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After a surprisingly fractious negotiating period, Israel finally has a new government in place. The most religious, hard-right government it has ever had! A brief list of its priorities are listed here.
For my part, I remain puzzled over how some of their initiatives are termed anti-democratic. For instance, they want to allow businesses to reject certain customers/requests based on their faith. This reminds me of the "LGBT cake" ordered by a gay couple from a Christian baker in the US a few years ago. One gets the sense that they did it as a provocation, and to rub it in his eyes. He refused, was sued, and the case later went all the way up the courts.
If you're libertarian, shouldn't individuals and businesses be free to associate and do business with whoever they may want? I can see why this would be offensive if you're a leftist, but the charge is that this is "anti-democratic" which isn't synonymous with leftism. Or it shouldn't be, at least.
The coalition agreement is non-binding but rather a statement of principles. How much gets implemented remains to be seen, and there is rife speculation - one may be forgiven for thinking it is wishful thinking - in the media about the current government being short-lived. Either way, Israel's new government will be worth watching for how far a genuine right-wing government can be allowed to travel before it gets blocked by the establishment.
It's also worth mentioning that Prime Minister Netanyahu's own Likud party is substantially more secular than its right-wing/religious partners. So there is also an internal split that Netanyahu has to manage. He is liked by his base, but is loathed by much of the larger Israeli establishment. Particularly in the judiciary and the academic/media class.
That's a confirmed fact, because after the whole legal and wide-covered story, they went back and did it again, this time for gender transition. One can plausibly claim it is random event - it is a vendetta and an attempt to establish a precedent and make an example of him.
I expect not very far, unless they manage to rein in the Supreme Court, which has been very activist (to the left) for years and has not been shy to intervene politically. And which the left is not shy at all to use as a bludgeon to override any policy they don't like. That said, the traditional left in Israel right now is kinda in shambles politically after their "New Middle East" project obviously fizzled out, and no there's no long-term solution to the issue that anybody in Israel believes in. So the contention is now more along religious/secular lines, with secularists kinda aligning with American Left, but not entirely (there are wokes among them, but they are really in minority, most of them would be somewhere around moderate Republicans by American standards).
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