General Discussion

…the police after a few days.

From Doc Sachs:

Netanyahu’s Court: Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and the Messianic Settlers

On the Israeli side, the inner court is composed of two figures whose radicalism is so extreme that they were considered political pariahs until Netanyahu used their votes to stay in power. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the National Security Minister, is an admirer of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was designated a terrorist organization. Bezalel Smotrich, the Finance Minister, draws his ideology from Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, who taught that Israel’s 1967 military victory was divinely mandated and that the settlement of Palestinian territory is the will of God. Together, they hold 20 seats in Netanyahu’s 67-seat coalition. They do not merely advise the prime minister, they share in his messianic beliefs and vision.

Ben-Gvir has used his control of the Israeli police to enable settler paramilitaries operating against Palestinians in the West Bank. He has consistently blocked ceasefire negotiations and has openly claimed credit for delaying them. He pushed for Jewish ritual rights on the Temple Mount in defiance of a status quo maintained for decades, a move Israeli security officials warned would lead directly to bloodshed. In August 2023 he declared: “My right, and my wife’s and my children’s right to get around on the roads in Judea and Samaria, is more important than the right to movement for Arabs.” The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and Spain have all sanctioned him for inciting violence, yet the United States, under Marco Rubio, defended Ben-Gvir and criticized those sanctions.

Smotrich is the more methodical of the two: less theatrical and more dangerous. He has systematically transferred civilian governance of the West Bank from the Israeli military to his own ministry, channeling hundreds of millions of shekels to settler infrastructure while Palestinian Authority budgets are deliberately strangled. He has directed his office to formulate “an operational plan for applying sovereignty” over the West Bank. During the Iran war, he called for Israel to annex southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, declaring that the war “needs to end with a different reality entirely.” Smotrich’s ideology draws on Kook’s teaching that the settlement enterprise is not political but sacred—a divine obligation that must be completed regardless of international law, Palestinian rights, or the opinion of the world. The 1967 borders, in this theology, are not a temporary military reality. They are God’s unfinished business.

The world’s grownups must try to stop the madness.
Neither Ben-Gvir nor Smotrich was anything more than a fringe extremist before Netanyahu legitimized them by bringing them into government and his inner court. He gave them power over Israeli society, and they gave him the religious-nationalist firepower to call his wars a divine mission.