Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett speaks at the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes Remembrance Day opening ceremony, at Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem April 27, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun.

Israel is going through “the worst domestic crisis we’ve had since our establishment,” the country’s former Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, told an American audience this week, faulting the government in Jerusalem for “doing a horrible job.”

“Many perceive that this government came in drunk with power,” Bennett said. He accused the government of engaging in “identity politics” and “working day in and day out to widen this chasm” between the “First Israel,” of secular Israelis who work in high tech in Tel Aviv, and the “Second Israel” of charedim and sefardim who live on the periphery.

Bennett’s remarks came as part of a “Critical Conversations” series sponsored by Chabad of Martha’s Vineyard. The event was long-scheduled, but took place just a day after Israel’s parliament passed part of a judicial overhaul advanced by Prime Minister Netanyahu. The legislation, though delayed and modified, prompted extensive street protests in Israel, cautionary warnings from President Biden, and threats of negative reactions from elements in Israeli society, from the military to medicine and venture capital.

Bennett said he was “very concerned” about strains in the relationship between Israel and America, and between Israel and American Jews, but he said it was “unfair” to place all the blame on Prime Minister Netanyahu.

“There’s also a problem on the extreme Democrat wing,” he said, where the line has been crossed between legitimate criticism of Israel to denying Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, or at all. “It’s going on in universities in America,” he said.

An Unlikely Partnership

In a conversation with Terry Kassel of the Paul E. Singer Foundation, Bennett told the story of how his government had been formed with the participation of Mansour Abbas of Ra’am, an Israel Arab party.

“I called him up. He was really surprised,” Bennett said, especially when Bennett invited him to meet publicly at his Knesset office rather than at some secret hiding place. “I really liked him and I liked what he said…I view him as an Israeli Sadat in terms of his courage.”

The reference is to Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian leader who made peace with Israel and was assassinated. Abbas’s support gave Bennett and Yair Lapid the votes to form a coalition that governed from June 2021 to December 2022; Bennett was prime minister from June 2021 to June 2022.

Putin and Bennett

Bennett also told the story of his relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin. The first meeting between the two lasted 5 and a half hours. “We hit it off,” Bennett said. Putin’s research team had somehow unearthed that in 1995, Bennett was the Israel Defense Force’s champion in number of terrorists killed. “He loved that,” Bennett said.

Early on in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Bennett tried to negotiate a settlement with Ukraine and Russia.

“We were making tremendous progress,” Bennett said. “Putin agreed not to try to kill Ukrainian President Zelensky, and Putin also conceded by giving up a demand that Ukraine be disarmed. Zelensky gave up on a demand that Ukraine be allowed to join NATO.”

The two sides were negotiating over territory and security guarantees when a Russian massacre derailed the talks.

“It’s just going to grind on for a long time,” Bennett said of the conflict. “I’m not optimistic.”

Message to Iran: ‘Don’t Mess With Us’

Bennett said that as prime minister he had changed Israel’s policy on Iran to raise the price for Iran’s regional terror attacks. When Iran sent unmanned aerial vehicles into Israel, a drone base in Iran was destroyed. When Israelis in Cyprus and Turkey were targeted by Iran, the commander of the unit doing the targeting was assassinated in Iran.

The message, Bennett said, was meant to be clear: “Don’t mess with us, because we are going to hit you in Tehran,” he said. The broader strategy was to weaken Iran, which Bennett likened to the Cold War-era Soviet Union. “Iran will not be around the way it is anywhere between 5 months and 50 years, and we can accelerate that,” Bennett said.

Bennett rued what he called a “post-right” politics “about hating the others.”

“I don’t hate anyone,” he said. “I’m a huge believer in moderation.”

Bennett on Israeli Unity

Bennett predicted that the reaction to the judicial reform legislation would yield a national unity government in Israel’s next election. “I’m convinced that, come the next election, we’re going to have a unity government, including Likud, and we’re going to start fixing Israel,” he said.

One possibility he mentioned was changing the law exempting yeshiva students from military service so that the students are no longer required to remain in religious seminaries until they are 26. “I bet you 85 percent of them will leave,” Bennett predicted, painting a picture of charedim “becoming capitalist, enjoying life.” Then, “they’re going to start asking, why can’t our kids go in the army?”

Bennett is religious and he said that his wife was raised secular and got interested in synagogue through a beginner’s minyan at Congregation Kehillath Jeshurun in New York that featured a free lunch. “I would love to import that to Israel,” he said.