JFJFP

March 2, 2024

Analysis

JFJFP

Tags: Benjamin Netanyahu, Conference for the Victory of Israel, hilltop youth, Israeli politics, Itamar Ben Gvir, population transfer, young settlements

Political scientist Gayil Talshir analyzes how the messianic right is shaping Israel's political leadership and landscape. Now, she says, the left must try to do the same thing

Gayil Talshir.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi

Netta Ahituv writes in Haaretz Mar 2, 2024

It’s been about a month since Israel’s right wing converged in Jerusalem and called for the conquest of the Gaza Strip, for the expulsion of its local population and for the renewal of Jewish settlement there. That political show of force – at what was called the “Conference for the Victory of Israel – Settlement Brings Security: Returning to the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria” – reflected the growing might of the messianic right and made instant headlines. Naturally, the extremist messages voiced by speakers there generated concern in liberal circles. But as the days passed, the headlines changed, and Israelis seemed to move on. But not Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In her view, we must pause and take a hard look at this benchmark date, January 28, 2024, and what transpired then at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center.

Dr. Talshir paid particularly close attention to the speeches, which extolled the idea of crushing the enemy and expelling the Palestinians from Gaza. The idea that “only a [population] transfer will bring peace” – one of the slogans tossed around at the confab – used to be espoused by those at the most extreme fringes: by a few MKs from the now-defunct National Union and the tiny Moledet party of the ultranationalist Rehavam Ze’evi. But among the attendees at the January gathering were no fewer than 10 cabinet ministers from four parties – Likud, Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit and United Torah Judaism – in addition to 27 MKs, almost one-quarter of the Israeli parliament.

Talshir points to the central idea behind the event, variations of which continue to reverberate among the settler right: “Then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land.” To which the Book of Numbers adds, “But if you will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then shall those that you let remain… harass you in the land wherein you dwell.” The right wing has given the verses a literal interpretation, the scholar argues: If you allow your enemies to live by your side, they will continue to kill you, so it follows that the Palestinians must be killed in war, or expelled. At the very least, as Religious Zionism’s Bezalel Smotrich wrote in his 2017 “Decisive Plan,” they must be strongly encouraged to emigrate.

The so-called victory conference featured a festive march of six “core groups” eagerly waiting to settle in the Gaza Strip, and the highlight was the signing by attendees of a “covenant for victory and for the renewal of settlement in the Gaza District and Northern Samaria.”

The religious Zionist public has undergone radicalization. We see this in the disparity of views between Smotrich and his party colleague Itamar Ben-Gvir, on the one hand, and Naftali Bennett and veteran leaders of the National Religious Party, on the other, and it can also be seen in terms of the content of their messages.

Talshir: “Smotrich’s takeover of the religious Zionist movement left the moderate religious public with no political home to vote for, but in general, extreme religious messages have entered the mainstream and become popular. Visiting the Temple Mount, for example, which used to be considered an extreme act in most streams of Judaism, has today become a nationalist-symbolic act on the right. The same holds for the illegal settler outposts – referred to today as ‘young settlements’ – that were built on land privately owned by Palestinians. Today, the ‘hilltop youth’ are dictating the line to the Netanyahu government.”

More …

How Messianic Radicals Came to Control Israel – and Netanyahu