It’s time for Israel’s far right to go
The two most controversial new members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government: Itamar Ben Gvir, lawmaker and leader of the Otzma Yehudit party, left, speaks with Bezalel Smotrich, lawmaker and leader of the Religious Zionist party, during a swearing in ceremony at the Knesset in Jerusalem Nov. 15. Photo by Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Contributing Columnist Jay Michaelson November 30, 2023
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has threatened to quit Israel’s governing coalition if the war on Hamas is not immediately resumed.
Good. Let him.
And if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won’t let him; if he makes another deal or restarts hostilities for domestic political purposes rather than national security ones; if he once again puts his own political survival above the nation’s interest — then it’s time for American Jews to tell him clearly that our support of Israel has limits, and is justified precisely because of those limits, and that kowtowing to extremists is beyond them.
The United States, and most American Jews, have supported the war against Hamas for very specific reasons: to free the hostages and to eradicate the intolerable threat of Hamas. We do not, however, support what Ben-Gvir and numerous other nationalists have called for: an ethnic cleansing of Gaza and a reestablishment of settlements on land that, from biblical times to our own, does not belong to the Jewish people. Most American Jews (63%) believe that peaceful coexistence between Israel and an independent Palestinian state is possible — a vision for the future that Ben-Gvir and his cronies vehemently oppose.
A war establishing Jewish supremacy over all the land would be exactly what Israel’s bitter opponents have shouted about for the last seven weeks. It would be a war of mass displacement, creating between 1 and 2 million refugees, depending on how much of Gaza is reoccupied. It would be an establishment of apartheid rule, in which Jews in the occupied territory have civil rights but non-Jews do not. It would even be, to use the most incendiary and contested term in this conflict, a form of genocide, ethnically cleansing an entire population.
It would also be a kind of Jewish jihad, with no boundaries and no limits. It is of a piece with the contemptible mob violence that Ben-Gvir’s friends, militia members, and fellow Jewish terrorists have been inflicting on Palestinians in the West Bank with increasing brutality over the last weeks, often with the assistance of Israeli authorities who have tolerated Jewish terrorist violence and slapped numerous restrictions on Palestinian movement. It is part of the far right’s vision of Israel as an authoritarian ethno-state, in which the rights of the minority are dependent upon the tyranny of the majority, in which journalists are prosecuted and courts are mere handmaidens of the government.
As the pre-war protests against the proposed judicial reforms showed, this is not the Israel that most Israelis, most Americans, or most American Jews support. It is, again, more reminiscent of anti-Zionist propaganda than of the Zionism we have defended for all these years. It would prove Israel’s harshest critics to be correct.
This is not about abandoning Israel. On the contrary, rejecting the extremists, who most Israelis oppose, would be to Israel’s short-term and long-term benefit. It’s not even about bringing down the government, since at least for now, the unity government has more than enough votes to survive even without the extremist bloc. It’s about clarifying what we do and do not support.
For nearly two months now, Netanyahu’s government has coddled the extremists, indulging in a kind of deliberate semiotic indeterminacy with regard to their nationalist-dystopian vision. For example, Netanyahu recently said that “from the beginning of the war, I set three goals: the elimination of Hamas, the return of all our abductees, and to ensure that Gaza will never again be a threat to Israel.”
That third goal is deliberately vague. Does it mean, as Netanyahu has floated (to nearly universal condemnation), a semi-permanent Israeli occupation of Gaza? Does it mean rebuilding Gush Katif? What about the 2 million people who call Gaza home? Are they to be stateless refugees? Forcibly relocated to the West Bank, or the Sinai, or some other place that is not their home?
By clinging to vague language like this, turning a blind eye to settler violence and cracking down on dissent, Netanyahu has dog-whistled to his far-right coalition members who want to fight a war of ethnic cleansing and Jewish supremacy. American Jews and American politicians need to hear those whistles too, and reject them utterly. Not one shekel of American aid should be used for these purposes.
To be sure, there is still ample room for disagreement about the wisdom and defensibility of Israeli actions. Should the cease-fire be extended, even made semi-permanent, or must Hamas be pursued? What is the moral and military equation that balances innocent civilian life against wanted rapists and murderers hiding among them? What does the achievement of Israel’s strategic goals actually entail, in terms of the dismantling of Hamas? There is room for debate on all these questions and many more.
But there should not be any disagreement that the violent ethnic cleansing of Gaza is neither strategically nor morally acceptable to the United States or to American Jews. Most of us (though of course not all) have supported Israel’s right to self-defense. But that right does not justify the ongoing subjugation of millions of people. The check is not blank. Our support has limits.
And what Israel’s far right has done, is doing right now, and wants to do in the immediate future is well beyond them. It is time for them to go.
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