Yoel Meltzer
One of the most intriguing personalities to recently throw his
name into the political ring is 40-year-old Naftali Bennett. A literal
success story in various fields, his impressive resume includes the
company commander of an elite army unit, the co-founder and CEO of a
successful high-tech company, the Chief of Staff for Benjamin Netanyahu
while he was the opposition leader, the CEO of the Yesha Council, the
co-founder of the MyIsrael national movement and the founder of the
Yisraelim movement.
In addition, for the last
six months he has been promoting a plan for Israel to start increasing
sovereignty over Judea and Samaria by formally annexing “Area C”. No
wonder his announcement to officially enter politics has caught the
interest of many observers in Israel.
In order to clarify some of his intentions I recently conducted the following brief phone interview with Naftali.
Yoel Meltzer (YM): Following months of political speculation, rumors
and short-lived announcements, you finally decided to run for the head
of The Jewish Home party (
Ha-Bayit Ha-Yehudi, formerly
Mafdal)
in the party’s upcoming internal primaries. With all the options open
before you, why did you choose this one? After all, wouldn’t it have
been easier to simply join the Likud?
Naftali Bennett (NB): The national camp is effectively gone. The
Likud used to be the national camp and many from the religious Zionist
community, myself included, worked very hard to turn Netanyahu into
Prime Minister. However, once he was elected everything changed: Ehud
Barak became Defense Minister in charge of Judea and Samaria and then
there was the building freeze for 350,000 Israelis. The fundamental
problem is that when it matters most, no one pays any attention to us
and unfortunately this isn’t going to change.
Moreover, the reason that the big national religious move within the
Likud has failed is because fundamentally it’s an attempt to take over a
party with an existing DNA in order to instill within it a totally
different DNA. This simply won’t succeed.
Therefore what we need to do is to create one big national camp, with
a core from The Jewish Home, together with partners who are traditional
and secular in order to build the national camp back up again. That’s
our only option. Right now all we have is three seats in the Knesset and
that’s why there is not one religious Zionist MK in any decision-making
forum or in any key position; not Defense Minister, not Foreign
Minister, not Finance Minister and not Prime Minister. We don’t even
have any member in the
shminiya (the inner “kitchen cabinet” of
the government). It’s like we’re nothing. We’re not taken into
consideration and the only way for this to change is to become a very
strong power. I’m talking about 15 seats in the Knesset, which will
enable us to lead and not only be the
gabbai on the sidelines.