Written by: Ziyad Abu Ziyad
The victory achieved by Itamar Ben Gvir, a settler from Kiryat Arba in Hebron, did not come as a surprise to anyone who follows the course of Israeli politics. Right-wing and extreme racism on the other hand.
Ben Gvir has emerged as a lawyer for every settler who carries out attacks against Palestinians anywhere in the occupied territories, by being present and demonstrating in all sites of friction between Palestinians and Jews, the latest of which is Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem, and in persevering with his provocative visits to Al-Aqsa Mosque, raising Jewish slogans and symbols, and practicing religious rituals in it, and taking advantage of immunity In his capacity as a member of the Knesset, he carried weapons, declared them, and threatened to use them against the Arabs. His movement was called "Otzma Yehudit", meaning "Jewish power", which is the new name for Kahane's slogan represented by the fist with the word "Kach", meaning thus.
And all of these behaviors are, in their entirety, tickling the emotions and national feelings of the Israeli right.
And in the meantime, Ben G Vir was presenting himself to the Israeli right-wing community as the new, improved version of Meir Kahane and his rightful heir.
Ben Gvir following in the footsteps of Meir Kahane
In a press interview that Hanoch Daum conducted with him seven years ago, Ben Gvir said that the difference between him and Kahane "is not in ideas and principles, not in standards, but rather in the method, as he follows another method." He also said in a speech he gave five years ago at a ceremony commemorating Meir Kahane that Kahane was sincere and that "every word and word that Kahane said is true and accurate and refers to the reality that exists today."
There is no doubt that the audiovisual media has contributed greatly to building Ben Gvir's personality and promoting him, even the media that was covering news of his activities with the intention of criticizing them, because that coverage resonated in the hearts of many right-wingers who saw Ben Gvir express what was going on in themselves. Ben Gvir said three years ago in an interview with Y-Net that the big difference between him and Kahane is that "the media opens the microphones to me."
In order to know the meaning of describing Ben Gvir as a racist or a fascist, it must be noted that the Kahanism to which he belongs calls:
1- Separation between Jews and Arabs on the shores of the sea.
2- Prohibition of intermarriage between Jews and Arabs.
3- Taking away the right to run for office and the right to vote from the Arabs.
4- Enacting a law to make Jerusalem a Jewish city and only Jews are allowed to live in it.
Death to the Arabs... Peace be with the Arabs
Although Ben Gvir is the star that attracted all the lights in the recent Israeli elections, the most important fact is that these elections reflected the true picture of the Jewish society that is constantly deviating towards the racist right, which repeats on all occasions the slogan "Death to the Arabs", and the disappearance of the left-wing Meretz movement from The political scene and its inability to pass the threshold, and it is the only one that raises the slogan "Peace with the Arabs".
In addition, the Labor Party - with its various names - which founded the State of Israel and controlled the government in it until 1977, entered a stage of fading during the last two decades until it almost disappeared, just as the Meretz movement disappeared this time, as it passed the electoral threshold with difficulty and only got one. Four seats, while the Religious Zionist Party led by Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich won 14 seats, the representation of the Sephardic religious movement Shas rose to eleven seats, and the total number of seats for religious parties and Likud rose to 64 seats, which will allow Netanyahu to form a homogeneous and stable right-wing government.
Although many observers and analysts warn that the landslide victory achieved by the religious and the extreme national right leads to the establishment of a fascist racist government, what is more dangerous than that is that what happened in the recent Israeli elections is not the end but the beginning.
I have written repeatedly and said on many occasions that there are social shifts within Israeli society that are constantly pushing this society towards the religious right, which expressed itself in the recent elections through the strong emergence of religious Zionism, which ranked third in size among the Israeli parties that won. In the elections and other right-wing parties led by Likud.
Religious Zionism is not content with participating in the government, but aspires to be the government. While it is calling today for the portfolios of the ministries that have the power to decide everything related to the Arabs, such as the Ministry of Security (Defence), the Ministry of Homeland Security (the police) and the Ministry of Justice, it does not see this as anything but a stage on the road towards seizing power in the coming days.
The concept of the Jewish state and its contradiction with democracy
Perhaps benefiting from the lessons of history, especially the history of fascist and racist movements, requires us not to underestimate this development within Israeli society, and requires us to take it absolutely seriously and think in advance of how to deal with it and rise above all individual and factional differences.
We are facing a society that is gradually drowning in Jewish fundamentalist Presbyterianism and does not hesitate or feel any embarrassment while talking about it, but rather sees it as a necessary thing. In order to put the reader in front of a clear conception of what is meant by the Presbyterian state, it is necessary to cite what the thinker and philosopher Gershon Feiler (1926-1994) wrote, that the Jewish state means defeating secularism, liberalism and democracy. And it is based on the following principles:
• Torah laws are superior to man-made laws.
• The secular, democratic State of Israel is an illegitimate body, and must be replaced in the future by the State of Halekha (ie, the state of Jewish law).
• The duty to submit and respect the government is related to the extent of the government's respect and submission to the Torah.
• It is not permissible to install a king or a government that heaven does not approve of.
• The opinion of the majority has no weight because there is no validity for any law or any decision of the sinful sinful government that contradicts the provisions of the Torah, and it is a religious duty to reject its laws and decisions, and it is strictly forbidden to accept the opinion of the erroneous majority.
• There is only one opinion in Israel and no more, and everyone who contradicts that one opinion, which is the opinion of God's Torah, even if those are the majority of the Israeli people, their opinion is an abnormal and deviant opinion.
• There is a need for a system governed by one person and one word, the president, and not the delegation of tens and hundreds of delegates and parties.
• Every person who does not do the work of God's people, and does not submit to the Torah, loses his right and position.
• Pseudo-intellectualism must be isolated because their hostility to religion reflects their disgusting interior.
Reflection on this concept of the Jewish religious state makes us notice that it is not much different from the concept of the state of any fundamentalist group, including the concept of ISIS, Khomeini, the concept of Boko Haram, and others. But at the same time, while the world stands against all fundamentalist movements, especially Islamic ones, describing them as terrorism and waging war against them, we find that no one dares to talk about Jewish fundamentalism as an extremist terrorist movement.
In my opinion, it is not permissible to underestimate the danger posed by the continued growth of the influence of fundamentalist religious Judaism on governance in Israel and the possibility that a day will come soon when it will be the decision-maker in the Presbyterian State of Israel.
What do we expect from the next government?
It is not inconceivable that Netanyahu himself has fears of this scenario, although he is compelled at this stage to see them as indispensable allies, and he may take advantage of the pressure exerted on him by some of his Western allies, including America, in order to try to hold the stick in the middle so that he remains The religious right is in the arena of its allies on the one hand, and on the other hand it is trying to expand the non-extremist Jewish base of its government and to include other Jewish parties such as Gantz or Lapid to reassure its critics in the West and evade their pressure, and so that it is not the subject of blackmail by religious fundamentalists and so that it is not the face that represents its government before the world.
In all cases, the rise of Jewish Zionism, along with other religious parties such as Shas and United Torah Judaism, and the fading or diminishing of the strength of secular parties such as Meretz and the Labor Party, should be a red light for us and for the world that is concerned with stability in the region, because the emergence and increase of the strength of these groups only means fueling The flames of religious conflict and confrontation between armed fundamentalist Jews who enjoy the protection of the Israeli army and police, and unarmed Palestinian civilians.
We are on the verge of a stage that is the most dangerous since the occupation of 1967. A stage whose most prominent features will be the expansion of existing settlements, legitimizing outposts and turning them into settlements, ignoring the fact that groups of settlers have seized privately owned Palestinian land and established new outposts on top of them, giving Permits to establish private Jewish farms and facilities on Palestinian lands, turning a blind eye and possibly encouraging settler violence against Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank, expanding settlement infrastructure to connect remote settlements with Israel at the expense of appropriating more Arab lands, and other practices.
And we need to reconsider all our political calculations, whether internal or regional, because the imminent danger coming with the resurgence of extremist racist Judaism calls for us to be up to the challenge that puts us before: “To be or not to be, that is the question,” according to Shakespeare.
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