Deputy Minister Avi Maoz quits government, railing against pressure of ‘deep state’

By Sam Sokol 24 March 2025, 5:57 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Noam party chairman Avi Maoz speaks during a function at the Knesset, in Jerusalem, March 20, 2023. (Erik Marmor/ Flash90/ File)

Following through on a threats, Deputy Minister Avi Maoz submits his resignation letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, railing against an alleged “deep state,” which he claims has taken over the Justice and Education Ministries.

This alleged cabal of officials is “instilling a hyper-progressive, anti-Jewish and anti-national worldview into the education and legal system in Israel,” he writes.

Maoz, who as a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office oversaw educational vendors who supplement curricula in public schools by way of his Jewish National Identity Office, claims that under pressure from the “deep state,” the Education Ministry halted collaboration with him.

The sole lawmaker representing the anti-LGBTQ, anti-feminist Noam party also blames the “deep state” for preventing the allocation of additional budgets for national religious schools and claims that no part of his coalition agreement with Netanyahu’s Likud has been fulfilled — leaving him a deputy minister in name only.

This is the second time that Maoz has quit the government. In February 2023, he resigned, stating that he did not believe he would be put in charge of a “Jewish national identity” hierarchy, as stipulated in his coalition agreement.

Then in May, he returned, after being granted the authority to exercise oversight over educational vendors in public schools, following a cabinet decision handing him NIS 285 million ($76 million) in funding for his Jewish National Identity Office.