Israel’s Political Landscape
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are not an aberration. A survey of Israel’s party platforms shows a political system, from the ruling coalition to the “centrist” opposition, built on the settler-colonial logic that has denied Palestinians freedom since Zionism’s founding.
Rev. J. Mark Davidson
9/24/20265 min read
Last week, we focused on the demonization of Hamas, and how that gives Israeli impunity. We countered the Zionist propaganda about Hamas’ 1988 charter as “proof” of malevolent intent toward Jews with facts and perspective about Hamas’ revised charter of 2017. We clarified that one can be critical of Hamas, and declare its targeting of civilians on October 7th as war crimes, and still be accurate in describing Hamas. Rather than demonizing it as “a terrorist organization,” it is more accurate to describe Hamas as a Palestinian resistance movement affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
This week, we call attention to the political charters of Israel’s political parties. I researched the platforms of all the current political parties represented in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition (Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism, Religious Zionist Party, Jewish Power, New Hope, Noam) controls 64 of the 120 seats. This far-right coalition follows the lead of Likud, the strongest political party in Israel. Likud has been in power 36 of the past 50 years. Through four different prime ministers, it has driven Israeli society further and further to the right. In 1977, Likud stated in its charter that “the right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel is eternal.” They assert that “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only Israeli sovereignty.” As Likud leaders have made clear “there will never be a Palestinian state,” and “the entire West Bank (which they call Judea and Samaria) belongs to the Jewish people.” They have never deviated from these convictions and policy positions. This means that the political landscape in Israel for the past 50 years has been overtly hostile toward Palestinian freedom, dignity, and equality. Their policy has been Palestinian dispossession and ethnic cleansing. They have instituted apartheid rule in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and genocidal elimination and forced displacement in Gaza.
The other parties in the far-right coalition draw their support from the Ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel. They insist that full-time Torah students continue to be exempt from mandatory military service in the Israeli Defense Forces. They represent the interests of the settlers in illegal Jewish-only segregated settlements in the occupied West Bank. They advocate for maximum expansion of illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian land. Bezalel Smotrich’s party, Religious Zionist Party, pushes aggressive militarism and maximum territorial expansion. It unabashedly advocates a vision of “Greater Israel.” This extremist position would impose Israeli dominance over all the countries between the River Nile in Egypt and the Euphrates River in Iraq and Turkey, an area comprising multiple cultures and over 200 million people. This fanatical idea used to be dismissed as ridiculous. But in the current political landscape in Israel, it must be taken seriously. After all, Smotrich is not a wild back-bencher. He is the Minister of Finance. As extremist as Bezalel Smotrich is, Ben G’vir is more so. Ben G’vir’s party, Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”), draws its inspiration from the teachings of Rabbi Meir Kahane, an American-Israeli Orthodox rabbi and politician who taught Jewish supremacy. Baruch Goldstein, a devotee of Rabbi Kahane, murdered 29 and injured 125 Palestinians at prayer during the holy month of Ramadan in the Ibrahimi Mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron on Feb. 25, 1994. In response, Israel banned Kach, the Kahanist political party. But G’vir, an ardent Kahanist, is back with a new party with a different name. He now holds the powerful position of Minister of National Security. Ben G’vir’s “Jewish Power” advocates Israeli ownership of the Temple Mount, an extremely sensitive religiously significant location. He endorses building Judaism’s Third Temple on the site of the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, a proposal that everyone acknowledges is incendiary. “Jewish Power” rejects a Palestinian state out of hand. Like Kahane, Ben G’vir is a theocrat who believes Jewish spiritual law (“the Halakah”) should be fully integrated into Israel’s civil judicial system. He advocates biblical “total war” against all of Israel’s “enemies.” He says Israel must annex the West Bank and make no territorial concessions to the Palestinians. Ever. Non-Jews have no rights in Israel. Under his system, all those who refuse to voluntarily emigrate from Israel, or who are deemed “disloyal,” would be forcibly deported. Although Itamar Ben G’vir has high unfavorable ratings among the Israeli public (60%), and his party holds only 6 seats, he is a “kingmaker” in a coalition with razor-thin margins. He commands disproportionate power to influence the agenda toward his dangerous fringe positions. All of the political parties of the Likud-led ruling coalition, not only the parties of Smotrich and Ben G’vir, cheered for the genocidal assault on Gaza.
What about the opposition parties? The Opposition coalition (Yesh Atid, Blue and White, Yisrael Beiteinu - “Israel is our Home”, United Arab List, Hadash-Ta’al Joint List, Labor) control 58 of the 120 seats in the Knesset. Yesh Atid, the largest opposition party is “centrist.” It leans secular, and proposes to end the military service exemptions for Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Torah students. Many in the minority coalition favor a “two-state solution,” “two states for two peoples.” But they want to retain Israeli governmental control of major settlement blocs in the Occupied West Bank, control over East Jerusalem, and military control over the rich agricultural land in the Jordan Valley. There are only two parties in the opposition bloc that advocate for equal rights for all citizens – The Joint List and United Arab List – which together control only 10 seats.
When surveying the current Israeli political landscape, it is important to remember that many of the ideas of Smotrich and Ben G’vir, which are now being deemed “fanatical” and “extremist,” are not new. Nor are they outliers in Zionist history. The settler-colonial founders of Zionism – men like Theodore Herzl, David Ben Gurion, and Ze’ev Jabotinsky - never believed in a Palestinian state. Their dream was to drive the Palestinian population out of Palestine, settle the land with Jews from around the world, and establish an exclusive Jewish state. The following quotes show what the Zionist founders of the modern state of Israel, with remarkable candor, admitted was their true and abiding intent:
-“Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries – all of them. Not one village, not one tribe, should be left.”
-“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the land of its Arab population.”
-“We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of this land…we shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours…”
Many want to give the impression that these “extremists” are the problem, that there is a “good, human rights-observing, democratic Israel” that only wants “peace with the Palestinians.” If only we could isolate the Smotriches and Ben G’virs, they say, and restrain the “small handful of juvenile delinquents-settlers” terrorizing Palestinian families in the West Bank, or topple Netanyahu, who “has done so much damage to the reputation of Israel,” then we could go back to “the good, peace-seeking Israel.” And that’s where we will supposedly find real hope for a just and lasting peace. But it is a myth, a cruel deception, and I hope this column helps lay it to rest. The problem runs much deeper than Smotrich and Ben G’vir. It goes to the heart of the Zionist settler-colonial project itself. Until it is uprooted and delegitimized, there can be no genuine peace.