“It’s what the left does instead of debating, instead of reasoning, instead of saying, ‘I have a better way of solving the problem,’” she said.
Maya Haber left Israel in 2000 when she was 26. Potential changes to the judiciary worry her.
“We can have an argument about reforms needed,” she said, but “they’re making the judiciary political, which, in my opinion, works here only because you have a jury system.”
Haber said she is terrified by what has already happened since December.
“I don’t recognize my country,” she said.
It’s not simply changes to the Supreme Court that concern Haber. She said that legal counsel to the various ministries now have to be political appointees, which might include trusted personal lawyers.
Democracy, she said, is already challenged in Israel because of the close relationship between the executive and legislative bodies; the proposed changes make it more precarious.
“There is no legislation divorced from the government structure,” she said. “The coalition decides on legislation and controls the government. There is only one check and balance, which is the courts. Take that out, and see what happens.”
Haber argued, though, that just the threat of change has been enough to alter Israeli society.
“I have a friend with a teenage kid that wants to come out as gay,” she said. “My friend is saying, ‘I support you; I love you; I accept you. Don’t come out.’”
Whether or not he agrees with its policies, Aridor believes that after a period of political tumult, the new governing bloc is here to stay.
“This is a coalition of people who have common interests,” he said. “They’re not going to give it up for some political fights. They know exactly what they have,” he said. PJC
David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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