On Iran, Bennett says the Iranian nuclear program “is approaching a critical point.”

“Israel will not allow Iran to attain nuclear weapons. Israel is not a party to the [international nuclear] deal and will maintain full freedom to act.”

In a message to Washington, he adds: “Renewing the nuclear deal is a mistake.”

Israel's longest-serving Prime Minister (12 years), Benjamin Netanyahu, was just unseated, as Bennett-Lapid government passes confidence vote with a slim majority.

Prime Minister-designate Naftali Bennett will retain Brig. Gen. Avi Blot in his role as military secretary for the time being. National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat will also stay in office until after his successor is appointed to ensure a smooth transition. Both top officials were appointed by Benjamin Netanyahu.

Bennett will meet with Blot and Ben-Shabbat later this evening for his first security briefing as premier.

Yesh Atid MK Mickey Levy is appointed the new Knesset speaker, replacing Likud’s Yariv Levin, after winning 67 of the parliament’s 120 votes.

His rival, Shas lawmaker Yaakov Margi, picks up 52 votes.

Levy will now preside over the confidence vote in the new Bennett-Lapid government, which will begin shortly.

Bennett sworn in as Prime Minister
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett stands at the Knesset plenum and vows to “maintain allegiance to the State of Israel and its laws, to faithfully fulfill my role as prime minister/a member of the government and to uphold Knesset resolutions.”

He is followed by Yair Lapid, the alternate prime minister and foreign minister.

The rest of the cabinet members will follow individually, in alphabetical order.

The Knesset swears in the 36th government, appointing the right-wing Naftali Bennett the next prime minister and removing Benjamin Netanyahu from power after 12 consecutive years.

Netanyahu offers a brief handshake to Israel’s new prime minister, Naftali Bennett.

The new opposition leader and former premier is wearing a face mask in the plenum, making his facial expressions inscrutable.

PROFILE

Naftali Bennett is a study in contrasts. Born to American immigrant parents, he doesn’t consider himself part of Israel’s English-speaking community; an ex-commando and West Bank annexationist, he lives in liberal-leaning suburban Ra’anana; a successful tech millionaire, he has little expertise in computer science.

His unlikely rise to power, too, is a tale of unexpected twists, turns and contradictions.

Bennett was born in Haifa on 25 March 1972, the youngest of three children to American immigrant parents Jim and Myrna, who moved to Israel from San Francisco in 1967 in the wake of the Six Day War. Besides two short family stints in San Francisco and Montreal in his youth, he spent much of his childhood in the northern city. Ambitious from the start, he tried out for the army’s most prestigious commando unit, Sayeret Matkal. He made it past the grueling trials and served in the elite force and then in the Maglan reconnaissance unit.

He left full-time military service after six years, in 1996. Three years later, at the tender age of 27, he was living in Manhattan and founding his first technology company, Cyota, which sold six years later for $145 million.

A rocky relationship with Netanyahu from the start

A self-made multimillionaire by 33, Bennett’s pivot toward politics came in the wake of the 2006 Lebanon War. Bennett served as a reservist in Maglan in that war, participating in operations behind enemy lines to destroy Hezbollah cells and rocket launchers. As he would later tell it, the high command’s confused strategy and the political echelon’s strategic indecision in that war, as seen from the perspective of a soldier on the ground, kindled in him a burning desire for a national leadership role.

Like Avigdor Liberman before him, he entered politics in late 2006 as an aide to then-MK Benjamin Netanyahu, who was head of the opposition during the Olmert government. And like Liberman, Bennett ran Netanyahu’s primary race to lead Likud (Liberman in 1995, Bennett in 2007), would go on to serve as Netanyahu’s top political aide, and then, in 2008 — again, just like Liberman — would have a falling out with Netanyahu and find himself out of a job.

But Bennett found his footing quickly. Two years later, in 2010, he and Netanyahu were already on opposite sides of a political fight. In January 2010, Bennett was appointed director-general of the umbrella advocacy group of West Bank settlements, the Yesha Council, while Netanyahu was ordering a sweeping freeze on construction in settlements at the behest of the Obama administration.

While he led the Yesha Council, Bennett also founded the My Israel activist movement together with Ayelet Shaked, who had served with him in Netanyahu’s office from 2006 to 2008.

In November 2012, Bennett and Shaked used the platform of the My Israel organization to mount a primary challenge inside the floundering religious-Zionist party Jewish Home. Bennett swept to victory with over two-thirds of the vote, and then swept the right-wing party itself to an astounding showing of 12 seats in the 2013 general election.

A breakneck pace

As Bennett stepped onto the national political stage in 2013, at the age of 41, many already took note of the frenetic speed of his rise: An elite but short six-year military career, a wildly successful but scarcely seven-year-long high-tech career, a political climb from Netanyahu aide to settlements advocate to religious-Zionism’s ballot-box champion that itself stretched across scarcely seven years — he did everything on full throttle and nothing, it seemed, for very long.

Indeed, just as he entered the Knesset in 2013, news came of the sale for over $100 million of Soluto, a company he had helmed for the brief period between leaving Netanyahu’s side and entering into his Yesha Council role.

That frenetic pace hasn’t let up.

Bennett’s strong showing in 2013 spooked Netanyahu, who did not forget their falling out and began to seek ways to crush the popular upstart. During coalition talks in late January, Netanyahu turned to Labor party leader Shelly Yachimovich in a bid to avoid inviting Bennett into his coalition.

Bennett, in turn, formed a union with another neophyte upstart — popular talk show host Yair Lapid, who had established his fledgling Yesh Atid party the year before and, as much to his own surprise as to everyone else’s, won a whopping 19 seats at the ballot box. Together, Bennett and Lapid controlled 31 seats, equal to the 31 won by the Likud-Yisrael Beytenu joint list led by Netanyahu at the time.

Netanyahu had no choice. Bennett was appointed the economy minister and Lapid the finance minister. The Haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism were shunted aside in favor of the new reformers.

It was a stunning first showing for Bennett, both at the ballot box and at the coalition negotiations.

Decline

But it wasn’t to last.

Netanyahu broke up the government early, and in the 2015 snap election Bennett’s Jewish Home dropped from 12 seats to eight — still enough to wrangle from Netanyahu the post of education minister.

In the four years of that government, and increasingly acutely in 2018, Bennett grew frustrated with the Jewish Home party he had led through two elections. It was an old party — Jewish Home was a new name for the old National Religious Party — built on old institutions and an aging activist base.

But it was Jewish Home’s spiritual leaders who most rankled for the independent-minded ex-high-tech CEO. Religious figures such as Rabbi Haim Druckman had a habit of speaking with Netanyahu directly, over Bennett’s head, and then trying to pressure Bennett at Netanyahu’s behest.

In November 2018, after the latest Liberman-Netanyahu spat saw Liberman resign as defense minister, Bennett publicly demanded the post for himself. And just as publicly, Netanyahu refused.

Bennett viewed himself as a competitor to Netanyahu, not a retainer to be called to heel by rabbinic fiat. With Netanyahu seemingly trying to hold him back and Jewish Home’s rabbinic echelon seemingly willing to play along, Bennett rebelled.

The New Right

In December, Bennett and Shaked walked out on the party — Bennett’s stint in Jewish Home, as in most things, had lasted just over six years — to establish the New Right party.

It was the latest in a long list of all-or-nothing gambles for the restless Bennett. This time, it failed.

In the April 2019 election, the first of Israel’s four polls in two years, Bennett crashed out of the Knesset, narrowly failing to clear the 3.25% vote threshold.

Netanyahu had campaigned aggressively against New Right and was initially satisfied with the result. Bennett’s independent run had backfired.

It was only on May 30, as it became clear in the final hours before he had to return his mandate to the president, that Netanyahu realized his efforts to eliminate New Right had backfired on him too. He now lacked the right-wing seats to form a government. Netanyahu had tried to crush Bennett, and discovered too late that he’d needed him.

In desperation, Netanyahu engineered September 2019’s redo election. He blamed Bennett’s political adventurism for his failure to form a government and was determined to crush him once and for all at the ballot box. Netanyahu even went to the trouble of firing Bennett from the interim government in June.

But despite those efforts, the first-ever redo election in Israel’s history gave Bennett his second chance.

A second chance

Chastened by his April failure, Bennett allied New Right’s slate to Rafi Peretz’s Jewish Home and Betzalel Smotrich’s National Union, and even agreed that Shaked, not he, would hold the top spot — though the alliance agreed he would have the top cabinet posting of the list. Yamina won seven seats in the September 2019 election, and a weakened Bennett, now at fourth place on the list, returned to the Knesset.

It is one of the most astonishing parts of Bennett’s story: From the initial success of 12 seats in 2013, Bennett’s ballot-box showing has steadily dropped to 8 and then 7. Yet despite that decline, Bennett’s political influence had only grown. He’d learned to play the game.

Scarcely three weeks after the September race, on November 8, exactly a year after his demand to be appointed defense minister was rebuffed, Netanyahu suddenly agreed to appoint him to the defense post.

What changed? Netanyahu did poorly in the September race and began to fear that Bennett might cross the aisle and join with Gantz’s Blue and White to oust him from power. Bennett played that fear for all it was worth.

But the September race, too, failed to produce a government, and the Yamina alliance ran again — this time with Bennett at the lead — in the March 2020 elections. It won six seats.

Opposition

Bennett’s stint as defence minister was a short one. On May 17, 2020, after Netanyahu and Gantz formed their new unity coalition and Netanyahu no longer needed the Yamina leader, Bennett took leave of the post and headed to the opposition.

Thus began Bennett’s first-ever experience of life in the opposition. It was another gamble. He was betting that the unity government wouldn’t survive, and he would be better positioned to take advantage of its collapse as an outside critic.

By the time the March 2021 election rolled around, Bennett’s newest, most ambitious gamble was ready: a campaign focused on openly challenging a “failed” Netanyahu for power. Bennett shed no tears when Betzalel Smotrich led his National Union faction out of the Yamina alliance in January 2021 to run alongside the Netanyahu camp.

Bennett expected Netanyahu to once again try to crush him, and was not surprised when the prime minister threw all his support and political acumen behind Smotrich’s fledgling run.

Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat

After initially polling at over 20 seats in the leadup to the March election, Bennett was polling below 10 by election day. A nation angry at Netanyahu’s incompetent handling of pandemic lockdowns had changed its mind as the Netanyahu-instigated world-leading vaccination drive took off.

Bennett openly campaigned for Prime Minister, and had reason to believe it was within his reach as long as polls gave him 20 seats and predicted he would hold the deciding vote between the pro- and anti-Netanyahu camps in the new Knesset.

But what could he accomplish with the mere seven seats he actually won on election day? Could a seven-seat party — by May reduced to six with the departure of MK Amichai Chikli — demand the premiership?

Naftali Bennett, as always, didn’t blink. He leaped.

To his critics, there’s something galling about the fact that Bennett is set to take the prime minister’s seat while leading a mere six-seat faction that now fails even to clear the electoral threshold in most polls.

But it’s hard to think of a more characteristically Bennett-esque act. A driven soldier, a self-made tech millionaire, a political activist turned political leader, a fast-moving, ever-striving, ambitious and fickle and astoundingly confident man — Israel’s newest leader is a brazen risk-taker and gambler with an unusual penchant for beating the house.

A Defiant Netanyahu insists he will lead the opposition to victory again

Netanyahu also notes Israel’s relative security under his leadership, calling it “the best decade for security we’ve ever had.”

“This didn’t happen by chance. This came because we set a different security policy… which exacted a very high price from our enemies, while avoiding recklessness and impulsivity,” says Netanyahu.

“If we are destined to be in the opposition, we will do it with our heads held high until we bring down this dangerous government,” he says.

ANALYSIS: THE END OF AN ERA OF SOLITARY, NON-COLLABORATIVE LEADERSHIP

Netanyahu unseated by a new generation of leaders he tried, and failed, to crush

One thing is certain — he lacks the mastery of the world stage enjoyed by his predecessor.

But there’s another thing the world should know: Profound changes are afoot in Israel.

The 36th government’s swearing-in signifies a changing of the guard. Though Netanyahu is likely to stick around, the new government will mark a major step in drawing to a close the era of a 71-year-old prime minister, born one year after the establishment of the state, while pushing Israel’s younger high-tech and media-savvy generation into power.

Bennett and Netanyahu are from an entirely different generation; the same goes for Bennett’s partner in the power-sharing government, Yair Lapid. Of all the 28 designated cabinet members, only one is near in age to Netanyahu: the next Diaspora affairs minister, Nachman Shai, 74.

Underlining the stark change is the youngest party leader of them all: Ra’am chair Mansour Abbas, born in 1974, is 25 years younger and a world apart from the outgoing prime minister. Abbas is poised to become the first Arab Israeli leader in half a century to steer his political party into a governing coalition.

New leaders, new media

The new political leaders have also blunted Netanyahu’s edge in a key area: His quick adoption of new media and ability to use these outlets to his advantage.

While Netanyahu has been perceived throughout the years as a wizard of tech and media, many of his successors built their public fortune in the news industry. Lapid, Labor’s Merav Michaeli, Meretz’s Nitzan Horowitz, and New Hope’s Gideon Sa’ar all worked as news professionals as columnist, reporter or anchor.

They are not shy to utilize their media know-how. They write long Facebook posts, talk easily to cameras. When Netanyahu adopted new social media platforms in a flash, they were right behind him.

In the last decade, none of them has had the means at their disposal that Netanyahu did: countless staff and assistants, huge budgets, and more.

Nevertheless, they kept up: Lapid utilized his writing skills and cool presentation style; Bennett performed Cuomo-style quick and sophisticated Zoom briefings and press conferences; Michaeli brought the camera into her living room with her famous weekly summaries and maintained a popular Instagram feed.

Even political neophyte Abbas rapidly became a communications wizard. He directed his press conferences to the nation at 8 p.m., taking a page out of the Netanyahu playbook to control the evening news headlines.

Two weeks ago, when coalition negotiations were taking place at a Ramat Gan hotel, Abbas was the only politician who made a point of cutting through the lobby as he entered and exited, letting journalists chase him to capture his comments live.

Having worked with Netanyahu, they had enough

Another common element worth dwelling on is that many of those about to unseat Netanyahu were his political apprentices.

Bennett was Netanyahu’s chief of staff, Yamina’s Ayelet Shaked was director of Netanyahu’s political office, and Avigdor Liberman was Likud’s Director-General, a senior adviser to Netanyahu and a political partner when Likud and Yisrael Beytenu ran on a combined list in the 2013 elections. Blue and White head Benny Gantz was the IDF chief of staff under Netanyahu, Lapid was a senior minister in his 2013 government, and New Hope’s Sa’ar was Netanyahu’s cabinet secretary as well as a senior minister under him.

And further down the list of New Hope lawmakers, the connections continue: Ze’ev Elkin was a Minister in Netanyahu’s cabinet as well as a confidant of the Premier, Yoaz Hendel served as Netanyahu’s communication director and Zvi Hauser is a former cabinet secretary.

The lawmakers making up the foundations of Israel’s next coalition studied in Netanyahu’s academy, learning from the best.

This is the next generation of leaders. They reached this position thanks to him, but also despite him.

The new generation of leaders grew sick of living in the shadow of Netanyahu, a man who is apparently unable to give credit to others for successes. He failed to acknowledge others’ work and dedication, and was almost unable to delegate responsibilities or give anyone a free hand to act as they saw fit. And now, after many years, that centralization of power and egocentrism have played a key role in his removal from the stage.

When Blue and White was formed in 2019, Netanyahu used to deride the fact that the faction had four leaders — Gantz, Lapid, Moshe Ya’alon and Gabi Ashkenazi. “How many chairs together are required in order to replace one prime minister?” he quipped.

However by its nature the incoming government, comprising as it does eight very diverse leaders, many of them former Netanyahu’s protégés, rejects the notion that any one person is a key enough figure to occupy the helm alone.

To survive, the coalition requires all of its components pulling together to stay afloat. None of the constituent pieces can be jettisoned.

This is not yet the end of the Netanyahu era. But it may be the end of individual, non-collaborative, solitary leadership.

PRESIDENT BIDEN CONGRATULATES NEW PM BENNETT

On behalf of the American people, I congratulate Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Alternate Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, and all the members of the new Israeli cabinet. I look forward to working with Prime Minister Bennett to strengthen all aspects of the close and enduring relationship between our two nations.

Israel has no better friend than the United States. The bond that unites our people is evidence of our shared values and decades of close cooperation and as we continue to strengthen our partnership, the United States remains unwavering in its support for Israel’s security. My administration is fully committed to working with the new Israeli government to advance security, stability, and peace for Israelis, Palestinians, and people throughout the broader region.

Statement by the Prime Minister on the formation of a new government in Israel

The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today issued the following statement on the formation of a new government in Israel:

“On behalf of the Government of Canada, I congratulate Prime Minister Bennett and Alternate Prime Minister Lapid on the formation of a new Israeli government.

“Canada and Israel are close friends bound together by shared democratic values, a long history of cooperation, and vibrant people-to-people ties. Throughout the years, we have joined efforts on a number of common priorities, including through advancing education, science, and innovation, combatting antisemitism in all its forms, and promoting peace and stability in the Middle East.

“I look forward to working with Prime Minister Bennett and Alternate Prime Minister Lapid to keep our people safe and supported as we recover from the global COVID-19 pandemic, and help both of our countries build back better. Together, we will explore ways to further strengthen the relationship between Canada and Israel, expand bilateral trade and investment, and create new opportunities and jobs for our people, including through the modernized Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement.

“Canada remains steadfast in its commitment to a two-state solution, with Israelis and Palestinians living in peace, security, and dignity – without fear and with their human rights respected. Canada will continue to promote lasting peace and security in the region.

“I thank former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his valuable partnership over the years, at a time when Canada and Israel achieved a great deal together.”

Congratulations to PM @naftalibennett and alternate PM @yairlapid for forming a government. I look forward to working with you. Austria is committed to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and will continue to stand by Israel‘s side.

On behalf of the UK, I offer my congratulations to @naftalibennett and @yairlapid on forming a new government in Israel.

As we emerge from COVID-19, this is an exciting time for the UK and Israel to continue working together to advance peace and prosperity for all.

Righteousness2:
Congratulations to Bennett!
Put an Eye on GOD'S Prophetic time.
All things are Falling in place.
Bennett is as a result of a Collation of parties including the Arab Jewish party.
All they are gunning for is PEACE and SAFETY. The Bible chronicles that when they say Peace and Safety, Sudden Destruction!

Folks, all the puzzles are falling in Place.
The RAPTURE of the Church which will trigger a whole lot of things is upon us. It is closer than you think.
Be Prepared folks. In a time you think not, The Rapture will Happen.
The World only way to be Prepared is to Submit yourself Fully to JESUS Christ..