Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has taken steps to influence the race to find a successor to President Isaac Herzog as chairman of the Jewish Agency, actively pushing the candidacy of Intelligence Services Minister Elazar Stern (Yesh Atid), The Jerusalem Post learned on Sunday.
After weeks of candidates saying Bennett would not get involved, he has met in person or spoken by phone with members of the selection committee, who will be choosing the next agency chairman next month. He told them Stern is the government’s choice.
“I hold Stern in the highest regard, and he is my preferred candidate for the position of chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel,” Bennett wrote to the 10 committee members. “MK Stern has been an exemplary public servant for decades. Among his many personal accolades is leading the IDF’s conversion and integration program. He also was a stalwart champion of straightening the IDF’s connection with Diaspora Jewry. In his various roles in the IDF and in government, MK Stern has proven to be a thoughtful, open-minded, compassionate leader who would undoubtedly serve the Jewish people a great deal should he assume the position of chairman.”
Stern’s party leader, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, also wrote to the selection committee, telling them Stern is a “uniquely passionate Zionist thinker who has worked steadfastly to improve the status of the Jewish people, Judaism and the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”
While Lapid’s reasons for backing his party colleague are obvious, Bennett would gain the ability to appoint another minister from his Yamina Party after Strategic Planning Minister Eli Avidar would receive Stern’s portfolio. One of the issues Avidar has focused on in his ministry is how to encourage unaffiliated American Jews to move to Israel and how to prepare to absorb them.
To be chosen as agency chairman, nine of the 10 members of the selection committee must vote in favor. Stern’s candidacy has been put in jeopardy by World Zionist Organization chairman Yaakov Hagoel, who backs former minister Danny Danon, and by WZO board member Racheli Baratz-Rix (Blue and White), whose party leader, Benny Gantz, has urged her to support former Diaspora affairs minister Omer Yankelevitch.
Avidar, who has known Hagoel for decades, said he believes he will ultimately enable Stern to receive the post.“Yaakov Hagoel cares about only one thing: The Jewish world,” Avidar said. “His heart is in the right place. I’m confident that he will do what he sees as the right thing for the Jewish people.”
As reported originally by Makor Rishon Jewish world reporter Zvika Klein, besides Stern, Danon, and Yankelevitch, the candidates presented to the selection committee last week were former MKs Michal Cotler-Wunsh, Uzi Dayan, Tehila Friedman, and Michael Oren, Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, ANU – Museum of the Jewish People board chairwoman Irina Nevzlin and Bar-Ilan University law professor Yaffa Zilbershats.
Nevzlin was urged to run by a senior Jewish Agency official due to her fundraising ability. Hassan-Nahoum, who has been speaking to selection committee members, also has experience in fundraising, mother-tongue Spanish and English, understands French, and has close connections to both the current government and the opposition.