JTA – Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has made the Time list of the 100 most influential people in the world and his Arab-Israeli coalition partner Mansour Abbas believes he knows why.
“It all comes down to courage,” writes Abbas, the leader of the first Arab party that joined an Israeli governing coalition, in the attached speech explaining why his political opponent was recognized in the list released on Wednesday.
“After four elections in two years, it took a bold act to unite a country sunk by a political stalemate. Something dramatic had to be changed, but more importantly, someone brave had to make that change. “
Abbas and Bennett disagree little ideologically. Abbas leads the United Arab List, a party that defends Palestinian self-determination, while Bennett comes from the right wing of Israel and has promised that a Palestinian state will not appear under his watch. But they united around the goal of eliminating Bennett’s predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom they considered divisive and corrupt.
Arab parties have previously been part of the coalition negotiations and for a period in the 1990s supported a government outside the coalition. But, Abbas points out, these negotiations were always held behind closed doors.
“I don’t do things in the dark,” Abbas tells Bennett when he told him when Bennett surprised him by opening his coalition talks to the media.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett leads a cabinet meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem on September 12, 2021. (Olivier Fitoussi / Flash90)
Bennett is part of Time’s “Leaders” category. Other Jewish figures in this category are Rochelle Walensky, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control who has become a public figure during the coronavirus pandemic, and Ron Klain, the chief of staff to President Joe Biden. Julie Gerberding, who served as President George W. Bush’s CDC director, wrote the Walensky review and Hillary Clinton wrote the Klain review.
In the “Artists” category is actress Scarlett Johansson, rated by actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who says that seeing Johansson playing his mother, Janet Leigh, in a film about the director of “Psycho” Alfred Hitchcock , forgot a moment he was seeing a performance. Curtis, like Johansson, is the product of a marriage that has Jewish and Danish roots.
Scarlett Johansson arrives at the Oscars on Sunday, February 9, 2020 at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by AP / John Locher)
On the Time list, in the “Icons” category, are Palestinian activists brothers and sisters Muna and Mohammed El-Kurd, who this spring focused international attention on efforts to evict Palestinians who have lived in their homes. Jerusalem for decades.
Biden also made the list, and his speech was written by Bernie Sanders, the Jewish senator from Vermont who is the de facto leader of the progressives. Sanders emerged last year as Biden’s most serious rival in the Democratic presidential primary.
“Joe Biden and I have strong disagreements, but it must be acknowledged that he is the first president in a long time to try to deal with the fundamental crises facing our nation,” Sanders said, referring to the pandemic and its repercussions. to the economy, racial tension, climate change and growth of the authoritarian right.