It’s Official, Israeli Minister Says He’s a Fascist
Bezalel Smotrich is Normalized
January 18. 2003. Israeli Finance Minister and de facto “overlord” of the West Bank, Bezalel Smotrich, said in a recording played by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster that he’s a “fascist homophobe”. Haaretz quotes Smotrich as saying, “I’m a fascist homophobe, but I’m a man of my word, and I won’t stone gays.” You would think that a country populated by millions whose grandparents suffered a Holocaust at the hands of a fascist would have erupted at such a statement, but that hasn’t happened. Apparently in all the revolting extremes that are part of the Israeli government, “fascist” has just been normalized.
There was an interesting article about Smotrch seven years ago in Haaretz. It’s unfortunately behind a paywall, but here are some highlights.
1) “By definition, claims Smotrich, a Jew cannot and should not ever be called a terrorist in Israel.”
2) He said, “The murder in Duma, with all its severity, is not a terror attack. Period.” (He was talking about the burning alive of the Dawabshe family in 2015).
Talking about the celebrants at a wedding who stabbed a picture of the murdered Dawabshe infant, he said these people were not terror-supporters. He prefers to call them “well-intentioned youngsters” gone astray.
3) In 2006 in the Gaza Strip he was organizing to resist evacuation of Israeli government ordered evacuation. “Reportedly caught with 700 liters of fuel and oil, Smotrich and four others were held in detention for several weeks before being released without charges.”
3) In 2006 he organized the “Beast Parade,” in which he and his friends “marched in the streets of Jerusalem with goats and donkeys as a way of spotlighting so-called ‘deviant acts,’ and mocking the gay pride parade in the city.” He was trying to say that gays were beasts.
4) He believes that the “Land of Israel” was given to “us” by “God”. By “us” he means those of his cult who upended traditional Judaism and welded it to Zionism.
Other facts about Smotrich for your edification:
1) His Twitter account was suspended (for 12 hours) in 2018 because he said Ahed Tamimi should have been shot in the knee rather than arrested.
2) He says human rights groups are an “existential threat” to Israel.
3) He blames the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin on Israel’s own security police the Shin Bet and that “right-wing rhetoric against Rabin at the time was justified and played no role in inciting his killing”.
In Other News
There was a big, big rally in Tel Aviv against the government last week. Reportedly some 80,000 gathered to protest plans of Netanyahu’s government to gut the power of the Israeli Supreme Court. That sized rally in Israel is really large. Realize that would be a giant rally in the U.S. which has over 50 times Israel’s population. For all its size though it was limited in its thinking. As Haaretz writer Gideon Levy wrote in a recent column the Israeli Supreme Court has been always worthless for safeguarding Palestinian rights. The court system of an apartheid state is just falling to its lowest level, where it will be unable to guarantee rights even for the superior “whites”.
Further limiting the usefulness of the rally was that fact that in attendance were “former opposition leader Tzipi Livni, former prime minister Ehud Barak, National Unity party leader and former defense minister Benny Gantz, former IDF chief and National Unity lawmaker Gadi Eisenkot, Labor party leader Merav Michaeli, and Ra’am party leader Mansour Abbas”. All these people took part in governments that murdered Palestinians with abandon. In fact under the “Government of Change” in Israel in 2022 more Palestinians were killed than since the Second Intifada.
Israel is not classically fascist, a government using naked force to smash working class organizations and resistance, but its leading figures are not appalled at being described with the fascist label as it “reforms” the country to impose a state religion and to further set its apartheid in stone.