Who Is Israel’s New Prime Minister Naftali Bennett?

Bennett is the most immediate beneficiary after Yair Lapid, the head of the centrist Yesh Atid party, won a confidence vote in the Knesset on Sunday evening with the thinnest of margins, 60 for and 59 against, with one abstention. With a power-sharing agreement in place, Bennett is first in line to take the reins as Israel’s leader.

But who exactly is Naftali Bennett?

The Early Years

Bennett was born in 1972 to American parents, Jim and Myrna (nee Lefko) Bennett, who moved to Israel from San Francisco in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War. Naftali is the youngest of their three sons.

Bennett’s maternal grandparents came to San Francisco from Poland about two decades before World War II broke out. Other family members who remained in Poland were killed during the course of the Holocaust. On his father’s side, he has roots in Poland, Germany and the Netherlands.

The family moved in another way, too. Whereas Myrna and Jim, were committed members of Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco, over the years they came to redefine themselves as modern-Orthodox, with their children joining the religious education system in Israel.

The Bennett family settled in Haifa and Naftali studied at the local Carmel elementary school, but spent periods abroad as his father was required to work overseas. First, when Naftali was four years old, the family moved Montreal for two years. A few years later, they moved to New Jersey for another period of two years. He later attended Yavneh Academy.

Military Service

In the army, Bennett served in the Sayeret Matkal (General Staff Reconnaissance Unit), and as a squad commander and company commander in the Maglan unit, reaching the rank of Major in the reserves. Both are elite reconnaissance units, specializing in operating behind enemy lines and deep in enemy territory using advanced technologies and weaponry.

Booming Business Career

After completing his army service, Bennett proceeded to academia, attaining a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, before making the transition to business. In 1999, at the age of 27, Bennett co-founded the high-tech company Cyota, which specializes in online information security. The company was sold in 2005 to American company RSA Security for $145 million, making Bennet a multimillionaire and marking the first of his four high-tech exits. The deal stipulated that the Israeli arm of Cyota stay intact, meaning 400 Israelis remained employed at offices in Beersheba and Herzliya. Bennett also served as the CEO of Soluto, another company that was later sold for an estimated $100-130 million in 2013.

Bennett has also invested wisely, and is expected to make $5 million from his investment in the fintech company Payoneer, which was founded by Israeli serial entrepreneur Yuval Tal. Payoneer now has more than 700 employees globally across 12 offices and high-profile clients including Airbnb, Amazon and Getty Images. Bennett reportedly invested several hundred thousand dollars in the company before entering politics.

Entering The Political Arena

Despite being born to American parents and spending parts of his childhood in the United States and Canada, Bennett did not carve out a niche for himself in Israel’s tight-knit English-speaking community, and instead threw his weight into advocating for the Israeli Right.

Bennett’s career in politics actually overlapped with his business career; in 2005, at the invitation of Ayelet Shaked, he took up a position as Benjamin Netanyahu‘s chief of staff, a job he held until 2008. During this time, Bennett ran Netanyahu’s campaign in the Likud primaries, but according to a much-publicized Yediot Aharon report (Hebrew), relations turned sour between Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, and Bennett and Shaked, leading to their departure.

In 2010, Bennett was appointed CEO of the Judea and Samaria Council, known as Moetzet Yesha in Hebrew, an advocacy group which represents Jews living in the West Bank. He served in this position for two years and led the fight against the ten-month settlement building moratorium announced by Netanyahu during the Obama administration.

During his stint at Moetzet Yesha, realizing the significance and power of social media, Bennett co-founded the Yisrael Sheli (My Israel) movement together with Shaked. The organization spreads right-wing, pro-Israel content on Facebook, creates videos and organizes protests. Within a few years, the page received tens of thousands of ‘likes’ and at the time of publishing this article, it has in excess of 170,000 followers. The organization’s success served as a platform for Bennett and Shaked to enter the political arena.

In April 2012, Bennett formally entered politics, establishing a new party named HaYisraelim (The Israelis) together with Shaked. After polls revealed the party enjoyed some support, it was swiftly merged with Mafdal (National Religious Party), and the two became known as Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home). After internal primary elections were held, Bennett claimed a comprehensive victory and was installed as the party leader in November 2012 — a stunning rise for someone with no serious political gravitas six months prior.

By January 2013, Bennett guided the party to form a “joint list” together with another similarly aligned party, with himself at the head. In national elections that month, Bennett won 12 seats in the Knesset, making him the head of the fourth-largest faction in parliament. Almost overnight, Bennett had become a serious political force.

As far back as then, Bennett’s policies were clear. As The Economist reported at the time, under Bennett’s stewardship, the party:

flatly opposes Palestinian statehood, vigorously backs Jewish settlements in the West Bank and baldly urges Israel to annex swathes of it. Mr Bennett… says the conflict with the Palestinians is pretty well insoluble. Israel, he argues, should devote its energy to domestic problems.”

After the 2013 elections, Benjamin Netanyahu identified Bennett as a potential threat and refused to engage in coalition negotiations with him. Instead, Netanyahu spoke first to Labor leader Shelly Yachimovich in the hopes of striking a deal in the hopes of leaving Bennett out in the cold. However, when talks broke down, Netanyahu found that Bennett’s position had hardened: In the meantime, Jewish Home had struck an agreement with another political newcomer: Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid. Bennett conveyed the message to Netanyahu that they would only countenance entering the government together.

As a result, Bennett was appointed economy minister, at a time when Israel had just experienced large-scale social protests against the high cost of living. He was also handed the Ministry of Religious Services and Ministry of Diaspora Affairs portfolios, and was included as a member of the defense cabinet. Lapid was given a position as finance minister, as Haredi parties were cast aside. For Bennett, it was a significant success.

In June 2013, Bennett met with the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative movement in Israel’s Knesset. Bennett expressed gratitude and appreciation for the movement, and called for all Jewish streams “to engage in dialogue, not through a feeling that someone is above someone else, because nobody is better than the other, but in partnership.”

For Bennett, son of American Jews who regularly attended a Reform congregation, these weren’t mere platitudes. But his words were anathema to the strictly-orthodox party leadership and met with a scathing response from firebrand rabbi Dov Lior, who assembled the leadership of the Tekuma party, then part of the Jewish Home faction, to protest the meeting.

The next month, following the renewal of peace talks with the Palestinians, Bennett pushed for the passing of a Basic Law which would require Israel to conduct a referendum before withdrawing from any territory and ceding it to the Palestinians. The law was eventually passed the following year.

Also in 2013, in a bid to accommodate the Women of the Wall movement, Bennett announced the opening of a new prayer section at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Located adjacent to Robinson’s Arch, near already-existing, gender-segregated prayer sections, the new prayer area was to be open to all genders.

After elections were held in 2015, Jewish Home’s size was significantly reduced, with only eight seats retained. Nevertheless, the party remained in the governing coalition and Bennett was installed as education minister.

That year, Bennett pushed for the reduction of class sizes in schools, increasing the number of assistants in kindergartens, and also created headlines by removing a play, A Parallel Time, from the list of those subsidized by the state. Based on the life of Israeli Arab Walid Daka, who was serving a life sentence for being involved in the abduction and killing of Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam, the play had drawn sharp criticism from the soldier’s family and those on the Israeli right who insisted that it should not receive public funding.

Another move that sparked headlines that year came in December, when Bennett banned members of the controversial Breaking the Silence NGO from delivering lectures in Israeli high schools. The move came after senior Breaking the Silence members were caught on camera telling diplomats and politicians visiting Israel exaggerated and decontextualized stories, framing Israel as needlessly persecuting the Palestinians.

After Avigdor Lieberman resigned as defense minister in November 2018 in the wake of Israel’s decision to accept a ceasefire ending a brief but intense flare-up of violence with Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Bennett sensed an opportunity and announced his candidacy for the coveted position. However, to Bennett’s dismay, Netanyahu took the position instead.

In response, Bennett’s Jewish Home party declared that unless Bennett would receive the position, it would no longer be affiliated with Netanyahu’s government. Although Bennett reneged on the ultimatum shortly thereafter, the governing coalition nevertheless fell apart a few months later and early elections were called for April 2019 — the first in a series of an unprecedented four election cycles in under two years.

From Political Outcast to Prime Minister

Ahead of the April 2019 Knesset elections, after years of chafing against the restrictions imposed by the old-fashioned approach of Jewish Home’s aging leadership and electorate, Bennett announced that he, and numerous other Members of Knesset, would be leaving Jewish Home to form and head the breakaway New Right party.

Among the reasons given for the split was the purely religious nature of the Jewish Home, with the New Right seeking to widen its voter base even while retaining much of the Jewish Home platform. Among those enlisted as party members were Alona Barkat, owner of the Beersheba football team, and Caroline Glick, the well-known firebrand columnist.

However, election results proved a great shock, with the New Right failing, narrowly, to cross the 3.25% electoral threshold. For the first time in almost a decade, Bennett found himself outside of the political system, without a seat in the Knesset.

Bennett’s luck would soon turn, though. While Netanyahu was widely expected to assemble a coalition, he was unable to cobble together enough parties and the Knesset was dissolved and repeat elections were set for September 2019. In his bid to crush Bennett, Netanyahu had eliminated his own right-wing majority, leading Israel to a political stalemate. For the first time in history, Israel went to elections for the second time in a single calendar year.

With the country heading back to the polling booths, Bennett was handed a second chance. First, he had to allay the fears of right-wing voters dismayed that votes had been “thrown away” by a party that failed to cross Israel’s electoral threshold. In response, the New Right resolved to expand and strengthen its base to ensure it would be part of the next Knesset. To this end, Bennett formed an electoral alliance with the Jewish Home and National Union-Tkuma, named the United Right. The alliance was later renamed Yamina, and Bennett announced that he would be stepping down from his position as chairman of the party, allowing Ayelet Shaked to instead take the lead, with Bennett bumped down to fourth on the list.

The move paid off, as Yamina won seven seats in the election, and Bennett regained his Knesset seat. In November, Yamina and Likud announced that the two would be united as a single faction and, a year after his attempt to claim the defense minister position ended in failure, Bennett was installed in the post in the transitional government, making him the youngest defense minister in the history of the state.

Despite suffering a stinging setback just months ago, and seeing his party steadily dwindle in size, Bennett had developed the ability to wring concessions and senior political positions from Netanyahu.

However, with Israel’s political turmoil still without an end in sight, the country was soon headed back to repeat elections, this time called for March 2020. After briefly dissolving, Yamina was reunified in January 2020 ahead of the Knesset election, this time with Bennett returning as the list’s leader. The list won six seats in that election.

Although Israel’s political scene remained as fragmented as before, in May that year, with the world gripped by the coronavirus pandemic, Netanyahu managed to assemble a government together with his erstwhile rival Benny Gantz, the two declaring they had put aside their differences in order to guide the country in a time of crisis. Under the terms of the deal, Netanyahu remained prime minister while a new position, alternate prime minister, was created for Gantz, meaning that after two years, he would become the next premier.

Bennett, however, stuck to his guns and refused to join the coalition, blaming Netanyahu for not properly engaging in negotiations with Yamina. He calculated that this government wouldn’t last, and when it collapsed, he would be in a good position to take advantage.

Indeed, despite a coalition finally being forged, Netanyahu and Gantz were never easy bedfellows, and their coalition dissolved after just over six months, triggering yet another election cycle. With elections set for March 2021, Yamina underwent further changes as the National Union-Tkuma faction led by Betzalel Smotrich split, leaving Bennett’s New Right as the sole member party of the Yamina list.

Significantly, in hindsight, Bennett openly campaigned as an alternative to the “failed” Netanyahu.  And despite Smotrich’s National Union receiving Netanyahu’s backing, Yamina actually gained seats in the election, winning seven mandates.

While Yamina’s final electoral peformance did not match the forecasts just months before of some twenty seats, as the Likud enjoyed a resurgence in popularity following the vaccination drive very publicly led by Netanyahu, Bennett managed to position himself as having the final say between the pro- and anti-Netanyahu forces.

Once again, both Netanyahu and then Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid were given the opportunity to assemble coalitions. Once again, both seemed unable to make progress. But after two years of seemingly endless election cycles, and with many Israelis increasingly weary of Netanyahu’s lengthy stint as prime minister, Lapid changed his approach in the wake of an intense outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, during which over 4,500 rockets were fired at Israel. Instead of building a coalition with himself as prime minister, Yamina was offered to join the coalition with Bennett at its head. Under the terms of the arrangement, Bennett and Lapid would take turns at being prime minister in a “government of change.”

The coalition that arose, comprised of a diverse blend of ideologically opposed parties, looked nothing like anything ever seen in Israeli politics. From hardline secular and religious Jewish nationalists to centrists to leftists to a small Islamist party, the developing coalition looked improbable to the point of being impossible.

Nevertheless, a complex series of agreements were signed in June 2021, and Netanyahu was removed from power. Bennett’s remarkable rise in Israeli politics, surmounting hurdle after hurdle with neck-breaking speed, was capped with his installation as Israel’s prime minister.

Bennett’s ascent has been unquestionably meteoric. With a wildly successful career in Israel’s world-famous high tech sector, impressive military credentials, allied to strong religious-Zionist credentials and an ability to connect with modern-orthodox Jews, secular Israelis, and more progressive streams of Judaism abroad, the only question now is how much higher Prime Minister Bennett can rise.

Featured Image: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images