A recent opinion piece in the NYT referred to “a disproportionately powerful minority driving an agenda that is out of step with most of the public they represent.” The writer’s focus was on a segment of President Donald Trump’s entourage who avidly pursue an anti-globalist, conservative social values agenda. (See Jonathan Mahler, “How the G.O.P. Fell in Love with Putin’s Russia,” 4/13/25.) But I was intensely struck by the writer’s formulation because of a parallel phenomenon in Israel. Israel has very few Putin lovers, but it is indeed plagued by “a powerful minority” driving an agenda out-of-step with public interests and sentiment.

In Israel, the “powerful minority” is the patchwork governing coalition assembled by Benjamin Netanyahu. That assemblage is composed of Likudniks adhering to ultra-nationalist positions, a bloc of two ultra-nationalist parties headed by Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, and an ultra-orthodox wing (the Haredim) composed of two Haredi parties, Shas and United Torah. My object here is to illustrate how the coalition embodies an agenda out-of-step with venerable liberal Zionist principles and inconsistent with current public interests and sentiment.

The first example of the current coalition’s distorted agenda is advancement of an ultra-orthodox religious perspective. Torah study is an integral part of that perspective. By itself, that is not problematic. But the Netanyahu coalition continues to tolerate Haredi resistance to introduction in public religious sector schools of a core secular curriculum........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)