As Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich heads next week to the US, his words in support of Israel “erasing” the Palestinian village of Huwara still eco off the walls of the State Department and numerous Jewish organizations, all of whom have made it clear that they refuse to meet him. Even the right-leaning AIPAC will not greet Israel’s Finance Minister. His attempts to backtrack, awkward and halfhearted, did not make things better, and indeed only cemented the conjecture that with Smotrich things are not as we have known from the past.
It would indeed take either ignorance or naivete to assume the current Israeli government resembles any previous one. Though different in character and motives, never have coalition parties presented such monolithic eagerness to weaken Israel’s judicial system, dismantle the checks and balances on power, and expand the role of religion in the public sphere.
Significantly, more than half the seats of the coalition are taken by religiously observant Jews, and while most past Israeli governments had representatives of the Ultra-Orthodox public, none had the Religious Zionist public represented solely by hard-core fundamentalists, nor did any, ever, have had Kahanist ministers.
The particular brand of fundamentalist Judaism that the current extremists in power hold is different from that of Ultra-Orthodoxy. Discerning how is key to understanding the danger they pose for Israel’s democracy – and to the wellbeing of Palestinians.
Ultra-Orthodoxy’s piety is dedicated to community and continuity, that is to maintaining their cocoon of like-minded, meticulously observant Jews, following what they believe is the path of their forefathers and taking care that their children do the same. Theirs is a fundamentalism interested less in theology, more in sociology, and thus also capable of pragmatism, usually with an added wink and a Yiddish pun.
In contrast, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir (Israel’s Minister for National Security) display a fundamentalism resembling that of extreme Evangelical Christianity, in that it applies literal understanding to the Bible and aims to implement that understanding to the transformation of the political and social reality around them. This type of fundamentalism is committed to zealous authenticity in belief and practice, and maintaining a dogmatic understanding of tradition, shows very little aptitude towards pragmatism.
Just five years ago Mr. Smotrich presented what he called the Decisiveness Plan (or the Subjugation Plan, the translation can go both ways), in which he proposed to offer the Palestinians – in Israel and in the occupied territories alike – three options: surrender and agree to become residents with reduced voting rights; emigrate; or resist and be subjected to the full force of the IDF.
In the essay he published at the time (Sep’ 2017) Smotrich admits that this plan is “lacking in democratic distinctiveness”, but claims it is the only realistic path that Israel can take. What he does not reveal is that he bases his plan not on geo-political assessments but on an ancient Talmudic text.
In a speech he gave a year before he published his plan (Aug’ 16) he refers to a narrative according to which when Joshua came to conquer the Promised Land he sent three epistles to the peoples living in it, offering them the very same options.
In that speech Smotrich claimed that,
There is one absolute and correct truth… This is the basis for the approach of Joshua when he entered the Land, which I seek to adopt even today. The foundation of our absolute truths is faith in the Torah… The Torah of Moses is the only base on which we must establish the belief in the righteousness of the way and the fighting spirit of the IDF.
Israel’s new Finance Minister displays the most basic characteristics of fundamentalist religiosity: a uniform perception of history, by which what was true thousands of years ago is also valid today; a wish shape contemporary life according to ancient ways, to thrust the past into the present; and a literalist understanding of scripture which reduces a rich religious tradition into a rigid and simplistic framework. These produce a one-dimensional submission to the authority of the Holy Scriptures.
He has absolutely no qualms about his beliefs. Just half a year ago, during the previous Israeli government, Smotrich shouted across the Knesset’s floor to the Arab MKs: “You’re only here be mistake, because Ben Gurion didn’t finish the job and throw you out in 1948.”
And he is not alone. Mr. Ben-Gvir is a longtime member of circles following the late Rabbi Meir Kahane’s teachings, a vile racist who whose Kach movement was designated a terrorist organization by both the US and Israel. Ben-Gvir himself was twice convicted for supporting a terrorist organization following his activities there.
Kahane himself used the very same account about Joshua in his books to justify the future expulsion of Israeli Arabs, which he repeatedly claimed must be implemented. The tale plays a part in the movement’s theological world, being also founded on a fundamentalist interpretation of elements of the Jewish tradition. In the past Ben Gvir explicitly said that Jews must “Drive out the Arab enemy”, and though of late insisting he no longer thinks so, only five years ago claimed that “every word of Kahane is relevant for today’s reality”.
Just as Kahane insisted that non-Jews will no be able to vote in Israel, Smotrich also plans to reduce Israeli Arabs to the status of non-voting subjects. As he said in a privet conversation in 2017, Palestinians will be relegated to the status of “resident alien,” because, as he explained then, “according to Jewish law there must always be some inferiority.”
This kind of dogmatic, selective interpretation of the Jewish tradition, linked with the will, and now the power, to apply it in order to change the face of the country, is something that Israeli citizens encounter for the first time in the highest echelons of their government. The mass demonstrations that have engulfed the country over the last two months have a direct connection to the horror that strikes many Israelis witnessing it.
Netanyahu’s desperate legal conditions have led him to establish a government with the most extreme elements of Judaism’s underbelly, groups that were taboo until two years ago and that hold a violently racist view of Israel’s social and political reality. A significant part of the Israeli public, represented by the tens of thousands engaged in weekly demonstrations, are resisting what they conceive as threat to the Israeli democracy and to the integrity of the Jewish tradition.
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Published in Haaretz
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