Latest news with #BrandeisUniversity
Boston Globe
5 days ago
- Business
- Boston Globe
Demoulas family: Who's who in the latest Market Basket standoff?
Arthur T. Demoulas eventually prevailed, buying out Arthur S. Demoulas and delivering control of the board to his own side of the family — himself and his three sisters. But 11 years later, the company's So who's who in this latest round of corporate gamesmanship? Here's a rundown of all the key players in the Market Basket drama. Advertisement Arthur T. Demoulas — Market Basket CEO The central figure in the modern Market Basket saga, Arthur T. Demoulas has headed the company since 2008 — a tenure briefly interrupted by his firing and reinstatement in 2014. Arthur T. Demoulas learned the ropes under his father, Telemachus Demoulas, joining the company board just a year out of high school in 1974. Advertisement Arthur T. Demoulas was involved in many altercations with the Arthur S. Demoulas side of the family — including one occasion in court, where he threw a punch at his cousin. Despite the acrimony, a wayward board member on the Arthur S. Demoulas side was the deciding vote to name Arthur T. Demoulas CEO in 2008. When that board member changed sides again, it set off a seismic summer of employee walkouts and customer boycotts in 2014. With mounting public pressure, Arthur S. Demoulas agreed to sell his side's shares to Arthur T. Demoulas and his sisters. Since returning as CEO, But his style of governance has alienated board members, who complain Arthur T. Demoulas has left them in the dark about expenditures and management decisions. His desire to anoint one of his children as his successor only added to the board's decision to place him on paid leave. Frances Demoulas (Kettenbach) — Arthur T. Demoulas' sister, Market Basket shareholder The eldest sibling in the Demoulas family (five years older than her brother), Frances Demoulas lives in Boston with her husband, Michael Kettenbach. The two are co-directors of a real estate management firm based in Tewksbury, according to state filings. Advertisement Kettenbach, a developer, has worked closely with Market Basket 'for decades,' according to the Frances Demoulas of Boston, pictured in 1998. BRETT, Bill GLOBE STAFF Frances Demoulas may be more known for her role in a high-profile spat over a Back Bay townhouse several years ago; a retired Brandeis University professor and his wife claimed the Kettenbachs Glorianne Demoulas (Farnham) — Arthur T. Demoulas' sister, shareholder Glorianne Demoulas, the second of the three Demoulas sisters, lives in North Andover. Her husband, Robert Farnham, played football at Brown University, where he and his wife have a room named after them, and in the Canadian Football League. Robert Farnham owns a local food wholesaler in North Andover, according to state filings. Their son, Bobby Farnham, played four seasons in the National Hockey League. In 2015, Farnham told Caren Demoulas (Pasquale) — Arthur T. Demoulas' sister, shareholder Caren Demoulas lives in Weston. Her husband, Joseph B. Pasquale, is a real estate developer who, like Michael Kettenbach, has also worked with Market Basket in the past. Pasquale is also a co-owner of the Hopkinton Country Club. Caren Demoulas, along with her sisters Frances Demoulas and Glorianne Demoulas, helped finance Arthur T. Demoulas' $1.6 billion buyout of their cousin, Arthur S. Demoulas, giving their side of the Demoulas family full control over the company. Advertisement T.A. Demoulas, State Representative Carole Fiola and Madeline Demoulas at the opening of a new Market Basket in Fall River in 2017 State Representative Carole Fiola Madeline Demoulas — Arthur T. Demoulas' daughter, Market Basket executive Madeline Irene Demoulas, daughter of Arthur T. Demoulas, was placed on leave along with her father and brother. She was a member of the company's executive operations team, where her role included managing systems and logistics along with 'various personnel, marketing, and customer service programs,' according to the After attending Middlesex, a Concord preparatory school, Madeline Demoulas graduated from Boston College with an English degree in 2012. While at BC, she wrote a weekly column for The Heights, the college's student newspaper, and studied abroad in Greece, according to Madeline Demoulas married Matthew Kelley, an executive at Amazon, in 2022. ( Telemachus 'T.A.' Demoulas — Arthur T. Demoulas' son, Market Basket executive Named after his grandfather, Telemachus 'Mike' Demoulas and known as T.A., T.A. Demoulas attended Middlesex School as well as Bentley University, his father's alma mater. As a lacrosse player at Bentley, he was named to the Northeast-10 All-Rookie team and, in his senior year, the New England Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association All-New England team. Graduating with a degree in finance, T.A. Demoulas was drafted by the Advertisement At Market Basket, T.A. Demoulas holds the role of store supervisor, according to Mary Demoulas — Arthur T. Demoulas' daughter The sole child of Arthur T. Demoulas to not currently be working in the family business, Mary Demoulas graduated from Boston College with an English degree in 2020, according to her Arthur S. Demoulas. WILSON, Mark GLOBE STAFF Arthur S. Demoulas — Arthur T. Demoulas' cousin, former Market Basket shareholder Arthur S. Demoulas was the face of the decision to remove his cousin, Arthur T. Demoulas, in 2014. In the 1990s, Arthur S. Demoulas took the Arthur T. Demoulas side of the family to court over defrauded shares, and won. Like his cousin, he worked in the supermarket throughout his youth, even while studying business at the University of Maine (and playing on the Black Bears hockey team). Arthur S. Demoulas was pushed out of Market Basket after his side of the family agreed to sell their shares to the Arthur T. Demoulas side. Shortly afterwards, Market Basket board members and executives Arthur T. Demoulas and his sisters are represented on the Market Basket board by four members from outside the family: Jay Hachigian, Steve Collins, Michael Keyes, and Bill Shea. Advertisement Hachigian is a founding partner of the Gunderson Dettmer law firm; he replaced Shea, a longtime ally of Arthur T. Demoulas, as chairman of the board in March. Collins is a managing director at Exeter Capital, a private equity firm, and Keyes oversees acquisitions at Intercontinental, a Brighton-based real estate developer. Terry Carleton, another longtime Arthur T. Demoulas ally dating back to the days of the 2014 walkout, was pushed off the board earlier this year. Other allies of Arthur T. Demoulas also placed on paid leave last week include executives Joe Schmidt, director of operations, and Tom Gordon, grocery supervisor. Both have been with the company for decades, and were among the Material from previous Globe coverage was used. Camilo Fonseca can be reached at
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Two Extremists Driving Israel's Policy
They are the leading extremists in the most right-wing government in Israel's history: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir are both West Bank settlers. They ran together on the same ticket in Israel's most recent election, gaining more votes than ever before for the far right. They both want Israel to reoccupy all of Gaza, to renew Israeli settlement there, and to 'encourage' Palestinians to emigrate. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's dependence on their support to stay in power is a key reason, possibly the main reason, that the war in Gaza continues. They are also rivals, evidence that extremism comes in more than one form. A case in point: The Israeli army's new offensive, Smotrich declared in a May 19 video clip, 'is destroying everything left in [the Gaza] Strip, simply because it is one big city of terror.' The population, he said, would not only be concentrated in the southern end of Gaza, but would continue on, 'with God's help, to third countries'; meanwhile, the army was 'eliminating ministers, officials,' and other members of the Hamas administration. Smotrich presented all of this as proof that the government had at last adopted his approach to conducting the war. He ended with a slang term translatable roughly as 'We're kicking the enemy's face in,' and a verse from the Bible. Smotrich's speech can be read simply as a testament to the brutality of the Israeli campaign in Gaza, and to the far right's claim of responsibility for dictating it. But Smotrich was also defending himself against criticism from Ben-Gvir, someone he describes as always trying to be 'to the right of the right.' Smotrich supported Netanyahu's plan, presented the night before in a meeting of senior ministers, to end the total blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza and allow in what Smotrich called 'a minimum of food and medicine.' He described this concession as essential so that Israel's allies would defend it in the United Nations Security Council and allow the war to continue. Ben-Gvir opposed the decision and, in Smotrich's account, selectively leaked bits of the debate at the meeting to the media. Israeli journalists, myself included, promptly received a flurry of anonymous text messages backing Ben-Gvir's position and blasting Smotrich's. In other words, while Smotrich was claiming credit for getting things done, Ben-Gvir was outperforming him on the public stage. This is a starting point for understanding the difference between the two men who are driving Israel's push to the extreme. The Leninist of the Right When I spoke with the Brandeis University professor Yehudah Mirsky, a Jerusalem-based scholar of religious Zionism, he described Smotrich as a 'Leninist': Smotrich 'believes he has the correct philosophical understanding of history,' Mirsky told me, and thinks he's 'part of the revolutionary vanguard that is supposed to seize the reins of power.' Smotrich's 'understanding of history' derives from the theology of a radical rabbi, Tzvi Yehudah Kook, whose teachings became fundamental to the settler movement that sprang up after 1967's Six-Day War. Kook held that the establishment of Israel was part of the process through which God was bringing final redemption to his chosen people. Israel's victory in the Six-Day War, and its conquest of the West Bank and other territory, were proof that God was fulfilling biblical prophecies. [Read: Netanyahu takes desperate measures] Kook's disciples came to regard permanently holding the 'redeemed' territories conquered in 1967 as an absolute religious requirement. Their central project was establishing settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights—mostly membership-only communities of like-minded people that grew more and more separate from mainstream Israel. Smotrich, 45, is a second-generation settler, schooled in religious institutions faithful to Kook's political theology. His public statements suggest a dedication to seeing in every circumstance a step in the 'great divine process of redemption.' That includes political setbacks: In a Knesset speech when his party was out of power in 2021, he quoted a Talmudic description of the moral decay that would precede the coming of the Messiah. This is a closed system in which nothing can serve as disproof. Smotrich first rose to public notoriety in 2005. At the time, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, of the Likud Party, was preparing Israel for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the evacuation of its settlements there. The move was not only a political shock for religious Zionists, but also a theological earthquake. How could Israel, an instrument of God's plan, violate that plan by giving up sacred ground? A month before the withdrawal, the Shin Bet security service and police arrested Smotrich and three other activists in an apartment east of Tel Aviv. The men were interrogated for three weeks on suspicions that included conspiring to endanger lives on the roads; then they were put under house arrest, but finally released without charges, apparently after the withdrawal. Smotrich has asserted that he was suspected only of planning protests to block roads—as demonstrators against the current government have done regularly without being arrested. In a 2023 television interview, a former Shin Bet agent who'd arrested the activists insisted otherwise: He said that revealing what Smotrich and his associates had planned would expose Shin Bet sources—but that if they had carried out their plans, Smotrich would now 'not be a minister; he would also would not be a Knesset member.' The Shin Bet was involved, the former agent said, because its mandate is 'preventing terrorism.' Because no trial was held, neither version has been tested in court. [Read: Israel plunges into darkness] The affair did not impede Smotrich's ascent as a settler activist and politician. He was elected to the Knesset in 2015, representing a hard-line faction in an alliance of small religious nationalist parties. His new prominence furnished a platform for statements that shocked many Israelis with their extremity. In 2016, Israeli news media reported that three hospitals were segregating Jewish and Arab mothers in their maternity wards. The hospitals denied the practice—but Smotrich defended it. 'It's natural that my wife wouldn't want to lie next to someone who just gave birth to a baby who might murder her baby in another 20 years,' he tweeted. After the 2021 election, Smotrich blocked Netanyahu's bid to include an Arab party in his coalition and said, 'Arabs are citizens of Israel—for now, at least.' The same year, he blamed a resurgence of COVID on Tel Aviv's gay-pride parade. 'In the long term,' he once told an interviewer, he wanted Israel to be 'run according to the laws of Torah,' as in the days of King David. Israel's most recent election, in 2022, catapulted Smotrich to greater power. A short-lived, uncomfortable electoral alliance among his party, Ben-Gvir's, and a splinter religious group won 14 seats in the 120-member Knesset, seven of them for Smotrich's Religious Zionism party. In the new government, Netanyahu made him finance minister. More significantly, he was given a new ministerial post within the Defense Ministry, with wide powers over settlement planning and building. Moving these responsibilities from the army to a civilian official has been aptly criticized as a significant step toward formal annexation of the West Bank—a strategic goal of the settlement movement. Smotrich has used his authority to speed settlement expansion at an extraordinary pace, effectively serving his settler constituency. Despite its small size, the Religious Zionism party has been an equal partner to Netanyahu's Likud in the government's effort to transform Israel's regime. Indeed, it was Religious Zionism, not Likud, that ran in the last election on a platform of hobbling the judicial system. A Religious Zionist Knesset member, Simcha Rothman, chairs the committee responsible for constitutional changes and has pushed along measures designed to give the prime minister and ruling coalition autocratic power. To a large extent, Likud is carrying out Smotrich's program. Then came the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. Smotrich treated the catastrophe as an opportunity. In a post on X a year after the war began, he wrote that he'd been expecting the reconquest of Gaza ever since the evacuation of settlements in 2005. 'In the end there will be Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip,' he wrote. In other words, the setback would be reversed, and history would proceed on its divinely determined track. [Read: Ben-Gvir can't bring himself to pretend] In January, when Israel reached a two-stage hostage deal with Hamas, Smotrich pledged that his party would bolt the governing coalition if Netanyahu proceeded to the second stage, which would include a cease-fire ending the war. Ben-Gvir did quit the coalition, promising to return 'if the war is resumed.' Smotrich's threat amounted to the same thing: Ending the war would mean the fall of the government. In March, after the first stage of the deal, the government chose to resume the war, and the coalition survived. If being the vanguard means exerting power, Smotrich has succeeded. If it means leading the masses, he has failed. Polls consistently cast doubt on whether Religious Zionism would receive the 3.25 percent of the national vote it would need to enter the Knesset in new elections. Its success in the last election was likely attributable to Ben-Gvir's relative popularity, which brought votes to their joint ticket. The Rabble-Rouser Ben-Gvir, 49, comes out of a separate stream of the radical right, with a different theological progenitor. The American-born rabbi Meir Kahane, who founded the Jewish Defense League in New York, had his own perverse religious doctrine. In traditional Judaism, a Jew who is dishonest or cruel 'desecrates the Name of God.' In Kahane's theology, Jewish weakness was the sacrilege, and Jewish strength sanctified God. He made vengeance a central religious value. Kahane moved to Israel in the 1970s and established a party called Kach, or 'Thus!,' whose platform included expelling all Arabs from Israel. In 1984, Kach won a single Knesset seat. In an act of what's known as defensive democracy, the parliament responded by banning racist parties from elections. Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1990. His movement survived him. Ben-Gvir became a Kach activist as a teenager growing up in a Jerusalem suburb. He was 17 in early 1994, when the Kahane disciple Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians at the Hebron shrine known to Jews as the Tomb of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque. The rampage ended when Palestinian worshippers managed to kill Goldstein; Kahanists and others on the Israeli far right elevated him as a martyr. The Israeli government declared Kach to be a terrorist organization, effectively outlawing it. But its members formed new groups, some of which were also declared illegal. These groups vehemently opposed the peace process with the Palestinians that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was pursuing through the Oslo Accords. In October 1995, during the Knesset debate on Oslo II, Ben-Gvir was one of the right-wing protesters who surrounded the prime minister's armored Cadillac as his driver brought it to the Knesset. Someone ripped off the hood ornament and gave it to Ben-Gvir, who afterward held it up before a TV cameraman and said, 'Just as we got to the ornament, we can get to Rabin.' Weeks later, another far-rightist assassinated Rabin. Ben-Gvir was not involved, but the ornament clip was shown repeatedly to illustrate the incitement that had led to murder. He'd achieved his first 15 minutes of fame, but not his last. In the years that followed, as an activist on the far-right fringe, Ben-Gvir acquired a long list of arrests and a shorter list of convictions. They included guilty verdicts for support of a terrorist organization—Kach—and incitement to racism. Meanwhile, he moved to Kiryat Arba, a West Bank settlement next to Hebron; got a law degree; and became known as a defense lawyer for right-wing extremists. In their living room, he and his wife hung a photograph of Goldstein. He once sued a journalist who called him a Nazi. The court awarded him one shekel in damages. In his testimony, he said he was 'in favor of expelling Arabs.' He also testified that he'd read all of Kahane's books, and that Israel should be ruled by biblical law. [Read: The hostage I knew] Nonetheless, Ben-Gvir's rhetoric lacks Kahane's theological flavor. 'It's about tribes and revenge,' Yehudah Mirsky told me of Ben-Gvir's political style. 'It's very primal.' But what Ben-Gvir seems to have learned from his master, most of all, is the value of public provocation and displays of anger. In a typical move, he showed up at the site of a Palestinian terror attack in Jerusalem in 2014 with a handful of supporters to demand that the government take harsh steps against Arabs. The media paid attention. To be elected, Ben-Gvir toned down his rhetoric just enough to avoid being disqualified under the anti-racism law. The supreme court, historically reluctant to bar parties, gave him a pass. 'I'm not for expelling all the Arabs,' he said in one interview. 'I'm for expelling the terrorists, the people who throw stones.' The Goldstein photo came down from his wall. After several failed attempts, Ben-Gvir made his way into the Knesset as the head of the Jewish Power Party in 2021, running together with Smotrich's party. After the alliance's success in the following election, Ben-Gvir demanded and received the ministry that administers the national police. Violating law and tradition, Ben-Gvir has politicized the force. In the West Bank, settler violence against Palestinians has soared, and law enforcement has faded. Inside Israel, at Ben-Gvir's urging, police have responded harshly to the constant protests against the government. Meanwhile, the rate of traffic deaths has climbed sharply—due to a lack of enforcement, according to a state agency. In Ben-Gvir's first year as minister, the murder rate in Israel nearly doubled, and it has stayed high since. That record seems to have little effect on Ben-Gvir's popularity. Polling shows that if elections were held now and his party ran on its own, it would win eight or nine Knesset seats. Smotrich's message may appeal to a small ideological sect, but Ben-Gvir's ideology-lite anger connects him to a significant slice of the public—one moved less by political philosophy than by hostility toward Arabs, the left, and liberal institutions. When elections are held, Netanyahu will most likely press the two rivals to run again on a single ticket. That's what he did last time, out of fear that one of the parties would not pass the electoral threshold, costing his bloc the election. Indeed, Netanyahu's role is key to understanding the power of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. The rise of chauvinistic, illiberal parties and movements is an international phenomenon. What that means for any particular country, however, depends on how mainstream conservative parties respond. Do they form coalitions with the insurgent right, as has happened in Croatia and the Netherlands? Or do they shun them, as in Portugal and Germany, forming alliances with the center and left instead? In Israel, Netanyahu has become anathema to moderate parties. To stay in power, he has helped engineer the electoral success of the far right. He has legitimized it for part of the public by bringing it into government. At the same time, he has competed with it by adopting much of its antidemocratic program. If Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have power beyond their numbers in his government, they are monsters Netanyahu has helped create. *Illustration by Mel Haasch. Sources: Saeed Qaq / Anadolu / Getty; Atef Safadi / AFP / Getty. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
The Two Extremists Driving Israel's Policy
They are the leading extremists in the most right-wing government in Israel's history: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir are both West Bank settlers. They ran together on the same ticket in Israel's most recent election, gaining more votes than ever before for the far right. They both want Israel to reoccupy all of Gaza, to renew Israeli settlement there, and to ' encourage ' Palestinians to emigrate. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's dependence on their support to stay in power is a key reason, possibly the main reason, that the war in Gaza continues. They are also rivals, evidence that extremism comes in more than one form. A case in point: The Israeli army's new offensive, Smotrich declared in a May 19 video clip, 'is destroying everything left in [the Gaza] Strip, simply because it is one big city of terror.' The population, he said, would not only be concentrated in the southern end of Gaza, but would continue on, 'with God's help, to third countries'; meanwhile, the army was 'eliminating ministers, officials,' and other members of the Hamas administration. Smotrich presented all of this as proof that the government had at last adopted his approach to conducting the war. He ended with a slang term translatable roughly as 'We're kicking the enemy's face in,' and a verse from the Bible. Smotrich's speech can be read simply as a testament to the brutality of the Israeli campaign in Gaza, and to the far right's claim of responsibility for dictating it. But Smotrich was also defending himself against criticism from Ben-Gvir, someone he describes as always trying to be 'to the right of the right.' Smotrich supported Netanyahu's plan, presented the night before in a meeting of senior ministers, to end the total blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza and allow in what Smotrich called 'a minimum of food and medicine.' He described this concession as essential so that Israel's allies would defend it in the United Nations Security Council and allow the war to continue. Ben-Gvir opposed the decision and, in Smotrich's account, selectively leaked bits of the debate at the meeting to the media. Israeli journalists, myself included, promptly received a flurry of anonymous text messages backing Ben-Gvir's position and blasting Smotrich's. In other words, while Smotrich was claiming credit for getting things done, Ben-Gvir was outperforming him on the public stage. This is a starting point for understanding the difference between the two men who are driving Israel's push to the extreme. The Leninist of the Right When I spoke with the Brandeis University professor Yehudah Mirsky, a Jerusalem-based scholar of religious Zionism, he described Smotrich as a 'Leninist': Smotrich 'believes he has the correct philosophical understanding of history,' Mirsky told me, and thinks he's 'part of the revolutionary vanguard that is supposed to seize the reins of power.' Smotrich's 'understanding of history' derives from the theology of a radical rabbi, Tzvi Yehudah Kook, whose teachings became fundamental to the settler movement that sprang up after 1967's Six-Day War. Kook held that the establishment of Israel was part of the process through which God was bringing final redemption to his chosen people. Israel's victory in the Six-Day War, and its conquest of the West Bank and other territory, were proof that God was fulfilling biblical prophecies. Kook's disciples came to regard permanently holding the 'redeemed' territories conquered in 1967 as an absolute religious requirement. Their central project was establishing settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights—mostly membership-only communities of like-minded people that grew more and more separate from mainstream Israel. Smotrich, 45, is a second-generation settler, schooled in religious institutions faithful to Kook's political theology. His public statements suggest a dedication to seeing in every circumstance a step in the 'great divine process of redemption.' That includes political setbacks: In a Knesset speech when his party was out of power in 2021, he quoted a Talmudic description of the moral decay that would precede the coming of the Messiah. This is a closed system in which nothing can serve as disproof. Smotrich first rose to public notoriety in 2005. At the time, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, of the Likud Party, was preparing Israel for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the evacuation of its settlements there. The move was not only a political shock for religious Zionists, but also a theological earthquake. How could Israel, an instrument of God's plan, violate that plan by giving up sacred ground? A month before the withdrawal, the Shin Bet security service and police arrested Smotrich and three other activists in an apartment east of Tel Aviv. The men were interrogated for three weeks on suspicions that included conspiring to endanger lives on the roads; then they were put under house arrest, but finally released without charges, apparently after the withdrawal. Smotrich has asserted that he was suspected only of planning protests to block roads—as demonstrators against the current government have done regularly without being arrested. In a 2023 television interview, a former Shin Bet agent who'd arrested the activists insisted otherwise: He said that revealing what Smotrich and his associates had planned would expose Shin Bet sources—but that if they had carried out their plans, Smotrich would now 'not be a minister; he would also would not be a Knesset member.' The Shin Bet was involved, the former agent said, because its mandate is 'preventing terrorism.' Because no trial was held, neither version has been tested in court. The affair did not impede Smotrich's ascent as a settler activist and politician. He was elected to the Knesset in 2015, representing a hard-line faction in an alliance of small religious nationalist parties. His new prominence furnished a platform for statements that shocked many Israelis with their extremity. In 2016, Israeli news media reported that three hospitals were segregating Jewish and Arab mothers in their maternity wards. The hospitals denied the practice—but Smotrich defended it. 'It's natural that my wife wouldn't want to lie next to someone who just gave birth to a baby who might murder her baby in another 20 years,' he tweeted. After the 2021 election, Smotrich blocked Netanyahu's bid to include an Arab party in his coalition and said, 'Arabs are citizens of Israel—for now, at least.' The same year, he blamed a resurgence of COVID on Tel Aviv's gay-pride parade. 'In the long term,' he once told an interviewer, he wanted Israel to be 'run according to the laws of Torah,' as in the days of King David. Israel's most recent election, in 2022, catapulted Smotrich to greater power. A short-lived, uncomfortable electoral alliance among his party, Ben-Gvir's, and a splinter religious group won 14 seats in the 120-member Knesset, seven of them for Smotrich's Religious Zionism party. In the new government, Netanyahu made him finance minister. More significantly, he was given a new ministerial post within the Defense Ministry, with wide powers over settlement planning and building. Moving these responsibilities from the army to a civilian official has been aptly criticized as a significant step toward formal annexation of the West Bank—a strategic goal of the settlement movement. Smotrich has used his authority to speed settlement expansion at an extraordinary pace, effectively serving his settler constituency. Despite its small size, the Religious Zionism party has been an equal partner to Netanyahu's Likud in the government's effort to transform Israel's regime. Indeed, it was Religious Zionism, not Likud, that ran in the last election on a platform of hobbling the judicial system. A Religious Zionist Knesset member, Simcha Rothman, chairs the committee responsible for constitutional changes and has pushed along measures designed to give the prime minister and ruling coalition autocratic power. To a large extent, Likud is carrying out Smotrich's program. Then came the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. Smotrich treated the catastrophe as an opportunity. In a post on X a year after the war began, he wrote that he'd been expecting the reconquest of Gaza ever since the evacuation of settlements in 2005. 'In the end there will be Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip,' he wrote. In other words, the setback would be reversed, and history would proceed on its divinely determined track. In January, when Israel reached a two-stage hostage deal with Hamas, Smotrich pledged that his party would bolt the governing coalition if Netanyahu proceeded to the second stage, which would include a cease-fire ending the war. Ben-Gvir did quit the coalition, promising to return 'if the war is resumed.' Smotrich's threat amounted to the same thing: Ending the war would mean the fall of the government. In March, after the first stage of the deal, the government chose to resume the war, and the coalition survived. If being the vanguard means exerting power, Smotrich has succeeded. If it means leading the masses, he has failed. Polls consistently cast doubt on whether Religious Zionism would receive the 3.25 percent of the national vote it would need to enter the Knesset in new elections. Its success in the last election was likely attributable to Ben-Gvir's relative popularity, which brought votes to their joint ticket. The Rabble-Rouser Ben-Gvir, 49, comes out of a separate stream of the radical right, with a different theological progenitor. The American-born rabbi Meir Kahane, who founded the Jewish Defense League in New York, had his own perverse religious doctrine. In traditional Judaism, a Jew who is dishonest or cruel 'desecrates the Name of God.' In Kahane's theology, Jewish weakness was the sacrilege, and Jewish strength sanctified God. He made vengeance a central religious value. Kahane moved to Israel in the 1970s and established a party called Kach, or 'Thus!,' whose platform included expelling all Arabs from Israel. In 1984, Kach won a single Knesset seat. In an act of what's known as defensive democracy, the parliament responded by banning racist parties from elections. Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1990. His movement survived him. Ben-Gvir became a Kach activist as a teenager growing up in a Jerusalem suburb. He was 17 in early 1994, when the Kahane disciple Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians at the Hebron shrine known to Jews as the Tomb of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque. The rampage ended when Palestinian worshippers managed to kill Goldstein; Kahanists and others on the Israeli far right elevated him as a martyr. The Israeli government declared Kach to be a terrorist organization, effectively outlawing it. But its members formed new groups, some of which were also declared illegal. These groups vehemently opposed the peace process with the Palestinians that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was pursuing through the Oslo Accords. In October 1995, during the Knesset debate on Oslo II, Ben-Gvir was one of the right-wing protesters who surrounded the prime minister's armored Cadillac as his driver brought it to the Knesset. Someone ripped off the hood ornament and gave it to Ben-Gvir, who afterward held it up before a TV cameraman and said, 'Just as we got to the ornament, we can get to Rabin.' Weeks later, another far-rightist assassinated Rabin. Ben-Gvir was not involved, but the ornament clip was shown repeatedly to illustrate the incitement that had led to murder. He'd achieved his first 15 minutes of fame, but not his last. In the years that followed, as an activist on the far-right fringe, Ben-Gvir acquired a long list of arrests and a shorter list of convictions. They included guilty verdicts for support of a terrorist organization—Kach—and incitement to racism. Meanwhile, he moved to Kiryat Arba, a West Bank settlement next to Hebron; got a law degree; and became known as a defense lawyer for right-wing extremists. In their living room, he and his wife hung a photograph of Goldstein. He once sued a journalist who called him a Nazi. The court awarded him one shekel in damages. In his testimony, he said he was 'in favor of expelling Arabs.' He also testified that he'd read all of Kahane's books, and that Israel should be ruled by biblical law. Nonetheless, Ben-Gvir's rhetoric lacks Kahane's theological flavor. 'It's about tribes and revenge,' Yehudah Mirsky told me of Ben-Gvir's political style. 'It's very primal.' But what Ben-Gvir seems to have learned from his master, most of all, is the value of public provocation and displays of anger. In a typical move, he showed up at the site of a Palestinian terror attack in Jerusalem in 2014 with a handful of supporters to demand that the government take harsh steps against Arabs. The media paid attention. To be elected, Ben-Gvir toned down his rhetoric just enough to avoid being disqualified under the anti-racism law. The supreme court, historically reluctant to bar parties, gave him a pass. 'I'm not for expelling all the Arabs,' he said in one interview. 'I'm for expelling the terrorists, the people who throw stones.' The Goldstein photo came down from his wall. After several failed attempts, Ben-Gvir made his way into the Knesset as the head of the Jewish Power Party in 2021, running together with Smotrich's party. After the alliance's success in the following election, Ben-Gvir demanded and received the ministry that administers the national police. Violating law and tradition, Ben-Gvir has politicized the force. In the West Bank, settler violence against Palestinians has soared, and law enforcement has faded. Inside Israel, at Ben-Gvir's urging, police have responded harshly to the constant protests against the government. Meanwhile, the rate of traffic deaths has climbed sharply—due to a lack of enforcement, according to a state agency. In Ben-Gvir's first year as minister, the murder rate in Israel nearly doubled, and it has stayed high since. That record seems to have little effect on Ben-Gvir's popularity. Polling shows that if elections were held now and his party ran on its own, it would win eight or nine Knesset seats. Smotrich's message may appeal to a small ideological sect, but Ben-Gvir's ideology-lite anger connects him to a significant slice of the public—one moved less by political philosophy than by hostility toward Arabs, the left, and liberal institutions. When elections are held, Netanyahu will most likely press the two rivals to run again on a single ticket. That's what he did last time, out of fear that one of the parties would not pass the electoral threshold, costing his bloc the election. Indeed, Netanyahu's role is key to understanding the power of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. The rise of chauvinistic, illiberal parties and movements is an international phenomenon. What that means for any particular country, however, depends on how mainstream conservative parties respond. Do they form coalitions with the insurgent right, as has happened in Croatia and the Netherlands? Or do they shun them, as in Portugal and Germany, forming alliances with the center and left instead? In Israel, Netanyahu has become anathema to moderate parties. To stay in power, he has helped engineer the electoral success of the far right. He has legitimized it for part of the public by bringing it into government. At the same time, he has competed with it by adopting much of its antidemocratic program. If Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have power beyond their numbers in his government, they are monsters Netanyhau has helped create.
Miami Herald
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Miami-Dade has become a global hub of Jewish life. We must build on this moment
There's a simple rule I've learned in business and politics: Follow the builders. Wherever they go, prosperity follows. And when they leave, that's your early warning sign. For centuries, the Jewish people have been among history's most reliable builders — of businesses, schools, hospitals, cities, you name it. Wherever they've put down roots, local economies have flourished. And wherever they've been pushed out, societies have tended to stagnate and deteriorate. As pockets of antisemitism take hold around the world today, like the murder Wednesday night of two Israeli Embassy staffers near the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC — Jews are slowly and steadily packing up and choosing new homes — in Israel and even here in Miami. Let's start with where they're leaving. Since 2015, more than 50,000 Jews have left France, most heading to Israel. That's not because the weather in Tel Aviv is nicer. It's because antisemitic violence — from kosher supermarket shootings to synagogue stabbings — has become unbearable. After the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7, antisemitic incidents in France surged 300%. France is hemorrhaging one of its most educated, civically engaged populations. Similar trends are emerging in Latin America. In Venezuela, the Jewish population has dropped from 22,000 to fewer than 6,000 in the past two decades. In Argentina, Jewish families increasingly cite safety and instability as reasons for leaving. In the United States, it depends on where you look. While places like New York City — once a proud capital of Jewish life — are making national headlines for antisemitic mobs chasing Jewish students into libraries, Miami is making headlines for being one of the safest, most welcoming cities for Jews in America. According to the 2024 Jewish Miami Community Study from Brandeis University, roughly 25% of Jewish adults here moved to the area within the past decade. About 26% came from New York, while another 17% came from Latin America — places like Argentina, Venezuela and Colombia. Another nearly 20% came from Israel. Miami-Dade's Jewish population now tops 130,000 — and it's thriving. Jewish day schools are expanding. New synagogues and cultural centers are being built. The downtown/Brickell area is becoming a hub for young Jewish professionals, with a 13% rise in Jewish children citywide, many of them in Orthodox households. What does this have to do with economics? Let's look to history. When Spain expelled its Jews in 1492, it lost countless financiers, scholars and doctors. Their exodus triggered an economic unraveling that turned Spain from an empire into a cautionary tale. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire welcomed the exiled Jews, integrating them into commerce, science and public administration — and thrived for centuries. In the 20th century, pogroms in Eastern Europe and the Nazis drove millions of Jews to America, Britain and what would become Israel. The Soviet Union was beset by brain drain and stagnation. The U.S. and Israel? Powerhouses of science, technology and economic growth. Arab nations like Egypt, Iraq and Yemen in the mid-20th century pushed out over 850,000 Jews and never recovered their lost capital — human or financial. Meanwhile, Israel, powered by that influx of refugees, went from a desert backwater to the startup nation. Today, Israel has one of the most vibrant tech sectors in the world, a nation of builders. So here's the million-dollar question: What's Miami going to do with this moment? We are becoming a global hub of Jewish life, innovation and investment. If we play our cards right, we can turn this city into the next great engine of Jewish prosperity — and American prosperity. When I was mayor of Miami Beach, I saw what happens when you empower builders. We raised roads to fight sea level rise. We reformed the police department. We turned a sleepy beachfront into an international destination. We didn't wait for permission — we just got it done. Now it's time to do that for our Jewish future. To welcome, to protect and most of all — to build. Because history tells us: When the Jews arrive, the future begins. Philip Levine, a cruise industry entrepreneur, is a former two-term mayor of Miami Beach and onetime Democratic candidate for governor of Florida.
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Drug Overdose Deaths Plummeted in 2024, C.D.C. Reports
Overdose deaths in the United States fell by nearly 30,000 last year, the government reported on Wednesday, the strongest sign yet that the country is making progress against one of its deadliest, most intractable public health crises. The data, released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is the latest in a series of reports over the past year offering hints that the drug-related death toll that has gutted families and communities could be starting to ease. Public health experts had been carefully watching the monthly updates, with skepticism at first, and then with growing hope. Wednesday's report was the most encouraging yet. Deaths declined in all major categories of drug use, stimulants as well as opioids, dropping in every state but two. Nationwide, drug fatalities plunged nearly 27 percent. 'This is a decline that we've been waiting more than a decade for,' said Dr. Matthew Christiansen, a physician and former director of West Virginia's drug control policy. 'We've invested hundreds of billions of dollars into addiction.' Addiction specialists said that changes in the illicit drug supply as well as greater access to drug treatment and the use of naloxone to reverse overdoses seemed to be paying off, but whether the country could sustain that progress was an open question. In announcing the new numbers, the C.D.C. praised President Trump, saying in a statement that since he 'declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency in 2017' the government had added more resources to battle the drug problem. But the new data was released as Mr. Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was testifying on Capitol Hill about the administration's proposed cuts to many federal health programs, including those addressing the drug crisis. 'I don't see how it can be sustained, with the kinds of deep cuts that they're taking to many of the programs that have been driving these reductions,' said Traci C. Green, an epidemiologist at Brandeis University who researches drug use. 'It seems ridiculous to cut that momentum so dramatically,' she said. And despite the progress, drug fatalities remain high. According to the data, 80,391 people died from drug-related causes in 2024. That was the lowest tally since 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic isolated drug users and shut down treatment facilities, sending overdose fatalities skyrocketing. But Dr. Green called the latest figures 'extremely high and unacceptable.' The C.D.C.'s statement said the improved numbers showed that public health interventions were 'making a difference and having a meaningful impact.' Still, it noted that overdose remained the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 44. While a constellation of factors could be accelerating the drop, experts do not know which have had the most impact. Dr. Christiansen said that addiction was a particularly elusive crisis to combat because it had tentacles in a patient's economic, familial, cultural, social and medical background. An array of interventions includes not only emergency responses and treatment, he said, but a continuum of care that wraps in housing and job training. 'Now funding is being rescinded, and we still don't know what the appropriate level of intervention is for each particular community, town, region and state,' he said. 'People and programs are going to fall through the cracks.' According to the preliminary budget circulated among federal agencies, the C.D.C.'s opioid surveillance programs may be cut by $30 million and folded into a new subdivision, the Administration for Healthy America. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the federal agency that coordinates and monitors grants for support programs, and provides training and data analysis, is facing a cut of over a billion dollars, and will also be folded into the new subdivision. According to the agency's most recent survey about substance use, in 2023, 27.2 million Americans ages 12 or older had a drug use disorder, 28.9 million had alcohol use disorder and 7.5 million had both. At Wednesday's hearing, before the House Appropriations Committee, Representative Madeleine Dean, Democrat of Pennsylvania, whose son is in recovery from opioid addiction, took Mr. Kennedy to task, noting his own history of heroin addiction. She said that in light of the improving fatality rates, she could not understand the rationale for the administration's cuts. Addressing Mr. Kennedy, she said: 'You know these families. You are these families. Help us save more lives.'
