The toxicity of far-right politics manifests itself in myriad ways — and not only here in America.
In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has engineered a continuance of his grip on power, this time by forging an alliance with far-right Zionist leaders. Netanyahu won Israel’s national elections earlier this month by agreeing to form a coalition between his center-right Likud Party and the far-right Jewish Power Party and the Religious Zionism party.
Just how extreme are Netanyahu’s new partners? The Jewish Power Party’s leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir, campaigned on the promise of broadening Israeli security forces’ authority to shoot Palestinians during demonstrations, and lionizes a man who once massacred 29 Palestinian worshippers at a mosque. The head of the Religious Zionism party, Bezalel Smotrich, describes himself as a “proud homophobe” and has backed the separation of Jewish and Arab mothers in maternity wards at Israeli hospitals.
