PM seeks to tap hardline aide critical of progressive Jews to serve as NY consul general

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is aiming to appoint his hardline aide Caroline Glick to serve as Israel’s next consul general in New York, Channel 12 reports.

Glick — a former conservative pundit who has served as Netanyahu’s international affairs adviser since early 2025 — would replace Ofir Akunis, who is slated to wrap up his term in New York in the coming weeks.

The US-born Glick, who currently resides in the Efrat settlement, would fill a role whose responsibilities include leading Israel’s engagement with US Jewry.

But she will likely face backlash due to her long-held criticism of the Reform and Conservative movements, which make up a majority of US Jews.

Glick has also been heavily critical of liberal Jewish and Israeli organizations, accusing them of undermining the state, and has argued that “Palestinians were only invented to annihilate the nation of Israel.”

While Glick ran on former prime minister Naftali Bennett’s New Right slate in 2019, her subsequent alliance with the current coalition makes it unlikely that she would stay on as consul general past the fall unless Netanyahu wins the upcoming election.

Her appointment has not yet been announced and would still have to be approved by the cabinet, though the pushback she’ll likely face will not come from ministers tasked with voting to okay Netanyahu’s pick.

Responding to the Channel 12 report on Netanyahu’s plan, The Democrats MK Gilad Kariv calls it “a terrible idea and a testament to the deep contempt and disdain that Netanyahu and his partners hold toward millions of American Jews.”

“The Israeli consulate in New York is the true embassy of Israel to the Jews of America,” Kariv tweets, adding that the reported plan to appoint Glick to head the mission shows that “there is no eye that this government does not try to poke.”