Two days before Israel votes, one of Prime Minister Netanyahu's most prominent American supporters has named the two men he says must not be in the next government. Bill Ackman, the billionaire founder of Pershing Square and a major backer of President Trump, wrote on X on Sunday that Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich should not serve again, arguing that the two far-right ministers have caused Israel enormous reputational damage with their statements and actions — damage he says he can measure from how Israel is perceived in the United States.
Ackman, who praised Netanyahu only last week, framed the exclusion as an opportunity rather than an attack: a government without the two men, he argued, would tell the world Israel is turning a new page — rebuilding lost credibility, opening the way to an expansion of the Abraham Accords, and repairing Israel's standing with Democrats, Republicans and Americans at large. Representatives of the two ministers did not immediately respond.
The intervention lands at the most sensitive point of the campaign. Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, and Smotrich, the finance minister, are the coalition partners Netanyahu has depended on — and both have drawn sanctions from Western governments over their West Bank policies and rhetoric. Polls show a tight race between Netanyahu's bloc and the opposition for Tuesday's Knesset election, which means the arithmetic of coalition-building may decide the question Ackman is raising before he does: whether a Netanyahu government can even be formed without the two men American friends of Israel are now publicly asking him to drop.
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