Natasha Roth-Rowland writes:

At the end of January, Israel’s ambassador to the United States arrived in Washington to take up his new role. In some ways, Yechiel Leiter’s resume is typical for someone appointed to perhaps the most prestigious diplomatic posting on offer: A U.S.-born immigrant to Israel, Leiter served in numerous senior government roles, including as chief of staff to then-Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, before working as a senior fellow at the right-wing Kohelet Policy Forum, and then moving into the private sector either side of a failed run for office with Israel’s ruling Likud party.

Other parts of Leiter’s biography, however, are less typical for a top diplomat — above all, his former membership in an organization designated by both his birth and adopted countries as a terrorist group.

While he was still in the United States, Leiter had been a member of the far-right Jewish Defense League, a violent vigilante group founded by the extremist American rabbi Meir Kahane. In the 1970s, after moving to Israel, Leiter joined Kach, the fascist political party and movement that Kahane had founded after his own immigration. Initially conceived as an international branch of the JDL, Kach eventually transformed into an authentic Israeli outfit that spawned its own political credo: Kahanism. Leiter was later nominated as a leader of the radical Jewish settlement in Hebron, before becoming a leader in the wider settler movement.

In 1994, after Kach member and Kahane follower Baruch Goldstein — another American immigrant to Israel — massacred 29 Palestinians at prayer in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, both the Israeli and U.S. governments classified Kach as a terrorist organization. (The U.S. State Department revoked this designation in 2022.)

Leiter’s appointment as ambassador to the U.S. despite his prior membership in this group is noteworthy, and offers a depressing snapshot of the extremism of both Israeli and U.S. politics. This was reaffirmed in late April when another Kach veteran, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, arrived in the United States for his first official overseas visit after being effectively boycotted by the Biden administration. Ben Gvir, who has been convicted for supporting a terrorist organization, met with several Republican members of Congress and spoke to welcoming audiences in Mar-a-Lago, Manhattan, and at Yale University, in between visits across Florida to a prison, a gun store, and a Jewish school.

At the same time, Leiter’s rise is a window onto a larger story: the perpetual and ever-growing absorption of extremist groups into Israel’s political mainstream, typically through their alumni either being elected into office or serving as top aides to powerful members of the Knesset. [Continue reading…]