Religious Zionism Chairman and Israel’s incoming Finance Minster and adjunct minister in the defense ministry Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday told the Wall Street Journal readers in a long op-ed (Israel’s New Government Isn’t What You’ve Heard) that contrary to US media vilifications, he is not an extremist looking to install a halachic state in Israel. Instead, he is a free-market liberal.
“As finance minister, I will pursue a broad free-market policy,” Smotrich wrote, promising the removal of “government price controls and import restrictions that have limited competition and kept consumer prices high, as well as regulatory reforms and a loosening of bureaucratic control over small businesses.”
He also promised to pursue measures similar to the US’ right-to-work laws to reduce union control over Israel’s labor force.
As to religious issues, Smotrich wrote: “We wish only to increase the freedom of religious people to participate in the public sphere in accordance with their faith, without coercion on secular people.”
This will include establishing “a minuscule number” of beaches where men and women are segregated, with minimal incursion on the choices of the secular majority. It will also include an amendment to the current law in the spirit of the US Supreme Court’s Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, removing the obligation of business owners to serve their clients even if it offends their sensibilities.
Smotrich defended his additional new role in the defense ministry, where he will take over the civil administration in Judea and Samaria from the IDF, arguing that “the current situation in these regions, in which a feckless military government lacks the civil-service orientation required for governing civil life, is unsustainable.”
“The army needs to deal with security and leave governing to a civil system capable of providing efficient service and protecting individual rights,” he explained.
Smotrich also declared war on the notorious Fayyad plan of the Palestinian Authority, “whereby a massive European Union-funded project to facilitate the Palestinian takeover of Area C, the one part of Judea and Samaria where Jews are currently permitted to live under the Oslo Accords.”
As to his party’s proposed judicial reform, Smotrich told the WSJ it is “meant to bring Israel closer to the American political model with some limited checks to ensure the judicial system respects the law. We seek to appoint judges in Israel in a process similar to America’s; to define the attorney general’s scope of authority and relation to elected representatives in a manner similar to what’s set down in America; to develop effective oversight mechanisms for law enforcement to ensure they protect basic rights; and to restore the Knesset’s authority to define the fundamental values of the state and its emerging constitution.”
Smotrich is convinced Americans would appreciate “the wisdom and justice in these plans,” and “shed their preconceptions” to unite in support of “the resurgence of accountable government, prosperity, individual rights, and democracy in the Jewish homeland.”
