The Rise of the Right Wing in Israel

Summary

Podcast Summary

NPR Throughline: The Rise of the Right Wing in Israel

Original Air Date: October 16, 2025
Hosts: Rund Abdelfattah & Ramtin Arablouei
Featured Analysts/Historians: Sarah Yael Hirshhorn, Natasha Roth Rowland, Amjad Araki

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Episode Overview

This episode of Throughline delves into the historical and political evolution of right-wing movements in Israel, leading to the ascent of figures like Benjamin Netanyahu and Itamar Ben Gvir. With the backdrop of the recent Israel-Hamas ceasefire, the hosts revisit Israel’s political history, examining how the right moved from the margins to dominate the political mainstream. The episode traces roots from 20th-century radical Zionism through watershed moments like the Oslo Accords and Rabin’s assassination to the rise of contemporary far-right leaders and policies.

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Major Segments and Key Discussion Points

1. Backdrop: Oslo Accords & Rabin’s Assassination

(00:17 – 10:09)

• Setting the Scene: In 1995, Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords, pursuing a peace process with the Palestinians (00:17).
• Right-Wing Protest: Mass demonstrations led by Likud politicians, including a fiery Benjamin Netanyahu, denounced Rabin as a traitor for concessions to Palestinians (01:47, 04:05).
  • “We are here because we will never allow Jerusalem to be divided anew.” - Netanyahu at the 1995 rally (05:16)
• Incitement and Assassination: Intense rhetoric and Nazi imagery targeting Rabin. Weeks later, Rabin is assassinated by Igal Amir, an Israeli Jew (06:50).
  • “It's like the JFK moment for Israel. Where were you when Rabin was assassinated?” - Historian Sarah Yael Hirshhorn (07:23)
  • “Netanyahu doesn't really take responsibility. The Israeli right doesn't take responsibility.” - Natasha Roth Rowland (07:53)
• Impact: Rabin’s assassination is seen as a turning point, exposing the depth of right-wing rage and catalyzing their further rise (08:07).

Notable Quote

“The fact that this assassination was perpetrated not by, you know, a Palestinian terrorist... but by a fellow Jew was totally shocking to a country and ripped the country apart.”
— Sarah Yael Hirshhorn (08:29)

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2. Roots of the Israeli Right: Revisionist Zionism and Kahanism

(12:26 – 27:33)

• Post-1967 Landscape and the JDL: The Six-Day War gives Israel control of West Bank and Gaza; in the US, the Jewish Defense League (JDL) rises, adopting the mantra “never again” and advocating militant self-defense (12:30, 13:47).
  • JDL founder, Rabbi Meir Kahane, embraces “Revisionist Zionism” — envisioning an exclusively Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River (14:53).
• Radicalization and Migration to Israel: Kahane’s activism, his founding of the Kach party, and push for a Jewish theocracy and segregation (17:36).
  • “I've always said that Western democracy is incompatible with Zionism.” – Kahane (17:46)
  • Outlawed and ultimately assassinated, Kahane’s ideas (“Kahanism”) outlive him, inspiring a generation of Jewish militants and far-right politicians (26:30).
• Political Context: Until the late 1970s, Israeli politics dominated by the Labor left; 1977 brings the Likud’s Menachem Begin to power, institutionalizing hardline positions on settlements and rejecting Palestinian statehood (19:26–22:12).

Notable Quote

“No guilt. The country is ours. Every inch of it… No guilt. It's our country, it's not theirs.”
— Meir Kahane (18:38)

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3. Mainstreaming the Far Right: Ben Gvir and the Post-Oslo Era

(29:17 – 37:09)

• Itamar Ben Gvir’s Emergence: A teenager at the anti-Oslo protests (1995), Ben Gvir gains notoriety, becoming a symbol of ultra-right activism (29:47).
  • On TV, holds Rabin’s car ornament: “If we can get to Rabin’s car, we can also get to Rabin.” (29:59)
• Radical Politics and Legal Troubles: Barred from military service due to extremism, Ben Gvir repeatedly indicted for racism, incitement, and support of terrorism (32:03).
• Legitimacy and Power: Becomes head of Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), a Kahanist-descended party; known for advocating for mass expulsion of Palestinians and previously displaying a photo of Baruch Goldstein, who massacred Palestinians in Hebron (34:23).
• Societal Segregation: Oslo Accords’ partial separation of Israelis and Palestinians entrenches both physical and ideological distance, enabling greater acceptance of hardline views (35:39).

Notable Quote

“You have a wholesale internalization of the idea that this kind of violence is not only normal… but is actually justifiable and righteous… you are doing it for love of your people and love of your country. That message is going to resonate.” — Natasha Roth Rowland (36:13)

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4. Benjamin Netanyahu: Architect of Modern Right-Wing Power

(38:54 – 54:55)

• Early Life and Positions: Netanyahu (Ben Nitai on US TV) opposes Palestinian statehood, drawing on both his revisionist family roots and American political experience (39:03–41:17).
  • “I think the United States should oppose the creation of a Palestinian state for several reasons…” - Netanyahu, age 28 (40:01)
• Political Rise: Returns to Israel, rapidly ascends Likud ranks, uses US-inspired campaign tactics, and leverages post-Oslo chaos to become Prime Minister in the 1990s (42:33–44:31).
• Consolidation Through Crisis: As violence escalates (Second Intifada), the right-wing narrative — that concessions lead to attacks — finds broad support (45:01).
  • “The answer that was provided… was to say, like, actually the right wingers were right.” — Amjad Araki (45:06)
• Shifting Alliances and Further Right: After losing and regaining power, Netanyahu increasingly partners with ultra-nationalist and religious parties, eventually making deals with Ben Gvir and other far-right figures to maintain political leverage (47:09–48:09).
• Political Survival and Polarization: Netanyahu’s willingness to appease the most extreme elements drastically shifts the Overton window in Israeli politics, normalizing radical rhetoric and policy (50:10–50:42).

Notable Quote

“If you kind of just keep pushing the envelope, you'll find that there are actually no consequences. So why wouldn't you just keep going more right wing?” — Amjad Araki (50:42)

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5. The Present: Judicial Crisis, Protests, and Unresolved Tensions

(51:06 – 54:55)

• Judicial Overhaul and Mass Protests: The Netanyahu government’s 2023 move to gut Supreme Court oversight triggers massive nationwide protests — but mostly among Jewish Israelis, not Palestinians (51:06–52:40).
  • “They were simply protesting… against what they saw as the potential curtailment of their own rights as Jews in a Jewish state.” — Natasha Roth Rowland (52:59)
  • “It is a battle to… reclaim a bit more of an image that we’re democracy for Jewish Israelis.” — Amjad Araki (53:34)
• Societal Fracture: The left-right chasm is described as existential, nearly pushing the nation towards civil conflict prior to the October 7th Hamas attacks. The war temporarily unifies society, but deep divisions remain (54:07).

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• Netanyahu at 1995 Rally:
  “We are here because we will never allow Jerusalem to be divided anew.” (05:16)
• On the Psychological Impact of Rabin’s Assassination:
  “It's like the JFK moment for Israel. Where were you when Rabin was assassinated?” — Sarah Yael Hirshhorn (07:23)
• Kahane’s Extremism:
  “No guilt. The country is ours. Every inch of it… No guilt. It's our country, it's not theirs.” — Meir Kahane (18:38)
• Ben Gvir on TV:
  “If we can get to Rabin’s car, we can also get to Rabin.” (29:59)
• On Normalizing Violence:
  “You are doing it for love of your people and love of your country. That message is going to resonate.” — Natasha Roth Rowland (36:13)
• Netanyahu’s Early Position:
  “I think the United States should oppose the creation of a Palestinian state for several reasons.” — Benjamin Netanyahu (40:01)
• Rightward Drift Post-Intifada:
  “The answer that was provided to that was to say, like, actually the right wingers were right.” — Amjad Araki (45:06)
• No Consequences for Going Further Right:
  “If you kind of just keep pushing the envelope, you'll find that there are actually no consequences.” — Amjad Araki (50:42)

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Key Takeaways

• The assassination of Rabin cemented the right’s ascendancy, as anti-peace, anti-compromise rhetoric became normalized.
• Figures like Kahane and Ben Gvir, once marginalized as extremists, have shaped, inspired, and eventually entered mainstream politics.
• Netanyahu’s political survival is intertwined with the legitimization and empowerment of ultra-nationalist and religious right-wing factions.
• Recent attempts to limit judicial oversight have sparked mass protest, but these movements are largely about Jewish Israeli democracy, not Palestinian rights.
• The deep polarization in Israeli society remains, with the threat of civil strife only tempered, not resolved, by periods of outward crisis.

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Episode Structure & Navigation

• 00:17 – Context: Post-2023 Conflict, Oslo Accords history
• 06:50 – Rabin Assassination
• 12:26 – Roots of Right-wing Movements (JDL, Kahane)
• 19:26 – Likud’s rise in 1977
• 29:17 – Itamar Ben Gvir and Kahanism in the 21st Century
• 38:54 – The Netanyahu Era: Strategy, Legitimization, and Division
• 51:06 – Judicial Crisis and Societal Polarization
• 54:07 – Reflections on Division, Civil Strife, and Unresolved Tensions

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This episode is rich in historical context, firsthand analysis, and makes clear how decades of shifting alliances, political calculations, and societal trauma have propelled the Israeli right to unprecedented levels of power, with significant implications for the country’s future direction and for peace in the region.

Transcript

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[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Agreed to a plan to end fighting in Gaza just over two years after the Hamas led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 and Israel's subsequent bombardment and invasion of Gaza. Since the agreement was announced, Israel's military has pulled back its forces. Hamas has released all remaining living hostages and Israel has freed Palestinian prisoners. As we wait to see what happens next, we are bringing you episodes looking at the history of major players on both sides of the conflict. Last week we ran our episode on the history of Hamas. If you missed that, go back and check it out for sure. This week we're revisiting our episode on the rise of right wing politics and Benjamin Netanyahu's political career, which we first ran in 2024. On October 5, 1995, tens of thousands of Israelis crowded the streets of Jerusalem. They began in midtown and marched towards the doors of the Knesset where Israel's parliament meets. It's not Mr. Rabin that we knew.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

In the past, entirely different man.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

The former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was there along with the rest of the demonstrators to protest Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who negotiated and signed the Oslo Accords, a peace deal with Palestinians. A peace deal these demonstrators viewed as a national betrayal. A weak man, a man that gave.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

Up not only the basic elements of Zionism and gave up to a terrorist organization.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

It was a very dangerous and radical moment. There was a palpable sense of violence.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

This is Sarah Yael Hirshhorn. She's a historian and visiting professor at the University of Haifa and fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Israel is at the brink of a civil war.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

The Oslo deal was very controversial in Israel because it would have required concessions like withdrawing Israeli security forces from the west bank in Gaza and transferring authority over occupied territories to Palestinian control. Concessions many saw as opening the door to a Palestinian state. The country's conservative party Likud opposed it immediately and other right wing parties agreed. Their anger towards Prime Minister Rabin came out in shocking ways. They chanted in blood and fire, we will expel Rabin. They carried massive signs with disturbing images of Rabin on them.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

You have photographs of Rabin, you know, that have been doctored so that he appears to either be in a Nazi uniform or looking like Arafat, you know, with a kefir around his head. And you know, and the kind of fatigues.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

This is Natasha Roth Rowland. She's the director of research and analysis at Diaspora alliance, an international organization that combats antisemitism.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

There is an equivalency that is being drawn by the Israeli right between Nazis and Palestinians, which has long predated that and continues to this day.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

When demonstrators reach Jerusalem's Zion Square, politicians and activists spread spoke to them from a makeshift stage on the third floor balcony of a hotel. One of those speakers was a rising politician named Benjamin Netanyahu. I'm saying this to the government of Israel, which is bowing down to this man.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

He does give this speech from the balcony of a Jerusalem hotel overlooking Zion Square, where all of this incredibly inciting language against Rabin is taking place.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

In the speech, Netanyahu called Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a bloody man. The crowd cheered. He accused Yitzhak Rabin's government of bowing down to Arafat. And then he said something ominous. We are here because we will never allow Jerusalem to be divided anew. In other words, Netanyahu was saying, we will not allow Rabin to turn over East Jerusalem to Palestinian rule as part of the Oslo Accords. The crowd chanted Netanyahu's nickname, Bibi, as he worked them into a fervor with his fiery language.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

It seems, you know, it was a kind of incitement to violence, an incitement.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

That Netanyahu has denied.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

It was a major moment in Israeli history. It's the time we've, you know, sort of Benjamin Netanyahu's arrival on the political stage in a certain way, but also his understanding of appealing to the logic of the mob or the logic of the crowd.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

About one month after that demonstration in Jerusalem, a rally was held in Israel's second largest city, Tel Aviv, in support of the Oslo Accords. The keynote speaker was Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. I want to thank each and every person here taking a stand against violence and for peace. This is the last speech Rabin would ever give.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has been killed. At 11:10, Rabin was shot to death as he was leaving a peace rally in Tel Aviv. He was hit by three bullets in his chest and his abdomen. An eyewitness to the shooting said Rabin was coming down a set of stairs when three shots rang out. The eyewitness said Rabin doubled over holding his stomach and fell to the ground, said to be covered in blood.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

Rabin is assassinated by a young man called Igal Amir.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Igal Amir, an Israeli Jew, A man in his 20s.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

It's like the JFK moment for Israel. Where were you when Rabin was assassinated? And, you know, where were you on the political spectrum when Rabin was assassinated?

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Yitzhak Rabin's widow blamed Netanyahu and other right wing leaders for stoking the flames of violence that took her husband's life.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

You know, some read it as, you know, the future assassin of Yitzhak Rabid, you know, sees this as almost a coded message to himself, himself to act on some kind of moral or God given imperative to assassinate the Prime Minister.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

Netanyahu doesn't really take responsibility. The Israeli right doesn't take responsibility. There's a lot of prevarication about who said what and who was really responsible for Rabin's murder.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Benjamin Netanyahu later said he did not see any posters of Rabin wearing a Nazi uniform or a kafiyya, and that he never intended to inspire his killing. But one thing was clear. Rabin's assassination showed how deep the anger and rage towards the peace deal with Palestinians was among the right wing of Israel's politics.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

The fact that this assassination was perpetrated not by, you know, a Palestinian terrorist or, you know, someone sent from the Arab world to, you know, do a hit on the Israeli Prime Minister, but by a fellow Jew and was, you know, totally shocking to a country and ripped the country apart.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

I miss this brave man with whom.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

I had signed the peace of the brave. You are the man who can respect his parole. This is the voice of Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, or plo, reflecting on Yitzhak Rabin, the man who he'd signed the Oslo accords with in 1993 and 1995, the man he accepted a Nobel Peace prize with in 1994. Although the deal was criticized as imperfect by some on both sides, it did represent hope and a path forward, a measure of basic respect. But the right wing in Israel who called Rabin a Nazi and a traitor, did not see it this way. They saw a peace deal as surrender.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

People really felt that there were possibilities in the air that there was going to be a real peace with Israelis and Palestinians. People were legitimately, you know, enthusiastic and hopefully and that it's gone. It is something that's really difficult to make people understand but is really important, you know, context for everything that's happened since 1995.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin was a major turning point for a right wing movement in Israel that had been growing for decades. A movement that uses a religious framework to define the state and its borders and and resists a two state solution with Palestinians. For most of its early history Israel was dominated by left leaning secular politicians, but today the right is in power through the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Where did the right wing movement in Israel come from? How did it start and how did it make it to the seat of power? That's coming up. This is David Childs from Salt Lake City and you're listening to Throughline from npr.

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[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

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[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

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[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Again.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

In 1967, after years of tension with its Arab neighbors, Israel launched a daring simultaneous preemptive strike on Syria and Egypt. Israel emerged victorious after only six days and in the process gained control over Gaza and the West Bank. The Six Day War shocked the Arab world and completely changed the geopolitical reality of the Middle east for decades. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic Ocean in the US the student protest and civil rights movements were at their height. In 1968 in New York, York, in the midst of this tidal wave of radical politics, a new organization formed for the rights of Jewish people in the US and abroad. The group was called the Jewish Defense League or jdl, and it had a particular interest in the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union who were often mistreated and had few places to worship Safely. The JDL popularized the phrase never again referring to the Holocaust. It became their rallying cry.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

The idea is to kind of represent Jews as, you know, a people that can defend themselves.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

This is Natasha Roth Rowland again.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

And not like a people who quote unquote, went like sheep to the slaughter in the Holocaust.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

The JDL's founder and leader was a 35 year old rabbi from Brooklyn. Mayor Kahana.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

We will do exactly what we have been doing until every Jew within the USSR who wants to go free will be free.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

He draws heavily from black power and thinking about, you know, Jewish power in the United States and how that should function.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Sarah Yael Horshorn again.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

And he becomes kind of a cult figure in New York, you know, with his own Jewish activist scene.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Merrick Kahane was born in Brooklyn in 1932 in a tight knit Jewish family. His father was a rabbi. The idea of Zionism, that Jews should have their homeland in Palestine, was a part of his life from a young age. But his family had a particular interpretation of Zionism that would shape his future.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

He grows up in a revisionist Zionist home in America.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Revisionist Zionism is the belief that Israel should exist as an exclusively Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River. That would mean Israel's official borders include the west bank and Gaza Strip, which are internationally recognized Palestinian lands. As a teenager, Kahane became a militant activist after several Brooklyn synagogues were graffitied with swastikas.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

In his teenage years, he joined an organization called Betar Bertard emulated fascist movements that were around it in the interwar period in Europe, you know, when fascism really sprung up. And when I say emulated, I mean in terms of their aesthetics, you know, they wore brown shirts. You know, they kind of glorified militarism and youth and violence. Very, very anti left, anti socialist. And they, you know, they kind of pioneered this vision of Greater Israel going in beyond the west bank and kind of into the rest of the Middle East. So he subscribes to that ideology.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

Those who commit violence against Jews within their borders can fully expect, and rightly so, violence in return.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

The Jewish Defense League kind of graduates, if you will, into terrorism. They start attacking Soviet targets in New York and Arab targets in New York because of anti Semitism in the Soviet Union against Jews and because of obviously the Israel Palestine conflict as well.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

Three members of the militant Jewish Defense League, including Mayor Kahane, pleaded guilty today to charges of conspiring to build explosives and transport them across state lines. Kahana admitted to the court he directed the making of Bombs, because he wanted to illustrate what effects bombs have.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Seeing the writing on the wall, in 1971, Kahane fled to Israel.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

He's essentially outrunning his legal troubles in New York.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

It was just four years after the Six Day War, a time where Israel was unofficially expanding its borders with its citizens, moving into the occupied west bank and Gaza, building communities, towns, suburbs, settlements.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

He arrives in Israel at a time when the religious far right in the country is really taking off because of that, because there is this perception that this victory in the Six Day War and the fact that Israelis were able to go back to these incredibly important religious sites that were scattered throughout the west bank, from Hebron to parts of East Jerusalem.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Kahane continued his activism in Israel, but he also formed his own political party.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

He establishes a political party called Kah Kah, which means thus, which has basically a pretty openly fascist political manifesto that it campaigns on.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

I've always said that Western democracy is incompatible with Zionism.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

He wants a theocracy, basically. He wants complete segregation between Jews and Arabs from, you know, separate beaches, separate schools. He wants to criminalize sexual and romantic relationships between Jews and Palestinians.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

The tragedy of Jewish girls. 4000 Jewish women today married to Muslims. The prostitutes of Israel are overwhelmingly Jewish and the pimps are overwhelmingly Arabs. And this is the Jewish state.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

So they stood for Jewish militancy and again deriding the secular Zionist tradition for its lack of militancy and even for, you know, inadequately representing the true spirit of Judaism.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

No guilt. The country is ours. Every inch of it, every centimeter of it. No guilt. It's our country, it's not theirs.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

There is no Palestine.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

No Palestines. There never was, there never will be. They're Arabs and let them go live in Jordan.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

In the 1970s, Kahana's ideas were seen as extreme by most Israelis. The K Party was not able to win any seats in the knesset. See, since 1948, Israeli politics had been dominated by the secular left leaning Labor Party, the exact people Kahane opposed. But in 1977, a political earthquake would happen in Israel that would alter the country's political landscape forever.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Last night, the conservative Likud Party, headed by Menachem Beginning, swept to victory. Begin defeated Shimon Peres and his Labor Party, which has dominated Israeli politics for 29 years.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

So 1977 was without doubt within Israeli politics, a pivotal kind of milestone year.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

This is Amjad, Iraqi, former senior editor at 972 magazine and a Palestinian citizen of Israel, currently based in London.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

But it was also very much the beginning of what ended up becoming a constant shift towards the Zionist right.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

What sets the opposition apart was first Menachem Begin's legacy as the kind of heir apparent of a kind of Zionism that saw Israel in eternal war with its enemies in the region and the necessity to take a very hawkish position towards Israel's future in the region and certainly towards peace negotiations or towards accommodating Israel's neighbors.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

This is how Menachem begin's Likud Party 1977 platform begins. The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace. Therefore, Judea and Samaria, which is the biblical name for the west bank that's used by right wing Israelis who claim the territories will not be handed to any foreign administration. Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Begin adamantly opposes the return of the occupied west bank to Arab control.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Begin found support for this hardline platform by appealing to revisionist Zionists, many of whom were settlers, and to the Mizrahi Jews, Israelis whose families originally came from the Middle east and North Africa, a group who'd long felt oppressed by Israeli society and excluded from its politics.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

These were Jews who came from Arab lands and then saw the enmity of the Arab Arab countries. And many of them were very attracted to hawkish ideas about the way Zionism should oppose Arab nationalism and Arab power because they frankly had fled the Arab world because of that and saw Begin's party as being a place where maybe they belonged. So Begin was able to mobilize them and it really made a huge difference in Israeli politics.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

Politics.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

With this major victory in 1977, the Likud Party had given voice to right wing views that had long been on the outside looking in.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

There was a shift in terms of how these parties talked about what to do with the Palestinians in their midst. Particularly the Likud, had a much more direct way of talking about settlement.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

This is what the 1977 Likud party platform says about settlements. Settlement, both urban and rural in all parts of the land of Israel, is the focal point of the Zionist effort to redeem the country, to maintain vital security areas, and serves as a reservoir of strength and inspiration for the renewal of the pioneering spirit.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

Right wing religious settlers take it upon themselves to really push deeper and deeper into the west bank and to settle areas that the Labour government initially wouldn't.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Generally because of Menachem Begin's hawkish orientation and belief that peace with the Arab world was not going to come about soon. And in any case, it would be valuable, you know, down the road perhaps, to trade land for peace. Begin himself is able to institutionalize these ideas in ways that hadn't been part of the Israeli agenda before.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

The emergence of a right wing government was seen by many in the revisionist Zionist community as a major victory. But Mayor Kahane was skeptical. He continued to push his extreme views. And in 1979, when Begin signed a peace deal with Egypt and started to entertain compromises with the Palestinians, Kahane felt the Likud government had betrayed the country.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

The question of the Arabs is something which no party, neither left nor right, neither a Rabin nor a Begin, is willing to deal with this greatest of, of all problems. The Arabs are not equal citizens.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Here in the early 1980s is the same time that Mayor Kahane is really, you know, trying to find his footing as the time where religious settlers decide that the government isn't doing enough and in fact, betraying the cause of the settler movement to further the expansionist and hawkish causes and even the aspiration to, you know, make Israel into more of a theocratic state.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Menachem Begin, for his part, considered Kahane dangerous, calling him a crazy man. And Kahane was actually jailed for six months for his alleged plan to put bombs on buses in Hebron in 1980.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

If it is necessary to save Jewish lives, to kill Arabs, I wouldn't hesitate for a moment.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

Not for a moment.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Still, Kahane didn't stop. He got out of prison and kept running for office. And in 1984, one year after an aging Begin left office, Kahane finally won a seat in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, by taking a page out of Begin's.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Own playbook, he, like Begin, turns to other disenfranchised groups, immigrants who haven't found an outlet in party politics and were looking to maybe associate with something that was a little bit more radical.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

And I think for American listeners, it's helpful to think about this in comparison with the Trump phenomenon. And so you have this very disaffected group that Kahana, even though he himself is not Mizrachi, he's able to tap into that sense of grievance and says to them, basically, you have a role to play in this country. The authorities have excluded you. The state looks down on you, society looks down on you. But I'm here to tell you that you are important. You have a role to play. And in my movement, I will make sure that you get to experience that level of belonging and importance in this National Religious Project Ghana transforms the Israeli.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Political scene, bringing this Jewish militancy message and xenophobic attitude towards the Arab community and even aspirations for a Jewish theological state into Israeli party politics as kind of a one man show. In the Knesset in 1984, Kahane had.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Finally started to gain some popular support. He was on the rise. But right in the middle of it all, his party, Kach, was banned from elections by a vote in the Knesset.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

The ostensible reason for this is because he, he was running on an anti democratic and racist platform. But actually the parties that initiated Kach's ban on the right, including Likud, they were worried that he was going to cannibalize their share of votes. So they kind of removed him as a threat.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

The founder of the Jewish Defense League was assassinated in New York City last night. Mayor Kahane had just finished speaking to a Zionist group in a midtown Manhattan hotel when he was gunned down.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Two years later, in 1990, Mayor Kahane was murdered by an Egyptian American man. But neither his death nor the outlawing of the Koch Party could stop the spread of his ideas. Kahane's ideology came to be known as Kahanism. And he'd already inspired the next generation of leaders, like a teenage activist who was in the crowd at that rally against Rabin in 1995. Coming up, how Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel's current minister of National Security, carried the Kahanes torch into the future.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Hi, this is Adrienne Stutler calling from Morgantown, West Virginia, and you're listening to through line from npr.

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[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

I have kids under 18, so like.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

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[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

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[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Part two we can get to him.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

It is 1995. We are back at that rally in Jerusalem where Benjamin Netanyahu gave a fiery speech against Yitzhak Rabin and the Oslo Accords. The rally that some point to as inciting the violence that led to Rabin's assassination. In the crowd was a 19 year old man, an activist who would go on to become one of Israel's most powerful politicians. His name, Itamar Ben Gvir.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

He really first came to infamy in 1995 during protests against the Oslo Accords. And during one of these protests, Israeli right wing activists yanked the ornament off the hood of Rabin's car. And there is a television interview of Itamar Ben GVIR holding this ornament up to the camera and saying, you know, if we can get to Rabin's car, we can also get to Rabin.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

That video of Ben GVIR holding up Rabin's hood ornament thrust him into the public eye. A few weeks later, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a far right extremist. Itamar Bengavir was born in the suburbs of Jerusalem in 1976, a year before Menachem Begin's political earthquake. Bengavir's parents were misfortune Mizrahi Jews with Kurdish and Iraqi ancestry. He grew up in a conservative household that supported both the Likud and Labor parties. His early activism was tied to the settlement movement, a movement that was going through its own internal tensions.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Should the aspiration be where people are going to live in bougie settlements and that satisfy, you know, the requirements of living in the whole of the land of Israel while still having a shopping mall down the street? Or is this a fringe movement that is, you know, engaged in essentially open warfare against a state that isn't doing enough to make Israel into more of a theocratic state?

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

It was also the moment when tensions between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories were about to erupt. Fighting began after four workers from the Israeli occupied Gaza Strip were killed when their car collided with an Israeli army truck. In December of 1987, the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising began.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

Palestinian violence seems motivated by despair. It was not just the buildup of frustration among West Bankers and Gazans at the lack of political progress or the lack of social services.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

The first is intifada was fueled by Palestinian frustrations against Israel's occupation and the expansion of settlements. It lasted almost six years. It's when Hamas, the current ruling government in Gaza, was born and was marked by sporadic attacks on Israeli targets. This was also when Itamar Ben GVIR became radicalized and joined with the Kach party and the Kahanis movement. Itamar Ben Gvir's views were so extreme so early on that they kept him out of Israel's mandatory military service. He would rack up a ton of arrests. He's been indicted over 50 times and was found guilty of carrying a sign that said expel the Arab enemy. He has been convicted of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organization. And a lot of this was happening during the second intifada that began in 2000.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

The second intifada was, you know, a terrible time in Israel where buses were blowing up, you know, on every street corner. You never knew when you got on a bus. Is today going to be the day that, you know, you're on your way to work or school or, you know, to visit a friend and a bus is going to blow up?

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

As the cycle of violence intensified, and after defending himself so many times in court, Ben GVIR decided to go to law school.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

His first part of his career was defending settler terrorists. Then he runs for the Knesset. All this time, you know, he is bringing with him this legacy as a youth activist deeply involved in Kahanism and radical politics in the settlements.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

And he was just always seen as this random. As this random fanatic.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

In many respects, this is Amjad Iraqi again.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

But the scene slowly started to evolve. That allowed him to not only become legitimate, allow him to be seen as someone who actually has rational thought, as someone whose idea, whose political ideas actually have a rational place in our spectrum.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

This is Ben Gvir in a 1994 interview saying, I think if settlements are dismantled in the west bank and Gaza, blood will spill.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

And he ends up at the head of a party called Otma Yehudit, which means Jewish Power.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Jewish Power is a far right party that advocates for deportation of Palestinians, is a descendant of the Koch party. Ben Gvir has led the Jewish Power party since 2019. Until recently, he kept a picture in his living room of Baruch Goldstein, an American Israeli settler who massacred 29 Palestinians in Hebron, Egypt, in the 90s. Today, everyone also understands that running away brings war, that if we don't want to be there again, we have to return home and rule the territory. And indeed propose a moral, logical and advantageous solution encouraging immigration and the death penalty for terrorists. There has been increasing violence and an increasing inability to reach any kind of resolution. Has that opened up the door for the message, an extreme message like the one from Kahana or Ben GVIR or many other right wing Zionists to find a place in the mainstream discourse?

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

Yes, definitely. We can really think about it as the post Oslo generation after the Oslo Accords. What it essentially did was it hermetically sealed off many, many Palestinians from meeting Israelis just in the course of day to day life. And so the only encounters that you really had were between Palestinians in the west bank and Israeli soldiers or Israeli settlers. What you have is two populations that are kind of sealed off from one another. It's hard to really communicate the extent of just the everyday grinding violence that the occupation demands. And it's everything from extreme levels of surveillance to checkpoints to segregation to structural violence keeping Palestinians penned in ever smaller areas of land. You have a wholesale internalization of the idea that this kind of violence is not only normal, is not only acceptable, but is actually justifiable and is righteous. You should not feel bad for accepting this kind of violence or instituting this kind of violence because actually when you do so, you are doing it for love of your people and love of your country. That message is going to resonate.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Coming up, Itamar Ben Gvir brings Kahanism into the highest levels of government after the prime minister comes calling. This is Margot Vandenhelder from San Francisco.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

California, and you're listening to Throughline from npr.

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[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Part 3. The Rise of netanyahu.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

Do the Palestinians have a right to a separate state? No, I don't think they do. But I think that it's quite instructive that the Palestinians who are invoking the right of self determination, which is an attribute for separate nations themselves, are the ones who define themselves as part of the Arab nation.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

This is a 28 year old Benjamin Netanyahu on a TV debate show called the Advocates. It was 1978 and back then he went by the name Ben Nitai.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Mr. Natai is a graduate of MIT.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

He is an Israeli and he is a man who has written widely on this question before the House tonight.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

That question was should the United States support self determination for Palestinians in a Middle east peace settlement? Here was Netanyahu's answer.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

I think the United States should oppose the creation of a Palestinian state for several reasons. The first one being that it is unjust to demand the creation of a 22nd Arab state and a second Palestinian state at the expense of the only Jewish state.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Even in his 20s, Netanyahu emerged as an effective spokesman for conservative Israeli politics in the US including the mention of a second Palestinian state, since many right wing Israelis argue that Jordan already exists as a Palestinian. Netanyahu's role as a conservative spokesman may not be a surprise when you consider the world and the family he was born into.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Benjamin Netanyahu had been known to Israeli politics because his father was a key figure in the revisionist Zionist movement. He was not well accepted by Israeli, you know, Israeli labor government leaders or by Israeli socialist society and always been sort of on the margins of both an academic career and a political trajectory.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Benjamin Netanyahu was born in Tel Aviv in 1949, just over a year after Israel's creation. But when he was a teenager, his family moved to Pennsylvania. When his father took a job there as a professor.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

He had much of his education in the United States and that's important because it gave him a particular kind of political approach that has proved very, very successful in Israel. And he also speaks very good English, which is really, really considered a boon in Israel and not just for speaking to the outside world, but it's just kind of there's like a cachet that comes with it.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

He returned to Israel after high school to join the military. He eventually became a Special Forces soldier and saw combat action in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. After the war, he returned to the.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

US and reinvents himself as kind of a political commentator and, you know, security expert and other guises, I guess.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

He served several Posts in the US for the Israeli government, including at the.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

Israeli embassy there, really fine tuned the message that he likes to deliver to the outside world about why Israeli politics is the way it is and why Israel has to treat the Palestinians the way that it does, which is that Israel is this kind of last outpost of quote unquote, Western civilization, and that it's the last line of defense between Europe and the Middle East.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Netanyahu returned to Israel with deep connections in the US And a renewed sense of purpose. He jumped straight into politics, getting involved with the conservative Likud Party.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

He climbs the ladder in Likud and he wins the chair of the party. In the mid-1990s.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Netanyahu, who is always very savvy to the pulse of the Israeli public, you know, really understands that the 1990s is a moment where Israel is at the.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

Brink of the civil.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

And so when he delivers his rousing speech at that 1995 rally in Jerusalem against Oslo and Yitzhak Rabin, he has his own political ambitions in mind.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

This is something that he knows will draw a political base toward him, will help a right wing political base consolidate around him.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Netanyahu was right. It worked.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

And sets about campaigning for Prime Minister at the elections that follow Rabin's assassination. And by the way, in his campaigns for the prime ministership, he actually enlists the support of American Jewish political advisors who were advising various GOP candidates. So there's this kind of importing of American political tactics into Israel, which are very much about the individual, it's about the personality. And, you know, Netanyahu kind of leans into that.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

He ran on a platform of economic reform and promised to oppose a Palestinian state. And he was able to tap into the anger against the Oslo accords to bring out the vote.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

He becomes Prime Minister despite the role that he played in the incitement campaign, as you know, of its most high profile figures.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

While a lot of Netanyahu's political success was due to his own shrewd strategy, he also benefited from the failures of the Labor Party led negotiations with Palestinians. As the promise of Oslo faded away and the Second Intifada loomed. Suicide bombings and violence were a regular occurrence on the streets of Israel.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

For a lot of Israelis, it almost disproved the Zionist left thesis.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

This is writer Amjad Araki.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

Again, the idea of giving Palestinians more rights, potentially a Palestinian state, the Oslo process in general, the narrative is that you tried to give Palestinians their rights and their statehood, and what we actually got was suicide bombings. That's the logic. And it's not to minimize, I think, the social and political trauma that was experienced by Jewish Israelis during that time. But the answer that was provided to that was to say, like, actually the right wingers were right.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

But Israelis got tired of Netanyahu's hawkish posture, a sluggish economy, and a peace process that had ground to a halt. He was being accused by many on the right of being too centrist. So in 1999, he lost his reelection bid. It was a crushing defeat for Netanyahu. In the time he was out of office and out of the public eye, he seems to have figured something out. If he were going to make a political comeback, he'd need to move further right.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

And 10 years later in Israel, conservative Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn in as Prime Minister last night. Today he returns to the office he held a decade ago.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

In 2009, he recaptured the prime ministership. And again in 2015, when he was challenged for re election, he pushed his messaging further to the right.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

His surprising and crushing victory, the product.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Of an 11th hour push for right.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

Wing votes, promising there would be no.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

Palestinian state on his watch.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

The right regime is in danger. The Arab voters are coming in huge amounts to the polls. But unlike the us, Israel has a parliamentary system, which means even if your party wins an election, you still have to form alliances with other parties to create a majority in order to be a ruling government. Because of his inflammatory rhetoric, it was going to be hard for Netanyahu to create that government with mainstream parties who were turned off by his strategy.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

So he looks towards, you know, parties to his right and decides that, you know, the kind of government that he wants to form is an ultra nationalist, ultra orthodox coalition because he doesn't want to have a national unity government and he certainly doesn't want to partner with leftist parties.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

Netanyahu is starting to get into a lot of legal and thus political trouble because he has corruption and bribery charges racking up. And so the country keeps going to elections as Netanyahu tries to outrun these charges and tries to remain in power.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

He certainly doesn't want to be in government with anybody who would, might, you know, might want to replace him and put him in prison. So these are his options. And, you know, he, he acquiesces to this situation.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Netanyahu, to survive, has courted the most right wing parties in the country. And one of the people he has cut a deal with is a politician who was also at that anti Rabin protest back in 1995, Itamar Ben Gvir.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

And in the next election, which was back at the end of 2022, the combined slate that he runs on with another far right party called Religious Zionism pulls in 14 seats. Ben Vere gets into the Israeli government and he basically gets to play kingmaker because of the number of seats that he's pulled. And Netanyahu, he is crucial to Netanyahu's coalition at this point. And so he gets appointed as National Security Minister, which is a new position which puts him in charge of all the police on both sides of the Green Line.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

The Green Line refers to the pre1967 border between Israel and the West Bank.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

And nobody's held power over both sets of police in that way before.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

And so they're all interconnected. Everyone thought they had something to gain. And this is what allows what was once a kind of seemingly random, thuggish activist slawyer to become someone who has an entire ministry designed around him, who is now sitting in major meetings of the government, who is now prodding the Prime Minister and the Defense Ministry and the military that you're not going hard enough.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Natasha Roth Rowland says Ben GVIR went from a pariah to a popular figure in Israel, especially with young people.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

He voices what they see as things that they may not be allowed to say themselves. You know, he kind of. He voices the ID of the nation in a way, in much the same way that Trump did.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

And what kind of views was he expressing?

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

Just unabashed racism toward Palestinians, understanding every Palestinian essentially as a terrorist, supporting the death penalty for, quote, unquote, terrorists, which in this case is simply a dog whistle for Palestinians, supporting mass expulsion of Palestinians, terrorizing Palestinians who are simply going about their daily lives, basically implementing Kahana's vision in any way that they are able to.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

Netanyahu has basically been in power since 2009, and with each coalition that he had, he enabled more and more far right people to come into the Likud, to come into these coalitions, and to be accepted into the political sphere. And Netanyahu definitely helped to facilitate that.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Amjad Iraqi says that Netanyahu's prime ministership, the longest in the country's history, by the way, his attempts to survive politically haven't just had an impact on the Knesset, but also on Israeli public opinion.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

Bibi's tenure was really a lesson for Israelis that actually you don't have to play that if you kind of just keep pushing the envelope, you'll find that there are actually no consequences. So why wouldn't you just keep going more right Wing, why wouldn't you keep saying more racist and explicit things? And they're so unafraid to say things that three decades ago they would have had to think many times before they could say so.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

But Netanyahu and his Likud coalition overplayed their political hand in 2023 when they proposed a law that would eliminate the oversight power of the Israeli Supreme Court. Israelis woke up today to their three.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Largest newspapers carrying a black front page.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

The black pages were ads that protesters took out calling it a dark day for democracy in Israel. This move to weaken the judiciary was met with intense protest throughout Israel. Until now, the Supreme Court in Israel has had the right to reject some government actions it did not consider reasonable. So what happens now that the Knesset stripped that power away? People of all ages are protesting in Israel. Doctors and lawyers are among those objecting to the Parliament removing a check on its power.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

You know, I think if you actually ask the average Israeli on the street, like, what are the three major, you know, platforms of the, you know, of the judicial reform plan? Most people weren't necessarily interested in the, you know, technical details of what, you know, was going to happen with basic laws or overrides and all these kinds of things. But they did see this as being a my values against your values, you know, secular versus religious interest in some kind of future negotiation of the Palestinians versus hardline, you know, or even violence towards, you know, Palestinian civilian communities. You know, do you want peace or do you want Itamar Ben gvir? It often, you know, sort of got framed along those terms.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Although Israel's right wing had won the day politically, there were still many Israelis who were deeply uncomfortable with the direction the country was going to, enough to fill the streets with protests. But Natasha Roth Rowland and Amjad Araki argue that there were still many voices missing.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

The most telling thing about them was that they were not protests that involved Palestinians. And the reason for that is that what Israelis were protesting against was not the huge decades upon decades upon decades long oppression of Palestinians or the unjust conditions in the west bank or anything like that. They were simply protesting, by and large against what they saw as the potential curtailment of their own rights as Jews in a Jewish state.

[Historian/Expert (possibly Amjad Araki or Sarah Yael Hirshhorn)]

It's not a battle for democracy. It is a battle to maintain at least a little bit more of an image, to try to reclaim a bit more of an image that we're democracy for Jewish Israelis to convince themselves because they realize that maybe we took it a bit too far. But Palestinian citizens know full on, no matter who was the head of the coalition, no matter who the judges were in the court, that actually the state always pursued the same objectives against Palestinians.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Sarah Yael Hirshhorn says the divisions on Israel's left and right are fundamental and got to a dangerous point.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Really felt like Israel was on the brink of a kind of civil war and people were really worried. And it was starting to happen towards the end of the judicial reform process, as things were starting to get a little violent, you know, it was becoming increasingly scary because no one really knew, you know, how this was going to play out. You know, October 7th, in some ways, you know, just ended this whole debate because Israel, you know, immediately came came together because of this tragedy, but also the necessity of the war effort to unify as a country. But some of these divisions are still simmering under the surface. And that's it for this week's show. I'm Rund Abdelfattah.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

I'm Ramtin Arablouei and you've been listening to Throughline from npr.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

This episode was produced by me and.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Me and Lawrence Wu, Julie Kane, Anya.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

Steinberg, Casey Miner, Christina Kim, Devin Kadayama.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Peter Balanon Rosen, Irene Noguchi. Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Voelkel. The episode was mixed by Josh Newell.

[Historian/Analyst (possibly Sarah Yael Hirshhorn or another academic)]

Music for this episode was composed by.

[Researcher/Analyst (possibly Natasha Roth Rowland)]

Ramtin and his band Drop Electricity, which includes Anya Mizani, Navid Marvi, Sho Fujiwara.

[Narrator/Host (possibly Rund Abdelfattah or Ramtin Arablouei)]

Thanks to Johannes Durgi, Kara West, Tony Cavan, James Heider, Jerome Sokolovsky, Edith Chapin and Colin Campbell. And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write [e-mail] thanks for listening. Foreign.

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