To portray the Naftali Bennett episode as a mere exercise in political opportunism is to underestimate its significance. This was not simply a politician breaking a promise, switching camps, or placing personal ambition above loyalty to his voters. Bennett created a far more troubling precedent: he demonstrated that it was possible to win votes in the name of one political course, use them to pursue the opposite one—and, with those very votes, rise to the highest office in the land.

Bennett and his supporters have offered a counter-narrative that deserves to be heard. Israel had just gone through four elections in two years, a prolonged budgetary paralysis, and an unprecedented crisis of governance. From their perspective, breaking the deadlock had become a national imperative, one that justified ideological compromises. It is a serious argument, and one that should be addressed rather than simply dismissed.

Yet Bennett’s path to the premiership was paved with an almost unimaginable succession of reversals: a break with the national and right-wing electorate that had carried him, an alliance with Yair Lapid, the formation of a coalition dependent on the Islamist Ra’am party, and the abandonment of commitments that had been made neither obliquely nor ambiguously, but explicitly, before the cameras and under his own signature.

Yamina’s disappearance from the political map in the following election appeared to be the voters’ verdict. But the consequences did not disappear with the party. They remained embedded in Israel’s political system as both a precedent and a temptation: if Bennett could do it, why should others not follow his example?

The Bennett affair is therefore not merely a matter of personal political morality. It raises constitutional, institutional, and democratic questions. At the head of a party with seven Knesset seats—only six of whose members ultimately supported the government—Bennett succeeded in becoming prime minister. He turned a handful of seats into leverage that allowed him to leapfrog parties several times larger than his own, effectively override the balance of power produced at the ballot box, and turn the premiership itself into a bargaining chip in coalition negotiations.

Naftali Bennett is not the “Madoff of Israeli politics” in any legal sense. He has never been convicted of criminal fraud, and that distinction must not be blurred. But politically, he traded in something no less valuable than money: the trust of voters. They entrusted him with a particular mandate; after the election, he repackaged it and transferred it to the opposing camp in exchange for the premiership.

Legal—but Lacking Legitimacy

In the election for the 24th Knesset, Yamina won just 273,836 votes, or 6.21 percent of the valid ballots cast. When one member of his own party refused to follow him, the future prime minister’s direct parliamentary base was reduced, in practice, to six MKs. The government won the Knesset’s confidence by the narrowest of margins: 60 votes to 59, with one abstention.

Everything was........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)