Ramzy Baroud on Itamar Ben-Gvir and the acceleration of the collapse of Israel.
Itamar Ben Gvir in 2021. (Shay Kendler, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir vowed, on Aug. 26, to build a synagogue inside the Muslim holy site Al-Haram Al-Sharif.
Ben-Gvir, as a representation of Israel’s powerful religious Zionist class in the government and society at large, has been candid regarding his designs in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine.
He has advocated a religious war, calling for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the starvation or killing of prisoners and the annexation of the West Bank.
In his capacity as a minister in the equally extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir has worked hard to translate his language into action. He has raided the Palestinian Al-Aqsa Mosque repeatedly, and implemented his starvation policies against Palestinian detainees, going as far as defending rape inside Israeli military detention camps and calling the accused soldiers “our best heroes.”
His supporters have carried out hundreds of assaults and dozens of pogroms targeting Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, at least 670 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since the start of the Gaza war. A large number among those killed and injured were victims of illegal Jewish settlers.
But not all Israelis in the political or security establishments agree with Ben-Gvir’s behavior or tactics. For example, on Aug. 22, Israel’s Shin Bet chief, Ronen Bar, warned against the “indescribable damage” to Israel caused by Ben-Gvir’s actions in East Jerusalem.
“The damage to the State of Israel, especially now … is indescribable: global delegitimization, even among our greatest allies,” Bar wrote in a letter sent to several Israeli ministers.
Bar’s letter may seem odd. The Shin Bet has been instrumental in the killing of numerous Palestinians, in the name of Israeli security. Bar himself is a strong supporter of the settlements, and as hawkish as is required for the person who leads such a notorious organization.
Bar’s conflict with Ben-Gvir, however, is not that of substance, but style. This conflict is only an expression of a much greater ideological and political war among Israel’s top institutions. This war, however, began before the Oct. 7 attack and the ongoing Israeli war and genocide in Gaza.
Seven months before the start of the war, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in a televised speech that “those who think that a real civil war … is a border we won’t cross, have no idea.”
The context of his comments was the “real, deep hate” among Israelis resulting from the attempts by Netanyahu and his extremist government coalition partners to undermine the power of the judiciary.
Demonstration against judicial refom near the Knesset in Jerusalem, Feb. 20, 2023. (Hanay, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The fight over the Supreme Court, however, was merely the tip of the iceberg. The fact that it took Israel five elections in four years to settle on a stable government in December 2022 was itself indicative of Israel’s unprecedented political conflict.
The new government may have been “stable” in terms of the parliamentary balances, but it destabilized the country on all fronts, leading to mass protests, involving the powerful, but increasingly marginalized military class.
The Oct. 7 attack took place at a time of social and political vulnerability, arguably unprecedented since the founding of Israel atop the ruins of historic Palestine in May 1948.
The war, but particularly the failure to achieve any of its objectives, deepened that existing conflict. This led to warnings from politicians and military men that the country was collapsing.
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The clearest of these warnings came from Yitzhak Brik, a former top Israeli military commander. He wrote in Haaretz on Aug. 22 that the “country … is galloping towards the edge of an abyss,” and that it “will collapse within no more than a year.”
Though Brik was blaming, among various factors, Netanyahu’s losing war in Gaza, the anti-Netanyahu political class believes that the crisis mainly lies in the government itself.
This solution, according to recent comments made by Herzog himself, is that “Kahanism needs to be removed from the government.”
Kahanism here is a reference to the Kach Party of Rabbi Meir Kahane. Though now banned, Kach has resurfaced in numerous forms, including in Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit Party. As a disciple of Kahane, Ben-Gvir is set to achieve the vision of the extremist rabbi, that of the complete ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
Kahane addressing his followers in Tel Aviv, 1984. (Dan Hadani, National Library of Israel, The Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
Ben-Gvir and his ilk are fully aware of the historic opportunity that is now available to them as they hope to ignite the much-coveted religious war. They also know that if the war in Gaza ends without advancing their main plan of colonizing the rest of the occupied territories, the opportunity may not present itself ever again.
Ben-Gvir’s rush to achieve the religious Zionist agenda contradicts the traditional form of Israeli colonialism, predicated on the ‘incremental genocide’ of Palestinians and the slow ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities from East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Though the Israeli military believes that illegal settlements are essential, they perceive these colonies in strategic language as a “security buffer” for Israel.
The winners and losers of Israel’s ideological and political war are most likely to emerge following the end of the Gaza war, the outcomes of which will determine other factors, including the very future of the state of Israel, per the estimation of General Yitzhak Brik himself.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a widely published and translated author, an internationally syndicated columnist and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, 2018). He earned a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015), and was a non-resident scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, UCSB. Visit his website.
This article is from Z Network, is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Is it just me or do these Israeli right wing idiots not act like the orange turd.
Why reference Donald Trump when you have Biden and Harris fully complicit in genocide, apologetic rhetoric notwithstanding aimed at fooling the easily fooled American electorate to win votes? Washington as well as Israel has brought its own country to a precipice which it will never be able to explain away. It’s historical record now.
You will not get an argument from me on that genocide point. However Trump has shown lately he has great difficulty putting two coherent sentences together when speaking. So why not? Besides the Israelis played him like a fiddle. It’s a historical record.
Look the country’s leadership over the last 61 years has been atrocious. Trump’s decidedly worse. This rank leadership, as in smell, has managed to lead the country straight to the mess we witness now. During those 61 years 6 republican administrations and 5 democratic, in my opinion the country was lost to the super wealthy. This noted, in my opinion, 4 of those democratic administrations were positioned clearly and solidly right of center, so much so one could hardly consider them as liberal.
Biden and Obama bought completely into the ultra secret world of the national intelligence community and the high tech “cult ” obsessed with monitoring the activities of every person on the damned planet.
Clinton was and is tied at the hip to big money corporations and the intelligence community in too many instances to count. Hardly a liberal, in my opinion.
Carter was drawn and quartered by the D.C. duopoly, the intelligence apparatus and the media, I’ll give him a pass. Noting of course that he only served one term, but for a totally difference reason than the “orange turd”.
Ford as president served to set the table for Ronny and his band of, in my opinion, ultra right wingers.
Nixon, benefited from negotiating with LBJ and the war in Vietnam lingered because of it. What happened to Nixon? He crossed the CIA and paid for it.
LBJ knew plenty about the JFK murder and played ball with the Israelis and the intelligence community. Hardly the actions of a liberal.
JFK was murdered by political enemies and both parties and the intelligence community covered the truth up! Hardly actions of any liberals.
In fairness to Ike he warned us of what was to come of the Military Industrial Complex. He was a republican and fair minded.
Not to omit Harry S. Truman who clearly warned of the dangers of the CIA.
Carl Zaisser what say you about AIPAC and it’s offspring the JCRC?
You want to talk historical record, I’m thinking no. Especially the accurate historical record.
This country has not had a legitimate two party system since the intelligence community stood by and watched as JFK was murdered. Congress got the message and the lobbyists took over. The Fix has been in ever since, in my humble opinion.
The historical record were it complete should reflect exactly how Israel acquired nuclear weapons an event which in my very strong and knowledgeable opinion created the opportunity for evil doers in the U.S. and Israel to position themselves in the key positions of destroyers of the planet.
Thanks for this opportunity to vent the truth such as I see it.
In addition if the historical record was compete we would have our long awaited answer to “Who shot John!”
Give me a break!
Intriguing to me is the capture of the American judicial/police/governmental system that manifests
a decidedly prejudicial treatment of Americans who are pro-ceasefire and pro-human rights of Palestinians. That is, peaceful protesters. Who are variously jailed, suspended and/or fired from university teaching positions. Or their on-line platforms disappeared/cancelled overnight – with a pseudo or no explanation given. How are these blotting outs from public discourse not tyrannical acts and expressions of an oppressive authoritarian mindset? Little Johnny who took a swing bang on little Leo for taking his red crayon without asking is patiently restrained and told by his teacher miss Amber, Johnny do you remember that in our classroom we use words and not our fists when we are angry? Today, grownup John is thrown in the clink for using his words instead of his fists. The utter absurdity and destructiveness of such oppressive actions equals the public’s lack of knowledge about who in the power structure is demanding these fascistic?anti democratic unjust if not illegal use of informal power to suppress, blot out our rights of free speech, assembly and press. Who exactly are behind these edicts? Exactly who is victimizing Americans for their rights? Please. Names. If the victims can be named, then the power pushers can be named. No ?
You asked I’m here with an answer. Try AIPAC their JCRC, Jewish Community Relations Councils. Check ithem out!
From outside, Zionism is uniform. Part of this ideology is deference of Exile (galut) Jews to Israel (Aliya, elevated), so as observed in USA, UK etc., it is a uniform deference and apology of whatever the state of Israel is doing. But inside, there are profound differences, with newly empowered forces proceeding toward
a. super-aggressive policies that, worst come to worst, will be rescued by the Messiah
b. theocracy.
The more secular traditional Zionists believe in more “realistic” policies and at least nominal equality between Jews in Israel. The seeming failure of traditional Zionists that form the bulk of the opposition is that their main argument is not any kind of fairness or justice toward non-Jews “between the Sea and the River”, but purely pragmatic, what Israel can get away with. The traditionalists claimed that not everything, and they were proven wrong again and again. And thus they lost influence within Israel. But even so, the theocrats, besides being beastly toward Palestinians and Arabs in general, they threaten their way of life, segregated beaches in Tel-Aviv, anyone, the distaste with their petty corruption, troglodyte behavior etc, so there is some equilibrium between the two camps, in the next elections pendulum can swing against Ben Gwir and allies.
Palestinians seem clueless about bridging to Israeli progressives.
Apologies, without first looking at my own form in a mirror, for a moment there, thought you were referring to our Big Brother, Americans, who are, by nature, naturally more aware and enlightened!
The parallels to the United States here are illuminating.
In a Hitler cabinet…this guy would have been a star!!! Killer instinct and going for the jugular.
Mr. Baroud just call it dog eat dog affair. That’s the end of an unjust system!
Israel, since its founding, has been a festering sore of racism and chauvinism that was given a pretty image for public relations purposes. But now the band aid has been ripped off and we see it for all its sickness and ugliness.