THE ONLY EXISTENTIAL THREAT IS INTERNAL:

The Biden administration's antisemitism envoy on Friday decried attacks against Jewish billionaire George Soros, a day after Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli came to the defense of Elon Musk, who came under fire for saying that Soros "hates humanity." [...]

US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt became the first Biden official to weigh in on the matter, tweeting Friday that "irrespective of how one feels about George Soros's politics or policies, it is entirely disingenuous to deny that many ad hominem attacks on him rely on classic antisemitic tropes and rhetoric."

"In bygone eras, the antisemites invoked the Rothschild family to advance their conspiracies about Jews. Today they use Soros to do so," she said.

The Likud is becoming more radical. These days, there are no longer any major differences of opinion between some senior Likud members and those of Otzma Yehudit. In the past, Likud MKs, like Moshe Feiglin and Yehuda Glick, who went up to the Temple Mount were quickly cast aside. Their places have been taken by a rising force in the party, religious MKs who don't heed either the religious ban on going up or the constraints of the security implications. [...]

It's no surprise that MK David Bitan, perhaps the real barometer of the old Likud, is horrified by the phenomenon.

"I view Knesset members from the Likud going up to the Temple Mount as inappropriate. It is not worthy. People have become extremists," Bitan said Thursday.

Moshe Gafni, head of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party and a coalition member,  also decried the phenomena, sending a letter to Netanyahu and asking him to prevent MKs from going onto the Mount. However, Gafni's motivations are largely religious and not political.

"Recently MKs and ministers have been going up to the Temple Mount, just today a large number of elected officials from different factions in the Knesset went up there. The decision is in your hands," Gafni wrote.

"I am turning and asking you to prevent the ascent to the Temple Mount; For the political reasons regarding world reactions, for the security reasons regarding the incitement it causes, particularly with the Muslim world, and mainly because there is no real reason for them to do so -- it is not an exercise in sovereignty, rather a desecration of God's name at the holiest site of the Jewish people," Gafni wrote.

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