Shai Golden of Israel’s right-wing Channel 14 is the public face of a growing trend: secular Israelis who’ve grown tired of left-wing propaganda in their news, preferring to align with tradition instead of vilifying it. 

“Israel without Judaism and without the chareidim is like a body without a soul. Like an army that has only weapons, but no soldiers. Like a national flag that’s all white,” Shai Golden, television commentator for Israel’s Channel 14, declared last week in an attack on former public security minister and Angel Bakeries chairman Omer Bar Lev, for participating in an anti-chareidi protest outside the home of Ponevezh Rosh Yeshivah Rav Gershon Edelstein.

“Because,” he continued, “if you don’t understand that a straight line runs between the Star of David symbol on our national flag, and our Jewish heritage and Jewish identity, and from there to the chareidim and the yeshivah students and Rav Edelstein, then you don’t understand what Israel is, and you don’t even understand the symbolism of the blue and white flag that you and your friends have taken to wrapping yourselves in with such a sense of ownership.”

A few years ago, no one would have imagined a leading Israeli TV channel broadcasting such a segment – statements like that, if spoken, would be self-censored. But now there’s Channel 14, a relatively new station with a clear right-wing orientation. Originally launched a decade ago as Channel 20, a heritage channel that was not allowed to report the news, with more media privatization it eventually received a news license, and two years ago it was rebranded as “Achshav Arba Esreh” (“Now 14”), with its ratings climbing steadily ever since.

The channel’s Shai Golden is the face of a growing stream of secular rightists who acknowledge the importance of the chareidi community to the State of Israel, and though they lack an appreciation of Torah’s true value as the revealed word of Hashem, they prefer to align with tradition instead of vilifying it. Longtime Likud MK Dudi Amsalem, for example, is known as a stalwart champion of chareidi interests, defending their adherence to tradition, and helping advance draft deferment bills for yeshivah students. He has also fought attempts by progressive heterodox movements to encroach on Israeli religious life.

Amsalem might be motivated by his own strategic political concerns, but he no doubt finds common cause while facing off against the country’s secular Ashkenazi elite. Yet he’s also clearly motivated by a deep love and respect for Jewish tradition.

“We came to Eretz Israel to establish a Jewish state,” he said in the Knesset plenum two years ago. “Democratic, with freedom for everyone, but as a country we have a Jewish character. We are not French, we are not Americans. This is the only country in the world where nationality and religion are the same thing.”

Even current defense minister Yoav Gallant — whom Netanyahu abortively fired for criticizing the pace of the judicial reform — made waves a year ago when he attributed Klal Yisrael’s survival through the millennia to Torah observance.

“The people of Israel survived for 2,000 years thanks to tradition and to praying three times a day in the direction of Jerusalem,” Gallant said at a conference in 2022. “For two millenia, without territory and through a hundred different exiles, we stayed intact. This happened only in the merit of our tradition and submission to a spiritual authority. The Torah and the Mishnah and the Gemara and the tefillos became our anchor in place of the Land of Israel.”

It might seem surreal, but statements like those of Amsalem, Gallant, and Golden have found a willing audience in the growing right-wing secular demographic, which played in important role in electing the largest Israeli right-wing coalition ever. And while these people aren’t necessarily running out to Arachim seminars and becoming baalei teshuvah, it seems they are at least filtering out the leftist incitement against chareidim.

“Now they tell us that Judaism is really democracy and liberal values,” says Shai Golden, a popular public face of this new demographic. “Please, enough with this nonsense. You may not believe in Hashem, or put on tefillin or keep mitzvos — or even be an atheist, but respect history and be honest and admit that if Jews didn’t keep halachic Judaism today, we would no longer exist as a people.”