According to a new report, experts think that the Israeli far-right think tank Kohelet Policy Forum is a big part of how the US thinks about Israel-Palestine. Kohelet Policy Forum gained attention in recent weeks because it helped make the controversial judicial overhaul.
According to the Middle East Eye, Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, said during an online webinar hosted by the foundation on Tuesday, “Now that the world is suddenly paying attention to Kohelet in Israel, I think they maybe are missing the story in the US.” “In the US they have played, I would say, a parallel, enormously effective, and quiet role of shaping US policy to where it is today when it comes to anything related to Israel-Palestine,” she said.
Laid out in 2012, the extreme right research organization is supported for the most part by American Jewish very rich people Arthur Dantchik and Jeffrey Yass. The latter is well-known for being one of the largest Republican Party donors.
Rights activist and founder of the Israeli civil society organization Democratic Bloc, Ran Cohen, says that the think tank got its start in 2019 when former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo thanked it for helping the Trump administration make the policy that says Israel’s settlements are legal.
Cohen stated, “You don’t see high-ranking politicians thanking an NGO, but he took the step and the attention to actually give them the credit for helping with promoting the statement that is actually stating that the settlements in the West Bank are not contradicting international law – a major change in American politics.” “We can put that Pompeo statement as the first sign that made us think that okay, this is something that we should look deeper into, and we found a bigger story than that,” he added
As of late, the research organization has become known as the engineer of the questionable “legitimate changes” which act as the focal point of the approaches of the Netanyahu-drove bureau that he cobbled together before the end of last year by charming super Universal and extreme right gatherings.
They want to take away the supreme court’s ability to overturn decisions made by the cabinet or legislature in order to weaken it.
The 120-member parliament would also have the authority to overturn the court’s decisions with a simple majority of 61 votes as another part of the reforms.
Additionally, the reforms would grant the Knesset the authority to modify the so-called Basic Laws, the regime’s quasi-constitution, in any manner it deems appropriate.
The reforms, according to observers, may make it possible for the Knesset to overturn a set of corruption charges against Netanyahu that are currently being tried. Bribery, fraud, and breach of trust are the charges against the Israeli prime minister.
“Kohelet is to blame for the political crisis in Israel,” stated Eran Nissan, CEO of Mehazkim, an Israeli digital movement. “They are the ones who wrote the policies and legislative initiatives that are causing all the turmoil and political crisis right now in Israel,” he said. “That’s why we’re talking about them.”
He stated, “They are the locomotive, the spearfront of a larger ecosystem of ultra-conservative, neoliberal, settlement, and Jewish supremacists leading a long-term ideological and political project to import the ideas of the fringes of the Republican Party.”
