Far-right anti-LGBTQ Avi Maoz quits government, says his coalition deal was ignored

The far-right Noam party’s sole lawmaker quit the government on Monday evening, saying he did not believe he would be put in charge of a “Jewish national identity” hierarchy, as stipulated in his coalition agreement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

MK Avi Maoz sent Netanyahu a letter saying that he was resigning as a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office because he was frustrated by an inability to bring about meaningful change in the role. He wrote that he “was shocked to find there was no serious intention of honoring the coalition deal.”

An outspoken homophobe who has also made misogynistic statements about women’s role in society and non-Orthodox streams of Judaism, Maoz was slated to be given control over an Education Ministry department that oversees external programming vendors for public schools. The appointment was met with outrage by pro-liberal forces.

A spokesman for the Education Ministry confirmed Monday that the unit remains under its purview.

Despite stepping down from the government, Maoz said he will remain in Netanyahu’s 64-MK coalition, though had he decided to quit that as well, it would not have brought it down. READ MORE