(RoyalPatriot.com )- On Tuesday Israel swore in its new Knesset (or parliament) and the anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian Associated Press isn’t at all happy about how “right-wing” it is.
Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu worked to cobble together a right and religious governing coalition in the 120-seat Knesset after Israel’s left-leaning parties suffered significant losses in the November 1 election.
After the 25th Knesset was sworn into office, lawmakers burst into applause when Netanyahu took the stage for a photo with the other party leaders after the ceremony.
Associated Press writer Eleanor Reich described the new Knesset as the “most right-wing in history,” bemoaning that it is largely “male, religious, and rightwing.”
In his speech before the new Knesset, Israeli President Isaac Herzog appealed for national unity saying the Israeli people are “exhausted from the infighting and its fallout” after the country’s five divisive elections.
Herzog called on the elected representatives to safeguard the rights of minorities in Israel. Reich quickly notes that Israel’s minorities are fearful the new government coalition will roll back the left’s achievements on the environment, LGBTQ rights, and funding for the Arab population.
Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid then lectured the newly sworn lawmakers telling them that the Knesset should be a “place that Israelis look up to” and “not a place they are ashamed of.”
Reich interjected that the previous Knesset was “the most colorful and diverse in Israel’s history,” including 36 women and a “small Arab Islamist party” in the coalition.
Now, Reich mourned, the new scary Knesset only has 29 women and most of the 23 new lawmakers are from Netanyahu’s Likud party as well as the Religious Zionism alliance, which the AP described as an “alliance of far-right parties.”
What’s more, Reich noted, the new Knesset has the lowest number of Arab lawmakers in twenty years, with only 10. The Palestinian nationalist party Balad “failed to make it” into the new Knesset at all.
