Naftali Bennett

Early life

Naftali Bennett was born in Haifa, Israel, on 25 March 1972. He is the youngest of three sons born to Jim and Myrna Bennett, American Jewish immigrants who moved to Israel from San Francisco in 1967, a month after the Six-Day War. His father's Jewish roots come from Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands. His maternal grandparents moved to San Francisco from Poland 20 years before the outbreak of World War II, and relocated to Israel as seniors, and settled on Vitkin Street in Haifa. Some of his mother's other family members, who remained in Poland, died in the Holocaust. Both of Bennett's parents observe Modern Orthodox Judaism. After moving to Israel, they volunteered for a few months at kibbutz Dafna, where they studied the Hebrew language, then settled in the Ahuza neighborhood of Haifa. Jim Bennett was a successful real estate broker turned real estate entrepreneur. Bennett's mother, Myrna, was the deputy director general of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel's northern program. One of Naftali Bennett's two brothers, Asher, is a businessman who is now based in the United Kingdom. His other brother, Daniel, is an accountant for Zim Integrated Shipping Services.

Naftali Bennett attended Yavne Yeshiva High School in Haifa, and became a youth leader ("Madrich") with the religious Zionist youth organization Bnei Akiva.

Military career

During his national service in the Israel Defense Forces, he served in the Sayeret Matkal and Maglan units as a company commander; he continues to serve in the reserves today with the rank of major. Bennett served in the Israeli security zone in Lebanon during the 1982–2000 South Lebanon conflict. He took part in many operations, including Operation Grapes of Wrath. After his IDF service, Bennett received a law degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During the 2006 Lebanon War, he was called up as a reservist and participated in a search and destroy mission behind enemy lines, operating against Hezbollah rocket launchers.

Some of Bennett's actions while serving as a special forces commando are controversial. Journalist Yigal Sarna argued that Bennett displayed “poor judgment", while serving in the Maglan commando unit, during Operation Grapes of Wrath. Sarna argued that “Bennett led a force of 67 combat troops into Lebanon. At a certain point, he decided to ignore orders and change operational plans without coordinating these moves with his superiors, who in his mind were cowardly and not steadfast enough. Near the village of Kfar Kana, Bennett’s troops were caught in an ambush… 102 civilians were killed and 10 wounded, of them four United Nations peacekeepers”. Bennett responded, writing: "“I have now been subjected to an attack claiming that I am ‘responsible for the massacre in Kfar Kana’,” Bennett wrote. “Heroism will not be investigated. Keep looking in the archives. My military file is available for viewing, and it’s waiting for you." Former members of Bennett's unit wrote a letter defending him, saying: "Naftali... led many successful operations that led to the elimination of Hezbollah terrorists deep in enemy territory”.

Business career

Bennett moved to the Upper East Side of Manhattan to build a career as a software entrepreneur. In 1999, he co-founded Cyota, an anti-fraud software company, and served as its CEO. The company was sold in 2005 to RSA Security for $145 million, making Bennett a multi-millionaire in the process. Despite being sold, a stipulation of the deal allowed the Israeli arm of Cyota to remain intact. As a result, 400 Israelis are employed at the company’s Israeli offices in Beersheba and Herzliya. Bennett has also served as the CEO of Soluto, a technology company providing cloud-based service that enables remote support for personal computers and mobile devices in 2009, at a time when he and partner Lior Golan were engaged in raising funds for a myriad of Israeli technology startup companies. Soluto had hitherto raised $20 million from investors, including venture capital funds Giza Venture Capital, Proxima Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Index Ventures, Michael Arrington's CrunchFund, Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors and Initial Capital. The sale of Soluto for a reported $100–130 million to an American company Asurion, was finalized in October 2013.

Return to Israel, entry into politics and personal life

Since moving on from software entrepreneurship, Bennett returned to Israel and since then moved on towards a career in politics. His wife, Gilat, was secular, but now observes the Jewish Sabbath and religious Jewish kosher laws regarding food. She is a professional pastry chef. The couple have four children and live in Ra'anana, a city about 20 kilometres (12 mi) north of Tel Aviv and 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) from the Mediterranean. Like his brothers, Bennett observes Modern Orthodox Judaism.

Political career

After he took part in the 2006 Lebanon War, Bennett joined the Leader of the Opposition Benjamin Netanyahu and served as his Chief of Staff from 2006 to 2008. Among attending to other issues, he led a team which developed Netanyahu's educational reform plan. He also ran Netanyahu's primary campaign to lead the Likud party in August 2007. On 31 January 2010, Bennett was appointed as the director-general of the Yesha Council and led the struggle against the settlement freeze in 2010. He served in this position until January 2012.

In April 2011, together with Ayelet Shaked, he co-founded My Israel, which claims to have 94,000 Israeli members. In April 2012, he founded a movement named "Yisraelim"—i.e., Israelis. The movement's main goals include increasing Zionism among centre-right supporters; increasing dialogue between the religious and nonreligious communities, and finally – promoting "The Israel Stability Initiative." Subsequently, Bennett resigned from the Likud and joined The Jewish Home, while announcing his candidacy for the party leadership. In the internal elections, on 6 November 2012, he won 67% of the votes, and was elected as head of The Jewish Home. In the 2013 legislative elections Bennett led the party to an achievement of 12 seats in the 19th Knesset.

Following his election to the Knesset, Bennett had to renounce his U.S. citizenship, which he held as the son of American parents, before he could take up his seat. He was appointed Minister of the Economy and Minister of Religious Services in March 2013. In April 2013, he was also appointed Minister of Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs. As a senior Cabinet Member, he plays a major role in financial, political and security affairs.

After being re-elected in the 2015 elections, Bennett was appointed Minister of Education and retained the Diaspora Affairs portfolio in the new government. In 2015, Prime Minister Netanyahu split the Ministry of Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs, initially taking back the Jerusalem Affairs portfolio for himself. He later appointed Ze'ev Elkin to the role of Jerusalem Affairs Minister.

In his function as Minister of Education, Bennett issued an official order that prohibits school principals from inviting members of Shovrim Shtika and other organizations that denounce Israel's military conduct in the West Bank. Under Bennett's supervision, the Ministry of Education changed the school curricula in order to include an increased number of visits to heritage sites in the West Bank.

In October 2015, Bennett resigned from the Knesset in order to allow Shuli Mualem to take his seat. His resignation took place under the Norwegian Law, which allowed ministers to resign their seats when in the cabinet but return to the Knesset if they leave the government. He returned to the Knesset on 6 December 2015 after Avi Wortzman opted to vacate his seat, having temporarily had to resign as a minister in order to do so.

Israeli–Palestinian conflict

On February 2012, Bennett published a plan for managing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, called "The Israel Stability Initiative." The plan is based in part on parts of earlier initiatives: "Peace on Earth" by Adi Mintz and the "Elon Peace Plan" by Binyamin Elon, and relies on the statements of the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Likud party ministers that spoke in favor of unilateral annexation of the West Bank. Bennett opposes the creation of a Palestinian state: "I will do everything in my power to make sure they never get a state."

He suggests a tripartition of the Palestinian territories. Thus, Israel should unilaterally annex Area C, authority over the Gaza Strip should be transferred to Egypt, while Area A and Area B would remain with the Palestinian National Authority, but under the security umbrella of the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet to "ensure quiet, suppress Palestinian terrorism and prevent Hamas from taking over the territory." Area C constitutes 62% of the area and approximately 365,000 people live in Israeli settlements. The Palestinians that live in this area would be offered Israeli citizenship or a permanent residency status (between 48,000, according to Bennett, or as many as 150,000, according to other surveys). Finally, Israel would invest in creating roads so Palestinians can travel between Areas A and B without checkpoints, and invest in infrastructure and joint industrial zones, because "Peace grows from below—through people, and people in daily life." Bennett also resists immigration of Palestinian refugees now living outside of the West Bank, or the connection between the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In 2011, Bennett noted that there were about 50 factories in the West Bank industrial region where Israelis and Palestinians work together, and cited this as one workable approach to finding peace between the two sides.

Bennett suggests that Israel must learn to live with the Palestinian problem without a "surgical action" of separation to two states: "I have a friend who's got shrapnel in his rear end, and he's been told that it can be removed surgically but it would leave him disabled... So he decided to live with it. There are situations where insisting on perfection can lead to more trouble than it's worth." Bennett's "Shrapnel in the butt" thus quickly became widely known as representing his view of the Palestinian problem.

In response to Israel's release of Palestinian prisoners in 2013, Bennett said Palestinian terrorists should be shot and is quoted to have said "I already killed lots of Arabs in my life, and there is absolutely no problem with that." Bennett was widely condemned for these words, though he denied these allegations and claimed he said that "terrorists should be killed if they pose an immediate life threat to our soldiers when in action."

In January 2013, he said, "There is not going to be a Palestinian state within the tiny land of Israel," he said, referring to the area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. "It's just not going to happen. A Palestinian state would be a disaster for the next 200 years."

In December 2014, a group of academics who are against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and members of The Third Narrative, a Labor Zionist organization, called on the U.S. and E.U. to impose sanctions on Bennett and three other Israelis "who lead efforts to insure permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank and to annex all or parts of it unilaterally in violation of international law." These academics, calling themselves Scholars for Israel and Palestine (SIP), and claiming to be "pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, pro-peace", asked the U.S. and EU to freeze Bennett's foreign assets and impose visa restrictions. Bennett was chosen in particular as a target for proposed sanctions because of his work in opposing the 2010 settlement freeze while he was director of the Yesha settlements council, actively supporting annexation of over 60% of the West Bank and "pressing strongly for a policy of creeping annexation."

In November 2016, following the election of Donald Trump as the President of the United States, Bennett maintained he saw this as hope that the two-state solution would no longer be considered viable, claiming "The era of the Palestinian state is over."

In October 2016, Bennett said that "On the matter of the Land of Israel, we have to move from holding action to a decision," He said. "We have to mark the dream, and the dream is that Judea and Samaria will be part of the sovereign State of Israel. We have to act today, and we must give our lives. We can't keep marking the Land of Israel as a tactical target and a Palestinian state as the strategic target."

Economy and society

Bennett believes in a free economy and that private businesses are the engine for economic growth. He is in favor of social support of vulnerable populations such as the elderly and disabled. Bennett says Israel needs to break the monopoly of the tycoons, the major labor unions and the Ministry of Defense, that are, in his opinion, strangling the economy of Israel. In addition, he believes that the key to reducing disparities is equality of opportunity and investment in education in the periphery, to give tools to populations of weaker economic backgrounds. By doing so, Bennett believes weaker populations in Israel will be given the opportunity to succeed professionally and financially. He supports the provision of land to veterans in the periphery, in the Negev and Galilee, to promote a national solution to the problem of "affordable housing" and a more equitable distribution of the population in Israel. He has also pledged to remove heavy bureaucratic challenges to small and medium-sized Israeli businesses. As an adherent of Orthodox Judaism, Bennett is opposed to the implementation of same-sex marriage in Israel "just as we don't recognize milk and meat together as kosher", but has expressed support for equivalent rights such as tax breaks for same-sex couples.

As Economy Minister, Bennett oversaw a new strategy by Israel to increase trade with emerging markets around the world and reduce trade with the European Union, so as to diversify its foreign trade. The two main reasons for this shift are to take advantage of opportunities in emerging markets, and to avert the threat of possible EU sanctions on Israel over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Bennett himself acknowledged that he was seeking to reduce Israel's economic dependence on the EU to reduce its influence on Israel. According to the Financial Times, Bennett is the primary architect of this economic pivot. Under Bennett's leadership, the Economy Ministry began opening new trade attaché offices in Asia, Africa, and South America, and also began closing some trade offices in Europe and consolidating others with offices in neighboring countries. As part of this process, Bennett opened negotiations with Russia and China on free trade agreements, oversaw continuing negotiations with India for a free trade agreement, and personally led economic delegations to China and India. While attending the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 2013 in Bali, Indonesia, Bennett held talks with delegations from some unspecified countries over the possibility of future free trade agreements.

Bennett also implemented reforms to lower Israel's high food prices. Under his oversight, import duties and barriers were reduced, and mechanisms were set up to ensure more competition in the Israeli food industry. These reforms have been credited with a decline in Israeli food prices that began in April 2014 and continued throughout the rest of the year and into 2015. According to a Haaretz editorial, however, a fall in global commodity prices and dire financial straits among many Israeli consumers prompted the decline, and not the reforms.

Bennett has led a push to integrate Haredi men and Israeli-Arab women, most of whom are unemployed, into the workforce. According to Bennett, their integration into the workforce will greatly bolster economic growth. Under his "voucher plan," the Ministry of the Economy issues vouchers for hundreds of vocational schools that will allow Haredi men to avoid mandatory military service, or at least temporarily, in exchange for enrolling in a vocational school to learn a job. Bennett has also greatly bolstered aid and government programs for Arab women to encourage more of them to enter the workforce, with the goal of doubling their employment rate from 25 to 50 percent in five years.