JERUSALEM — Voices critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government have been heard from within American Jewry for a while now, but a simple 20-word tweet from AIPAC, the largest American-Jewish lobby, has sent shock waves through the political establishment here.
The tweet, which came late on Friday, was a show of support for a statement put out earlier by another powerful Jewish-American group, the American Jewish Committee (AJC).
The AJC expressed its concern about an agreement reached last week — encouraged by Netanyahu to strengthen his right-wing base for the April 9 general election — uniting three small parties, including a controversial faction made up of followers of Meir Kahane, an ultranationalist American-Israeli rabbi banned from Israeli politics for his racist opinions and assassinated in the early 1990s.
Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power, is seen by many as an offshoot of Kahane’s Kach party, which is was designated a terrorist organization by the State Department. Members of Otzma Yehudit, including Kahane’s former parliamentary aide and his former students, believe that most Arabs support terrorism and its political platform includes plans for the mass transfer of the Arab population out of Israel.
“The views of Otzma Yehudit are reprehensible. They do not reflect the core values that are the very foundation of the State of Israel,” AJC wrote in their statement. “The party might conceivably gain enough votes to enter the next Knesset, and potentially even become part of the governing coalition.”
AIPAC’s tweet simply said it agreed with the AJC and added that it “has a long-standing policy not to meet with members of the racist and reprehensible party.”
The statements stopped short of criticizing Netanyahu directly for his involvement in facilitating the match between Otzma Yehudit and the two other ultraright parties, Jewish Home and National Union. The partnership is a technical move, allowing the formation of a right-wing bloc that will ultimately enable the longtime Israeli leader to form a coalition if he succeeds in being reelected.
Yet the message from American Jewish leaders was a clear signal of disapproval and a very unusual step for organized U.S. Jewry, which has a long-standing policy not to publicly criticize Israel or its policies.
[Netanyahu’s election rivals merge as Israeli leader makes pact with extreme right]
For AIPAC, which is often considered Netanyahu’s support base in America, the decision to criticize such a move is even more unusual. The pro-Israel lobby, the largest and possibly the most powerful in the world, endeavors to remain apolitical and the decision to air its view on this point was likely taken with much deliberation.
On Saturday night the organization confirmed to its supporters that Netanyahu will speak at its annual policy conference on March 24, two weeks before the election.
“When AIPAC speaks out this way, this is cause for alarm. Members of Otzma Yehudit belong to the margins of Israeli politics, not just on the Palestinian issue,” said Netanyahu’s former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beitenu party, another right-wing, but nonreligious faction.
Netanyahu’s main rival for prime minister, former army chief of staff Benny Gantz said that AIPAC’s statement “proves that Binyamin Netanyahu once again crossed ethical lines just to hold onto his seat, badly hurting Israel’s image, Jewish morality and our important relations with the American Jewish community.”
Netanyahu’s response to the comments seemed to underscore the rising tensions with U.S. Jewry.
In a Facebook post Saturday night, Netanyahu wrote that criticisms of his creation of a right-wing bloc were hypocritical. He compared his efforts to create a blocking majority in parliament similar to an alliance between the left-wing and Arab parties 20 years ago.
Pro-Netanyahu daily Israel Hayom was more direct on Sunday attacking the lobby with the headline: “AIPAC displays irresponsibility by letting itself get dragged into the political fray.”
Writing in another Israeli daily, Maariv, Israeli author Moshe Shamir, however, noted that Netanyahu might have managed to destroy “the last vestiges of the greater Jewish community’s esteem for official Israel.”
Shamir noted that Meir Kahane, who was raised in Brooklyn, was a thorny issue for American Jewry.
“His destructive activities are a dark chapter in the history of the Jewish community, and its leaders have done everything they can to forget him and to wipe out his memory,” wrote Shamir. “They do not comprehend how it is actually an Israeli prime minister who has granted approval and legitimacy to the ideological heirs of the man who disgraced the name of the Jewish diaspora in the United States.”
Debate over the inclusion of Otzma Yehudit on the Israeli political spectrum continued in Israel too. On Sunday, The Jerusalem Post reported that Rabbi Benny Lau, a prominent religious Zionist leader, had vowed to “go to war” to prevent Kahane’s followers from entering the Knesset.
He urged his congregants to research the Nazi Nuremberg laws and compare them to the bills advanced by Kahane when he was an MK in the 1980s, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The newspaper also said that Otzma Yehudit candidates, Michael Ben-Ari and Itamar Ben-Gvir have now threatened to sue Lau over his statement.
“Your words were clear slander and gravely insulting,” said Ben-Gvir. “You crossed a red line by comparing Jews to Nazis — Jews who are loyal to the State of Israel, the Land of Israel and the people of Israel.”
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