Shifts in the course of the rise of the extreme right within Israeli society

Written by: Tayseer Khaled
Two months after the elections, Benjamin Netanyahu presented his government to the Knesset to gain confidence, after a series of maneuvers through which he was able to sign coalition agreements with his partners in the government, the religious Zionists, Otzma Yehudit, Noam, Shas and Honorable Yehudot. We will not discuss here his coalition agreements with the last three parties, but rather his agreements with each of the religious Zionists led by Bezalel Smotrich and Otzma Yehudit led by Itamar Ben Afir, where he pledged to the first among other ministries to take over the Ministry of Finance with a minister in the Ministry of the Army who is responsible for the settlement and service department National and pre-military colleges, as well as membership in the mini-ministerial for political security affairs, assigning to the second wide powers through the Ministry of National Security and great powers over the police, replacing shooting procedures, exempting soldiers and police personnel from legal accountability, as well as membership in the mini-ministerial council, what The former prime minister pushed Netanyahu to accuse him of appointing arsonists (in the literal sense) in the fire brigade. And next to them are cats to guard the butter.

Barak, the son of the military institution, knows the truth, but he did not fully cover it in his fears that Smotrich and Ben Gvir's fingers would extend to the institution through the gate of powers, which they wrested from Netanyahu, and which would raise the level of flames not only in its repercussions on the relationship with the Palestinians, but also in Its repercussions on the internal situation in Israel and its relations with the world and the image that was promoted about the most moral army in the world. The picture changed and changed over the years without the presence of Smotrich or Ben Gvir. In the 1980s and 1990s, shifts took place in the social composition of the Israeli army, which witnessed a gradual decline in the motives for joining the army, especially among the secular groups of the middle class who formed the backbone of the Israeli forces, in a society lured by the factors of orientation to the market economy and within which a state of restlessness developed. From conflicts and wars, especially after the signing of peace agreements with Egypt in the seventies, and later with the Palestinian Authority in Oslo, and with Jordan in the early nineties of the last century, and the accompanying trend among those groups to search for a new path in positioning Israel in the region.

These transformations were visible, which prompted the Israeli army to ease restrictions on religious affiliation in order to fill a gap that is expected to widen in the recruitment system as a result of the reluctance of the middle class to catch up with it, and the beginning came by allowing the establishment of preparatory military religious schools. Filling the military vacuum came as an opportunity for religious Zionists to serve in the army on reduced terms, and an invitation from the military leaders, the leaders of the army branches themselves, the rabbis, to attract religious people to the army, who in turn took advantage of the opportunity to engage in the institution in order to enhance their social status since Rabbi Ibrahim Shabir, one of the most prominent leaders of this The current, a fatwa stating that recruitment in religious units is close to God, and that military service and fighting spirit are a collective task imposed by God with the aim of leading the Jewish project, coinciding with the religious spirit settlement project that flourished at that time, which prepared the conditions for the transformation of religious Zionism from a marginal stream into a political one And central cultural in both society and the army. In light of this transformation, religious schools and academies for military training began in the settlements of the West Bank, focusing on religious motivation to belong to the army and join its ranks. The percentage of religious people increased among the ranks of senior officers, and their presence in field units increased. The largest percentage of these officers came from settlement residents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. , which created a link between the settlers and the army on the one hand, and gave the rabbis greater influence within the military establishment on the other hand.

In light of these transformations, the rabbis in Israel had a strong influence in various aspects of life, even within the army. They are able to influence the parliamentary elections, the formation of the government coalition, and the orientations of the political parties, through their control over many parties such as: Shas, United Torah Judaism, the Jewish Home, and more recently in other parties, especially fascism, such as religious Zionism, the Jewish power, and the Noam party, where they can Through these parties influence the laws according to their desires and tendencies. A study prepared by the Department of Social Sciences at the Israeli Bar-Ilan University, known for its religious orientations, on the extent to which religious recruits obey the orders of the rabbis revealed that more than 90% of those who describe themselves as religious believe that if the steps taken by the Israeli government contradict the opinion of Rabbis, the first is to apply the opinion of the rabbis, and more than 95% of religious soldiers confirmed that they cannot obey military orders issued to them, without being consistent with the religious fatwas issued by the rabbis and religious authorities.

Beyond that, religious sermons were spread, delivered by soldiers belonging to rabbinical schools in front of the soldiers, such as the religious sermon delivered by the commander of the Samaria Brigade on April 13, 2022 in front of his soldiers before they entered Joseph’s tomb in Nablus, where he assured them that they work with their upper hand, not as night thieves, but as sons Kings. This racist religious discourse is additional evidence of the shifts taking place in the ranks of the occupation army, which now takes the rabbis as one of its references, or the speech of the Samaria Brigade commander himself, who claimed at a celebration on the occasion of the so-called "unification of Jerusalem" in the Elon Moreh settlement, east of the city of Nablus Whoever says that the army and the settlers cooperate, the settlers and the army are the same thing.. They are one identical body.

Pre-military academies play an important role in all of this, which explains Smotrich's insistence on supervising them in his coalition agreement with Netanyahu. In those academies, preparations are being made for the infiltration movement into the military establishment. The pre-military academy in Eli (Bani David) settlement, which was established by the occupation on the lands of the villages of Qaryut, Al-Sawiya, and Al-Laban Al-Sharqiah to the south of the city of Nablus, was the beginning. For about a decade in Nili settlement in Bethlehem governorate, this was followed by the establishment of a large number of academies until the number reached about 36 military academies, 41.66% of which (15 academies) are located east of the 1967 borders (12 in the West Bank and 3 in the Golan Heights). In all of the pre-military academies, 74 percent of the senior staff are from settlements beyond the 1967 lines.

Further, out of every five towns that had the highest rates of recruitment into combat units, three were in the West Bank. Beit El was first stationed in the Ramallah and Al-Bireh governorate, where 86% of the men born in 1991 served in combat units. The third place went to Efrat in Gush Etzion in the Bethlehem governorate, where 81% of the men born in 1991 had joined the combat units. The fourth place went to the Regional Council of Mount Hebron, with a rate of 78.4%. Ariel in the Salfit governorate, which is considered a secular settlement and whose Jewish population is questionable, was one of four cities in which the percentage of recruits exceeded 90%. From the point of view of the members of these academies scattered in the West Bank, the non-religious and liberal city of Tel Aviv represents all the diseases that pervaded society. The Israelis, they celebrate life and oppose the settlers, and they are the same ones whose willingness to contribute to the state reaches a great zero. In this environment, fascism tendencies grew, which was revealed by an opinion poll conducted by the Israeli Democracy Institute and published by the Jerusalem Post at the end of November 2022, in which more than 55% affirmed that the Israeli army should kill the Palestinians even if they no longer pose any threat.
It is wrong and in this case to believe that Ben Gvir and Smotrich's strong rise to power is the decisive factor that would strongly push the spread and penetration of the extreme right-wing tide into the center of political life in Israel and among the military establishment. Indeed, the dominance of the extreme right-wing discourse on the political arena in Israel in the civil and military fields over the last two decades is the one who constituted the real lever for the rise of the extremist right-wing forces with this momentum to power in light of the decline in the role of liberal and leftist forces, despite their limitations in Israel due to the limited humanitarian situation in this country, and he is the one who accelerated the solution of the contradiction complex in Attempts to define Israel as a Jewish and democratic state at the same time, after the right-wing camp decided to abandon democracy as long as it constitutes an obstacle that must be removed through the project of settlements, annexation, the Judaization of Jerusalem, the imposition of the Jewish state and Greater Israel, and by transforming the army from the people’s army into the Lord’s army. The tools provided by the pseudo-democracy did not allow the realization of these goals and the realization of racist projects. It is required to replace them with more right-wing tools and a system of government. extreme.

Finally, in this context, the arguments made by some about the recent elections seem absurd, such as the claim that everyone should respect the results of the democratic process that facilitated the rise of the extreme right to power in Israel, as this happened in no other place in this world. What happened in Israel's recent elections is a caricature of the rise of such forces and parties in several countries of the world. For information only, half of the elected members of the Knesset are affiliated with parties that do not conduct internal elections.