David Touro
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The Honorable Minister of the Interior David Touro | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Minister of the Interior | |
| Assumed office February 3rd, 2020 | |
| Monarch | Hezekiah III (2020-present) |
| Preceded by | Yehudis Eisenberger (RCP) |
| Leader of the League for New Judea | |
| In office February 6th, 2006 – April 19, 2022 | |
| Preceded by | Aaron Lemberger |
| Succeeded by | Nosson Gevura (temporary) |
| Member of Knesset, LNJ-Chevron | |
| In office January 14th, 2008 – February 3rd, 2020 | |
| Preceded by | Ilan Hadad |
| Succeeded by | Isaac Werner |
| Personal details | |
| Born | May 6th, 1980 Chevron, Yarden Valley |
| Nationality | Yisraeli |
| Political party | Royalist Conservative Party (2022-present) Northern League (2004-2022) |
| Spouse | Bathsheva (neé Schoemacher} |
| Residence(s) | Yerushalayim, Yisrael |
| Alma mater | B.A. in Political Science, King Solomon University |
| Profession | Politician, Political activist, Functionary |
David S. Touro (born May 6th, 1980) is a Yisraeli politician who is the current Minister of the Interior under President Yitzchok Katz and formerly the longtime Leader of the Northern League party. Previously, he had served as Member of Knesset from Chevron from 2008-2020. Touro is an influential right-wing powerbroker in- and outside of the Knesset as well as a "respectable" member of the Yisraeli far right. However, he has personally and repeatedly rejected the label of "far right," instead using the moniker "national conservative."
He left the Conservatives after college in his early 20s and eventually joined the moribund far-right League for New Judea party. After another electoral loss, he challenged its then-head, Aaron Lemberger, who was considered an extremist and isolated from mainstream politics. After taking over the party, he ejected the most toxic and extreme elements and recruited more well-behaved hard-right activists and supporters, many of them former Conservatives and focused on rebuilding the party in the Yarden Valley District, where the minor right-wing National Union Party, before its 2006 merger with the Conservatives, had found fertile ground for sustained voter support.
In the next two elections - 2008 and 2010 - he increased the party's representation from zero to five seats, an impressive turnaround for a party dismissed and ridiculed by the other Knesset parties. After the 2010 elections, both the Conservatives and the Constitutional Liberals tried to sway Touro's small Knesset bloc to their side given the narrow margins of majority control that flipped back and forth between the Blues and Golds. Eventually, Touro sided with the Right Bloc and his party cross-endorsed the Conservatives in 2012 and again in 2016.
He added nationalist and right-wing populist elements to President Noah Feldman's emerging Neoconservative movement on the right. Although his party endorsed the Conservatives at the presidential level in 2012, it was not until 2016 that the Northern League - now at 11 seats - was included formally in the Conservative-led right-wing coalition in the Knesset.
In the 2020 elections, Touro's Northern League lost half of its Knesset seats to the Left Bloc, including his own constituency in Chevron. In a deal to keep the far-right in line, new President Yitzchok Katz gave Touro the Interior portfolio.
After the 2022 elections, the League was wholly evicted from the Knesset, losing all of its remaining seats. At the local level, the LNJ lost the governorship of the Yarden Special District, held by Touro's top ally Benni Schloss as well as his party's coalition majority in the Yarden district legislature and a score of local city council seats and mayorships. As the 2022 Sydalon diplomatic crisis deepened, Touro defected to the Conservatives in mid April 2022, resigning his membership and leadership roles in the League.
Early life and education
Touro was born on May 6th, 1980, to Royal Yisraeli Border Guard Capt. Naor and Goldie Touro (neé Ben-Asher) in the General Kabi Chazzan Military Hospital in Chevron, Yarden Valley Special District, Yisrael. He was the youngest of five. His father was a commanding officer of a local Magav garrison and his mother was a local teacher in a day school.
His father had fought the Sydalenes during the Fourth West Scipian War, and David grew up hearing these war stories, piquing his interest in all things mid-century Yisrael. Naor Touro grew up and was originally Dati Leumi but after the Yarden Accords in 1973 joined the growing Chardal movement, many of whom lived or relocated to reside in the Yarden River Valley.
David grew up attending a Chardal shul with Scipian minhagim. He attended the Chevron Torah Academy and later, at his father's behest, applied and spent his first year at the RYPA - Yerushalayim. However, he hated the military-style atmosphere and against his parents' wishes, transferred to King Solomon University, where he pursued first history, then a political science degree. While at university, he met and dated Bathsheva Schoemacher, and they married seven months later in 2003.
He did his national military service with the Magavnikim, stationed at a border garrison near Petra, Sydalon. He later began working as a campaign operative for the Conservatives in the Yarden Valley.
Political activism
Late 1990s
2000s
Leader of the Northern League
2006 leadership contest
2008 and 2010 elections
2008 campaign
2010 gains
Courted by both major parties (2010-2011)
Feldman era
2012 elections
2014 elections
Inclusion in the Right Bloc Knesset coalition (2016-2020)
2016 and 2018 elections
2020 elections
Loss of own Knesset seat
Return to the Conservatives (2022-present)
Katz Cabinet
Interior Minister
Political views
Touro, as the LNJ party leader, led a "respectable" far-right party, often called "far-right-lite" by some political analysts. However, he himself has always self-identified as a "national conservative," and political watchers put him more in the "hard right" category rather than formally apart of the far-right sector.
He reformed the League from a hotbed of largely-fringe and toxic extremists into a more behaved, disciplined, "normal" political party, ejecting the ruffians and radicals in favor of bringing in newer blood from more mainstream harder right-wing circles.
He was a Conservative in high school and college, and although he felt it was too moderate and unsympathetic with some of his more strongly conservative beliefs, he told the Royal Yerushalayim Dispatch in 2017 that he has "always retained a strong affinity with, and affection for, the Conservative Party" and felt that "the Blues and the League were natural allies."
He has also tried repeatedly to bridge the ideological differences between the Torah Achdus party and the League, finally and largely succeeding after years of failed efforts with the mediation of Yitzchok Katz during his successful campaign for president in 2020.
In the early 2020s, media reports record him as "exasperated" by the increasingly radicalization among League ranks in the Hezekian era and amid the 2022 Sydalon diplomatic crisis, and he was increasingly viewed by his former party's grassroots activists as an "establishment sellout" and "insider." He defected in mid-April 2022 to the Conservatives, abandoning his longtime role as League party chief to join the upper echelon of Conservative Party luminaries.
Personal life and family
Touro is married to wife Bathsheva (neé Schoemacher) since 2003. They have 3 children (by order of age): Joshua (age 16), Sara (age 13), and Baila (8).
The Touros reside in a largely Chardal neighborhood in Chevron as well as maintain a small apartment in Yerushalayim for his governmental duties.
Besides his avid political interests, Touro is a big sports fan, known to follow Ghantish hockey and Latin football. He also has a significant interest in history, especially mid-20th century events such as the West Scipian Wars.