Oren Dobronsky, who slammed US president over Iran MOU, attempts damage control, calling him Israel’s ‘greatest friend’ in White House; PM’s party to seat its first-ever Haredi MK
A new candidate for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party on Monday evening was attempting damage control after calling US President Donald Trump a “morally corrupt piece of shit” less than two months ago.
Netanyahu announced entrepreneur and political newcomer Oren Dobronsky on Monday as his first pick to fill one of the eight slots he has been afforded for his handpicked candidates, six of whom are in the top 20 on Likud’s slate for the October 27 general election.
In a statement announcing the pick, the party described Dobronsky — known as one of the investors on “The Sharks,” Israel’s version of the business reality TV show “Shark Tank” — as “a successful businessman, one of the founders of Israeli high-tech, and a right-wing figure.”
But Dobronsky quickly found himself in hot water after recent social media posts came to light in which he insulted Trump and castigated the agreement the US signed with Iran in June. He also slammed the US president for leaving Israel out of the talks that preceded the deal, which has since lapsed.
“Do you understand that not only did Trump not invite Israel to the negotiating table, but he DIDN’T SHARE THE ACTUAL AGREEMENT LANGUAGE WITH ISRAEL?” Dobronsky wrote on X. “What kind of morally corrupt piece of shit treats an ally like that?”
In a separate post, Dobronsky accused Trump and his team of being “imbeciles” responsible for a “colossal failure” in the war against Iran, which he characterized as worse than former US president Joe Biden’s much-maligned “debacle” in withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2021.
His comments reflect the deep concern about the memorandum of understanding that spread across Israel in June, including on the right. But by Monday evening, Dobronsky appeared to be in crisis mode, posting an apology and praising Trump on Facebook.
“President Trump is the greatest friend that Israel ever had in the White House,” he wrote. “I posted in his favor countless times. On one occasion, not knowing all the facts, I lost my temper and posted something I regret. My apologies to President Trump whom I admire dearly.”
Trump is famous for not brooking personal criticism, a tendency that led Netanyahu to quash another of his appointments earlier this year. In March, the premier appointed Vice Adm. (res.) Eli Sharvit as the next head of the Shin Bet intelligence agency, but reversed course a day later after a recent op-ed by the former Navy chief criticizing Trump’s climate policy came to light.
The criticism of Trump was not Dobronsky’s only controversial remark. He wrote in a Facebook post in 2024, during the war in Gaza, that Israel should fight “as if we don’t have hostages there” and that defeating Hamas should take precedence even if it meant risking the lives of the captives.
According to the IDF’s data, 38 of the hostages were abducted alive and later killed in captivity. In many cases, they were murdered by their captors, and in others, the military has confirmed that its own actions, including airstrikes, led to the deaths of hostages.
Likud set to welcome first-ever Haredi MK
Netanyahu’s party is set to undergo another shift, and seat its first-ever ultra-Orthodox lawmaker, a reflection of the growing influence of Likud’s Haredi contingent.
Dan Illouz, a former Likud MK, resigned from the party last month over the coalition’s recent raft of controversial legislation favoring Haredi interests. In particular, Illouz was one of the most outspoken opponents of efforts to enshrine blanket exemptions from military service for ultra-Orthodox men.
Now, he is set to be replaced by Shabtai Katash, a Chabad Hasid and member of the Lod religious council. His impending appointment comes as Likud’s Haredi membership has grown, with thousands of the community’s members joining the party in advance of its primaries next week.
Speaking with the Kikar HaShabbat website, Katash said he believes “Likud is a people’s party, and the Haredi community also has something to say within Likud.” He said he views it as his mission “to connect the parts of the people and not deepen the divisions.”
In line with Netanyahu’s latest rhetoric on the military draft debate, Katash said members of the ultra-Orthodox community who are not enrolled full-time in yeshiva “must enlist.” However, Netanyahu and his coalition have sought throughout their nearly four-year term in office to enshrine in law the decades-long broad exemption from military service of ultra-Orthodox males, defying High Court orders to draft them, and pushed through legislation intended to maintain this arrangement in the final days before the Knesset dissolved last month ahead of the elections. Netanyahu’s political opponents have denounced the government over this policy, while the IDF itself has repeatedly pleaded for ultra-Orthodox men to be drafted amid a severe manpower shortage at a time of multi-front conflict.
“Those who study Torah must remain in the yeshiva” and “we need to ensure that those who enter the army remain ultra-Orthodox. I wish all secular people would both study Torah and serve in the army,” Katash said.
In another interview, with the Srugim news site, Katash criticized Illouz’s break with Likud, saying that he is “definitely wrong because we are part of a faction, part of the Likud faction, and there is coalition discipline.”
Announcing his resignation from the party and his move to Avigdor Liberman’s hawkish secularist Yisrael Beytenu in July, Illouz slammed Likud for “promoting schemes exempting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students from military service while our voters are collapsing in the reserves.”
Ex-Beit Shemesh mayor: Arabs can join government
Meanwhile, Aliza Bloch, the former mayor of the Jerusalem-area city of Beit Shemesh, has joined the new right-wing party founded by former Likud ministers Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein — and immediately sparked controversy when she said Arab parties should be able to join the government, contradicting her party’s stated position.
Shortly afterward, she backtracked, saying none of the Arab parties belongs in the governing coalition.
Asked in an interview on Channel 12 whether she believes Arab parties could be part of a coalition, Bloch responded that she wanted to be “colorblind” and added, “Certainly, there’s room for everybody.”
Bloch added, “I want to say very clearly, I want to stress this, if I came to the [TV] studio today just for this, it was worth it: Stop taking the discussion every time to this topic of ‘Yes to Haredim, no to Arabs’ — what’s happening is bigger than any single party.”
Whether the anti-Netanyahu Zionist camp should form a coalition with Arab factions has been a matter of debate among its parties, especially as a centrist Jewish lawmaker is reportedly set to join the Arab Ra’am party. When they announced their new party last week, Erdan and Edelstein said, “We believe in a broad Zionist government that will not be dependent on Haredi or Arab parties.”
After her interview, Block changed tack, ruling out joining a coalition with any of the Arab parties running in the election.
“Despite the lies being spread, my position is clear,” she said in a statement. “We won’t sit in a government with parties that support terror or refuse to recognize Hamas as a terror organization… The [Arab] Ra’am and Joint List parties are parties that support terror and we won’t sit with them under any circumstance.”
Bloch is the former principal of the Branco-Weiss high school in Beit Shemesh. She was elected mayor of Beit Shemesh in 2018, ending a decade of ultra-Orthodox control over the rapidly growing bedroom community.
Her administration was seen by many national-religious and secular residents as one final chance to fix their city following years of religious violence at the hands of ultra-Orthodox zealots. She lost reelection in 2024 to the ultra-Orthodox Degel HaTorah party’s Shmuel Greenberg.
As reported by The TImes of Israel