Naftali Bennett

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Naftali Bennett
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Naftali Bennett ( Hebrew נַפְתָּלִי בֶּנֶט, Born March 25, 1972 in Haifa ) is an Israeli politician ( HaJamin HeChadasch ). He has been Israeli Prime Minister and Minister for Settlement Affairs in the Bennett-Lapid cabinet since June 13, 2021 .

Before that he was chairman of the national-religious party HaBajit haJehudi (“Jewish home”) from 2012 to 2018 . He left the party in December 2018 and founded a new party, HaJamin HeChadasch (הַיָּמִין הֶחָדָשׁ, German: "The New Right"). From the election to the Knesset in 2013 until the election in April 2019 , he was a member of the government coalition of Benjamin Netanyahu and a member of the governing coalition until June 2019 . He was Minister of Economy and Trade , Religious Affairs and Diaspora Affairs and Jerusalem. Bennett also chairs the government committee on reducing the cost of living and reducing economic concentration. He was also represented in the security cabinet. Bennett served as Secretary of Education from May 2015 to June 2019. He has been a member of the Knesset again since the parliamentary elections in Israel in September 2019 . In November 2019, Bennett was appointed Secretary of Defense by Prime Minister Netanyahu .

biography

Origin and education

Bennett was born one of three sons to Jim and Myrna Bennett in Haifa , where they immigrated from San Francisco after the Six Day War . He attended the Jawne Yeshiva High School in Haifa and became a youth leader (Madrich) at the religious-Zionist youth association Bne Akiwa .

Between 1990 and 1996 he served in the Israeli armed forces in the two Sajerets ( special units ) Matkal and Maglan , most recently with the rank of captain . He left the military with the rank of Major in the Reserve and studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem .

Bennett lives in Ra'anana and is married to Gilat Bennett, a pastry chef with whom he has four children. He is an Orthodox Jew of the modern Orthodox branch.

Professional activities

After graduating, he co-founded the New York-based company Cyota in 1999 and became its managing director. Cyota manufactured security software for financial service providers , with which fraud in internet banking and electronic payment systems as well as phishing can be warded off. The company was sold to RSA Security in 2005 for $ 145 million , making Bennett a multimillionaire.

Even after that, he remained active as a business angel in Tel Aviv's IT start-up scene. In 2009/2010 he helped to set up the start-up Soluto and briefly took over its management. In August 2012 he published a free handbook for entrepreneurs.

Political career

After participating in the Lebanon War in 2006 , Bennett became chief of staff of the then opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu . During his tenure between 2006 and 2008, his focus was on educational reform and the intra-party election campaign, from which Netanyahu emerged in 2007 as chairman of the conservative Likud bloc.

On January 31, 2010, Bennett was appointed chairman of the yeshah council ( Hebrew מועצת יש״ע Moatzat Yesha ). The acronym Yesha ( Hebrew יש״ע) stands for Judea, Samaria and Gaza ( Hebrew יהודה שומרון עזה Yehuda Shomron 'Azza ). The council is the common umbrella organization of the Israeli settlements in these areas and lobbies and helps with self-government. The most important task of his tenure was the organization of the protests against the ten-month settlement freeze in the West Bank from 2009/2010.

In January 2011, Bennett and Ajelet Schaked , a former member of the staff of Benjamin Netanyahu, founded the activist organization “ My Israel ” ( Hebrew ישראל שלי Yisra'el Sheli ). “My Israel” cooperates with the Yesha Council as a representative of the settler movement. The work focuses on political activism such as logistics for protests and demonstrations, public relations work in social networks on the Internet and influencing anti-Zionists in the media and society. The organization opened offices in nine Israeli cities and claims to have more than 94,000 members.

In January 2012 Bennett finished his work for the Yesha Council and in April 2012 founded the political group "Israelis" ( Hebrew ישראלים Yisra'elim ), while Ajelet Shaked remained chairman of “My Israel”. The aim of the organization is to implement the “Israel Stability Initiative” (also known as the “Bennett Plan”). Shortly afterwards, he ended his long-standing membership in the Likud party and joined the small, but in the Knesset represented, national-religious party Jewish Home . On November 6, 2012, Naftali Bennett was elected chairman with 67% of the vote. Since his election as chairman, the party has increased its popularity with voters many times over, from three seats in the Knesset in the 2009 election to twelve in the 2013 election .

In the coalition government of Netanyahu, the 33rd government of Israel, Bennett received three ministerial posts: economics and trade , religious services, and Jerusalem affairs . Bennett is also represented in the nine-member security cabinet.

After changing the party constitution in September 2014, Bennett was able to put one candidate of his choice out of five on the party list as chairman and appoint the ministers.

Bennett was Minister of Education and Minister for Diaspora Affairs since May 2015 .

On December 29, 2018, he and Ajelet Schaked announced that he would be leaving the party and forming a new party in order to take part in the parliamentary elections in April 2019 . A day later, he, Schaked and another member of parliament founded a new parliamentary group in the Knesset called HaJamin HeChadasch (“The New Right”).

The new party failed to enter the Knesset. On June 2, 2019, a few days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had failed to form a government and a new election was scheduled, Bennett was dismissed as Minister of Education on the grounds that he could not remain in office for another six months without being elected. In November 2019, Bennett was appointed Secretary of Defense by Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Bennett was not a member of the Netanyahu V cabinet , also known as the Netanyahu-Gantz cabinet, formed after the parliamentary election in Israel 2020 on May 17, 2020 .

In the parliamentary elections in Israel in 2021 , the fourth in two years, there was again no majority for one of the political camps. Prime Minister Netanyahu failed to form a government. In June 2021, Jair Lapid , the party leader of Yesch Atid , told the president that he wanted to form a government supported by eight parties in which Likud would not be represented. Lapid agreed with Naftali Bennett that Bennett would first serve as Prime Minister until August 2023 and then cede the post to Lapid. The new cabinet was approved by Parliament on June 13th with 60:59 votes.

Bennett was sworn in as Israel's new Prime Minister on June 13, 2021, replacing Netanyahu as Israeli Prime Minister after 12 years.

Political positions

Middle East conflict

Bennett believes that the peace process with the Palestinians has failed forever and that unilateral action must be implemented. Bennett speaks out strongly against the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Bennett categorically rejects the abandonment of Israeli settlements. He advocates the annexation of large parts of the West Bank and justifies this with an Israeli reunification: "I pray to God, give me the strength to unite all of Israel and to restore Israel's Jewish soul." In February 2012 he published his plan called "Stability Initiative", which calls for the annexation of the C-Zone of the West Bank, which takes up about 62% of the area. According to Bennett, the 50,000 or so Palestinians living there would be offered Israeli citizenship. In the remaining areas he wants to allow the Palestinian leadership a certain amount of self-government, the Palestinian self-government in the West Bank will sooner or later join Jordan. The Gaza Strip will be annexed by Egypt. In support of this proposal, Bennett cites the statements of Israeli politicians who have also spoken out in favor of annexing the West Bank or at least parts of it. Domestic opponents criticized his plan as "Unzionist". The peace process would have "finally failed".

In June 2013, Bennett called the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories a "shrapnel in the buttocks" that was painful but had to be lived with.

In July 2013, Bennett voted against the release of 104 Palestinian prisoners as a precondition for new peace talks. All prisoners were detained for terrorist activities. His party supported the peace process, but no country in the world would release "murderers as a gift". In a cabinet meeting, he stated that if terrorists are arrested, they should not be locked up but "simply killed". When the chairman of the National Security Council, Yaakov Amidror , replied that it was not legal, Bennett said, "I've killed a lot of Arab terrorists in my life, that's no problem." Bennett had previously been on his Facebook page wrote about a possible release of prisoners: "Terrorists shouldn't be released, they should be killed."

During a speech by EU Parliament President Martin Schulz in the Knesset on February 12, 2014, Bennett led an uproar in which he and the members of his party left the meeting with shouts like "The Palestinians are liars" and "Shame". Schulz had assumed extremely unequal water distribution to Israelis and Palestinians and later admitted that he had not checked the facts. The blockade of the Gaza Strip criticized by Schulz has also been largely lifted. Bennett called the speech a "lying moral sermon" and asked for "an apology from the President of the European Parliament for telling two lies whispered to him by the Palestinians". Bennett was also angry that Schulz gave the speech in German: "And I will certainly not tolerate this propaganda being spread in German."

Bennett speaks out in favor of cracking down on the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas in the Gaza Strip and threatens to open the "gates to hell" for Hamas.

In 2020, Bennett announced that he wanted to increase the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank to one million.

Economic and social policy

Bennett advocates opening up and liberalizing the market economy in order to reduce the prices of housing and general products. He criticizes the strong monopoly and corruption in the Israeli economy in the hands of "small interest groups, tycoons and large trade unions". In contrast to politicians who are either close to the trade unions or tycoons, he sees himself personally as a free and independent politician who only serves the Israeli public.

In terms of ideological social policy, he would prefer to promote national-religious social support such as housing projects for army veterans in desert areas and the expansion of yeshivot .

Bennett rejects same-sex marriage. In July 2016, however, Bennett was the first to condemn a speech by Rabbi Yigal Levinstein in which he incited against homosexuals. “You cannot offend entire sections of the population and then hide behind the Torah. That is not the way of religious Zionism, ”said Bennett. He accused Hamas of having turned it into a "Taliban" state after the Israelis withdrew from the Gaza Strip, with no rights for women and homosexuals.

As Minister of Education, Bennett has invested in Arab schools and sponsored Arabic classes for Jewish children and Hebrew classes for Arabs. He also wants to expand infrastructure and economic development for West Bank Palestinians.

literature

Web links

Commons : Naftali Bennett  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Israel: wafer-thin majority for new right-religious coalition . Euronews.com of May 15, 2015
  2. ↑ Difficult formation of a government in Israel: Benjamin Netanyahu appoints Naftali Bennett as defense minister . In: Spiegel Online . November 8, 2019 ( spiegel.de [accessed November 9, 2019]).
  3. ↑ Naftali Bennett - Official biography ( memento from January 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) at HaBajit haJehudi
  4. ↑ a b Naftali Bennett . Crunchbase . From Crunchbase.com, accessed October 8, 2019.
  5. ↑ Andreas Wilkens: RSA Security swallows competitor Cyota . In: Heise online. December 5, 2005. From Heise.de, accessed October 8, 2019.
  6. ↑ RSA Security to Acquire Cyota; Creates Leading Provider of Layered Authentication Solutions ( January 26, 2013 memento on the Internet Archive ), RSA Security Inc. press release
  7. ^ Naftali Bennet: Exit . (PDF; 656 kB)
  8. ↑ Homepage of the Yesha Council (Hebrew)
  9. ↑ Yesha Council, description at Ynetnews (English)
  10. ↑ Yisra'el Sheli (Hebrew-language homepage)
  11. ↑ My Israel - spreading Zionism Online (English homepage) ( Memento of the original from November 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.myisrael.org.il
  12. ↑ My Israel - spreading Zionism Online - About us ( Memento of the original from January 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.myisrael.org.il
  13. ^ Wikipedia editing courses launched by Zionist groups . The Guardian , Aug. 18, 2010.
  14. ↑ Naftali Bennett's stability initiative - Doing what's good for Israel (Official video, Hebrew with English subtitles)
  15. ↑ Naftali Bennett . Knesset. Retrieved February 9, 2014.
  16. ↑ Michael Mertes , Nadine Mensel: Primacy of domestic politics . Konrad Adenauer Foundation , January 20, 2013.
  17. ^ Lazar Berman : Jewish Home to call new primaries in coming months . Times of Israel , November 9, 2014.
  18. ↑ Naftali Bennet. In: Knesset Members. From Knesset.gov.il, accessed November 20, 2019.
  19. ^ Knesset: House Committee approves split of MKs Bennett, Shaked and Moalem-Refaeli from Habayit Hayehudi
  20. ^ Ynetnews: Netanyahu fires Bennett, Shaked from ministerial posts
  21. ^ Current Knesset Members of the Twenty-Second Knesset. In: Current Knesset Members. From Knesset.gov.il, accessed November 20, 2019.
  22. ^ Lapid forms historical coalition in Israel. In: faz.net . June 3, 2021, accessed June 7, 2021 .
  23. ^ Israel: Coalition led by Lapid. In: zdf.de . June 2, 2021, accessed June 7, 2021 .
  24. ^ Change of government in Israel: Benjamin Netanyahu replaced as Israeli Prime Minister. In: The time . June 13, 2021, accessed June 13, 2021 .
  25. ^ David Remnick: The Party Faithful - The settlers move to annex the West Bank - and Israeli politics . The New Yorker , Jan. 21, 2013; Retrieved January 21, 2013.
  26. ↑ a b Michael Borgstede: Radical young millionaire steals the show from Netanyahu. In: The world. January 9, 2013. From Welt.de, accessed November 20, 2019.
  27. ↑ Israel chooses - every fifth person undecided until the end. January 22, 2013, accessed November 20, 2019 .
  28. ↑ Yair Lapid's reaction to the Bennett plan
  29. ↑ Dahlia Scheindlin: For Years, Israel's Leaders Have Cultivated Ethnic Hatred. This Is on Them Newsweek , May 13, 2021.
  30. ↑ Yedioth Ahronoth , July 29, 2013;
    Ariel Ben Solomo: Bennett under fire for comments about killing Arabs . Jerusalem Post , July 30, 2013;
    Mairav ​​Zonszein: Bennett: “I've killed lots of Arabs” quote was taken out of context , 972 Magazine , July 29, 2013;
    Hans-Christian Rössler: Israel releases Palestinian prisoners . In: FAZ , August 28, 2013.
  31. ↑ Elad Benari: Bennett: Terrorists Should be Killed, Not Released . In: Arutz Sheva . July 28, 2013. From IsraelNationalNews.com. Retrieved November 20, 2019.
  32. ↑ Christoph Sydow, Veit Medick : Appearance in Israel: Tumults during Schulz speech in the Knesset . In: Spiegel Online . February 12, 2014. From Spiegel.de, accessed November 20, 2019.
  33. ^ Einat Wilf: Fact check for Martin Schulz. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. February 18, 2014. From Sueddeutsche.de, accessed November 20, 2019.
  34. ^ Sputnik: Israel's New Right Leader Pledges to 'Open the Gates of Hell' on Hamas. Retrieved April 8, 2019 .
  35. ↑ https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/nahost-israelischer-minister-fuer-eine-million-siedler-im.2932.de.html?drn:news_id=1088734 Israeli minister for one million settlers in the West Bank
  36. ^ Karl Vick: An Hour with Naftali Bennett: Is the Right-Wing Newcomer the New Face of Israel? Time Magazine , Jan. 18, 2013; Retrieved January 21, 2013
  37. ^ Matti Friedman: The new (secular) face of religious Zionism . Times of Israel, December 26, 2012; Retrieved January 25, 2013
  38. ↑ Maayana Miskin: Bennett in Post-Election Interview: Onward to Unity . Arutz Scheva , September 19, 2012
  39. ↑ a b Chaim Levinson: Habayit Hayehudi leader: Israel cannot recognize same-sex marriage in Haaretz , December 26, 2012
  40. ↑ Stuart Winer: After rabbi's anti-gay comments, Ya'alon warns of national religious 'radicalization'. Retrieved February 18, 2019 (American English).
  41. ↑ Gil Yaron: Rabbi incites against homosexuals in Israel in Welt.de, July 21, 2016
  42. ^ Gil Hoffman, Sarah Levi: Bennett reveals plan for peace, calls for drastic West Bank change . In The Jerusalem Post , October 11, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Bennett, Naftali
ALTERNATIVE NAMES נַפְתָּלִי בֶּנֶט (Hebrew)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli entrepreneur and politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1972
PLACE OF BIRTH Haifa