[Salon] 'The People of Israel Will Settle Gaza': Netanyahu's Ministers at Far-right Conference Endorse Expulsion of Palestinians - Israel News

https://mondediplo.com/2022/09/03israel-nationalism
Israel in the grip of hardline religious nationalism
Influential rightwing ideologue Yoram Hazony believes in the supremacy of Jewish values. That precept has now been enshrined in Israeli law. (TP-correction; “fascist values,” which excludes non-fascist Jewish values, like those of JVP, Bt’selem, etc.)

Keeping watch: Israeli settler in Dolev, West Bank, 1984
Chanania Herman · GPO · Getty

On 1 November Israel will hold its fifth general election in just over three years. Polls confirm that the momentum is with the nationalist right and its allies in religious Zionist parties, especially among voters aged 18-25. Opinion polls predict a large majority — 71 out of 120 seats — for Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition (1). Within it, Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party and Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Strength) party (2) are expected to win between 11 and 14 seats.
This development is partly the result of religious nationalist ideology becoming entrenched in parts of Israeli society. One of its main proponents is the Israeli American Yoram Hazony, who has spread it among the American and European far right. His book The Virtue of Nationalism attracted attention in conservative American circles as soon as it was published in September 2018; it became a bestseller and was translated into some 20 languages. He had been inspired to write it two years previously by seeing nationalism rise after the UK’s Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election victory in the US. Hazony has become a key figure for many ultra-nationalists around the world and may have inspired the foreign policy known as the Trump Doctrine (3). He’s on good terms with Hungary’s president Viktor Orbán, who regularly quotes him.
My goal in life is to demonstrate that the Marxist-Zionist concept has failed in Israel ... Now we have to fight for the future of how we think about the Jewish people as a whole - Yoram Hazony

Minus its antisemitism and updated for the present day, Hazony’s position contains most of the elements of integral nationalism as theorised by the rightwing French thinker Charles Maurras (who said, ‘a true nationalist places his country above everything’): rejection of universalism, Enlightenment ideals and the principles of the French Revolution. Hazony sees the European Union as embodying a form of imperialism that seeks to recreate the Holy Roman Empire and he regards Hitler as an imperialist rather than a nationalist.

Shortly after his book appeared, Hazony founded the Edmund Burke Foundation in Washington to strengthen ‘the principles of national conservatism in Western and other democratic countries’. The Irish-born British statesman Edmund Burke was a leading critic of the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1790. The foundation’s co-chair, David Brog, is the former executive director of the American organisation Christians United for Israel, which claims to have ten million members.
In June 2022 the Burke Foundation set out its ideology in a manifesto, ‘National Conservatism: A statement of principles’ (4). The introduction reads, ‘We see the tradition of independent, self-governed nations as the foundation for restoring a proper public orientation toward patriotism and courage, honour and loyalty, religion and wisdom, congregation and family, man and woman, the sabbath and the sacred, and reason and justice. We are conservatives because we see such virtues as essential to sustaining our civilisation.’ And article 4, ‘God and Public Religion’, reads, ‘Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honoured by the state and other institutions both public and private. At the same time, Jews and other religious minorities are to be protected.’
Meir Kahane’s influence
Hazony’s religious and ideological journey began as an undergraduate at Princeton. One evening in 1984, Meir Kahane came there to give a talk to 250 Jewish students. Kahane, the rabbi who founded the far-right Jewish Defense League (JDL), had been found guilty of terrorism in the US and imprisoned several times in Israel for attacks against Palestinians. In 1984 he had just been elected to the Knesset as part of an overtly racist list. His speech opened Hazony’s eyes: ‘We were mesmerised ... Rabbi Kahane was the only Jewish leader who ever cared enough about our lives to actually come around and tell us what he thought we could do. He was the only one who seemed to understand how much we wanted a good reason to stay Jewish’ (5).
Hazony, writing just after Kahane’s assassination in 1990, made clear that he never subscribed to his violent political views, but he did adopt Kahane’s neo-messianic brand of theology: ‘Let us never forget that we came here to the Land of Israel to build a Jewish, not a western country. It is Jewish values that are true, not western values (or eastern, for that matter). What is right and true is not to be determined by liberalism or democracy or progressive circles’ (6). (TP-Kahane’s fascist ideas.)
Five years after the Princeton talk, Hazony moved with his wife and four children to the Eli settlement in the central occupied West Bank. While working on his thesis in political philosophy, he began writing for the Jerusalem Post, Israel’s main English-language daily, which had just been acquired by a Canadian press group and moved to the right. David Bar-Ilan, its executive editor, liked the young Israeli American settler’s writing and introduced him to Binyamin Netanyahu, chairman of Likud.
Hazony helped edit Netanyahu’s A Place Among the Nations, the book which set out the future prime minister’s programme; it was published in English in 1993 and a Hebrew version followed in 1995. There were already signs of Hazony’s trademark approach to history. For example, the claim — highly contested by historians — that it was not the Romans who expelled the Jews from Palestine after the Jewish revolt under Bar Kochba in 135 AD, but the Arabs in 636, in the early days of Islam (7).
Another example of how Hazony may have influenced the book occurs when Netanyahu asserts (in the Hebrew edition) that ‘the Israeli left may be suffering from a chronic disease that has affected the Jewish people for a century: the Marxism that impregnated the Jewish leftist, far-left and communist movements in Eastern Europe.’ An affliction that might explain why, after the June 1967 war, some leftwing Israelis wanted to give back the conquered territories.
Preparing the children for settlement life: Israeli settlers, 1980
Esaias Baitel · Gamma-Rapho · Getty
‘Jewish and democratic’
In 1994, with financial backing from wealthy Americans linked to Netanyahu, Hazony set up the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, a thinktank intended to tackle the ‘identity crisis’ that ‘the entire Jewish people is suffering from’. In Nekouda, the mouthpiece of the settler movement, he explained, ‘My goal in life is to demonstrate that the Marxist-Zionist concept has failed in Israel. No one believes in it any more, and now we have to fight for the future of how we think about the Jewish people as a whole and in Israel in particular’ (8). (TP- See Mein Kampf for the German version of this, or his later book: "Conservatism: A Rediscovery.")

Let us never forget that we came here to the Land of Israel to build a Jewish, not a western country. It is Jewish values that are true, not western values (or eastern, for that matter). What is right and true is not to be determined by liberalism or democracy or progressive circles Meir Kahane none
In The Jewish State: the Struggle for Israel’s Soul, published six years later, Hazony claims to reveal what he sees as the great conspiracy in which ‘culture makers renounce[d] the idea of the Jewish state’. It dates back to the 1920s, he writes, when the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was set up by great Jewish intellectuals, including Judah Leon Magnes, an American Reform rabbi, pacifist and opponent of nationalism, and the philosopher Martin Buber, an advocate of reaching an agreement with the Arabs and supporter of a binational state. Hazony accuses the historian and philosopher Gershom Scholem, who was a specialist in Jewish mysticism, of committing the crime of urging Zionist leaders to neutralise their movement’s messianic tendencies. According to Hazony, this ‘systematically strip[ped Zionism’s] Jewish basis of political pretensions’ (9).
Hazony also takes Asa Kasher, a philosopher at Tel Aviv University, to task for his definition of ‘a Jewish and democratic state’: ‘ “A Jewish state” in the full sense of the term is a state in whose social colouration there is found the clear _expression_ of ... the Jewish identities of its citizens. In a “Jewish and democratic” state this colouration is not created by force, nor in the law, but rather through the aggregation of the free choices of the citizens.’ To which Hazony responds, ‘Kasher claims that a “Jewish and democratic” state is one in which the people are Jewish and the state is a universalist democracy. In other words, a “Jewish and democratic Jewish state” is a non-Jewish state’ (10). According to this logic, the democratic principle would thus lead to the dejudaisation of Israel.
Hazony’s list of enemies of his vision of Israel is long. Top of that list are the Supreme Court’s justices and its former president, Aharon Barak, who oversaw the constitutional reform and defined Israel’s values as a Jewish state as ‘universal values common to the members of a democratic society’. Hazony criticises Israel’s leading writers too for rejecting the very concept of a Jewish state. Among them are the late Amos Oz, who considered nationalism humanity’s curse, and the late AB Yehoshua, who argued that Israel should be treated as a normal country. Also targeted is the writer David Grossmann, who ‘earnestly seeks to teach Israelis that it is weakness that gives birth to virtue [and yet] to embrace it is to demolish the foundation on which the entire edifice of the Jewish state rests’ (11).
Hazony, through his ties to the Republicans and the Jewish right in the US, is a central part of the religious Zionist ideological ecosystem of messianic rabbis and ultra-nationalist organisations that has built up over years. The Tikvah Fund, created in 1998, finances most of them through donations from wealthy Americans. The Kohelet Policy Forum, founded in 2012, is a religious Zionist thinktank which, according to the daily Haaretz, quietly runs the Knesset (12). Its lobbying helped have a discriminatory new basic law passed in July 2018. This stipulates, ‘The State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish People in which it realises its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination. The realisation of the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish People ... The State views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value, and shall act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.’ Twenty-four years after he set up the Shalem Center, Yoram Hazony’s ideas have become the law of the land.

'The People of Israel Will Settle Gaza': Netanyahu's Ministers at Far-right Conference Endorse Expulsion of Palestinians - Israel News - Haaretz.com
Nir HassonJan 29, 2024 5:32 pm IST
Netanyahu government ministers chanting and dancing at the 'Conference for the Victory of Israel – Settlement Brings Security: Returning to the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria' held in Jerusalem this weekCredit: Olivier Fitoussi
Thousands of participants, including ministers and coalition MKs turned out at the Binyanei Ha'uma International Convention Center for Sunday night's conference calling for the re-settlement of Gaza.
In between invitations to join new groups dedicated to settling specific areas of Gaza, and triumphant cries that "the Oslo Accords are dead," what really stood out was the repeated calls for the transfer of the Palestinian population out of the Gaza Strip.
The huge lobby of the ICC was filled with stands replete with banners inviting the masses who turned out for the confab titled, "Conference for the Victory of Israel" to register for settlement groups.
Those interested could choose from an ultra-Orthodox group planning to settle near Rafah and the "New Gaza" group that plans to establish a 'green city' in the Gaza Strip.
Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Amichai Eliyahu with Likud MK Ariel Kelner and Samaria Regional Council Head Yossi Dagan.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
The latter offers a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take part in the rebuilding of the Jewish city of Gaza as a green technological city open to all and uniting all sections of Israeli society."
A huge map of Gaza hung on one of the walls with the names of the Katif Bloc settlements that were dismantled during the Gaza disengagement in 2005; alongside them were the names of planned future settlements. One of the organizers said that dozens of families had registered for each of the six groups planning to settle in Gaza.
The head of the Samaria Regional Council Yossi Dagan enthused the participants. "Repeat after me: 'The Oslo Accords are dead, the People of Israel live," he screamed from the stage.
A sign reading "Returning to the Gaza region and the northern Samaria."Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
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The audience repeated the ecstatic chant three times; among them were ministers, including senior figures and Knesset members from the coalition, including Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Strock (Religious Zionism), Itamar Ben-Gvir, Amichai Eliyahu and Yitzhak Wasserlauf (Otzma Yehudit), Haim Katz, Amichai Chikli, Shlomo Karhi (Likud) and many others.
"There is something about the health, vigor, joy and dedication to the Land of Israel that I see here that has the potential to give us great strength," said Smotrich.
Samaria Regional Council Head Yossi DaganCredit: Olivier Fitoussi
It was indeed an extraordinary event. The thousands who turned up sang and danced with joy and enthusiasm that are rare in Israel these days.
The biggest response came for videos of soldiers in Gaza calling for the Strip to be re-settled, shouting out that "there are no innocents" or photographing themselves with banners for the Katif bloc. The crowd responded to these deafening cries and whistles.
Itamar Ben Gvir, the head of the Otzma Yehudit party, got a rock-star reception. After dancing enthusiastically with the audience, he took the stage to shouts, whistles and cries of "Death to the terrorists."
In his remarks at the conference, Ben-Gvir called for the execution of terrorists and the encouragement of what he terms 'emigration' for Gazans. "We have already seen and understood that running away brings war and that if we don't want another October 7, we must return home and control the territory, as well as propose a moral, Torah and halakhic logic – encouraging emigration [for Gazans] and the death penalty for terrorists.
"They must be executed, Nukhba after Nukhba, terrorist after terrorist." Later, he called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying: "It would be a shame to wait another 19 years to understand that we must bring the Katif Bloc and northern Samaria back into our hands. It's time to return home, to return to the Land of Israel, to encourage emigration, the death penalty for terrorists."
Answers as to what the future may hold, in the eyes of the participants, for the two million Palestinians living in Gaza can be found in a booklet distributed by the organizers.
A member of the audience holds a sign that reads "Only transfer will bring peace."Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
Attorney Aviad Visoli writes that "Nakba Two, i.e., the mass expulsion of Gaza's Arabs, is fully justified by the laws of war." Rabbi Uzi Sharbaf, the spiritual father of the Gaza settlement movement, explains in the booklet that the mitzva of inheriting the Land of Israel "means conquering the territory of the land according to the borders told to Abraham, as well as the destruction and expulsion of anyone who opposes the rule of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, just as Joshua ben Nun did."
Eliyahu Libman, whose son Elyakim is being held hostage in Gaza, explained, based on Jewish sources, that "even those who cannot be killed must be expelled and disinherited; there are no innocents."
Likud minister Shlomo Karhi clarified that the transfer of the Palestinians of Gaza, in his words "voluntary emigration," is the "only way to exact a heavy price from the Nazis of Hamas and ensure security." Karhi explained "voluntary" as follows: "'Voluntary' is at times a situation you impose [on someone] until they give their consent."
While the conference slogan was "settlement," what it was really about was transfer – this was stated explicitly and repeatedly on stage, in countless forms.
Members of the Israeli settler community gather at the pro-resettlement convention, Jerusalem, January 28.Credit: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
For example, Daniella Weiss, one of the organizers of the conference, left little room for doubt as to her vision: "There are two options on the agenda: Either Gaza will be Jewish and flourishing or it will return to being Arab and murderous," she told the audience.
"Millions of refugees from war move from country to country across the world and only these monsters must remain connected to their land? Should they of all people stay in a region they have turned into hell? October 7 changed history. Gaza, the southern gate, will open wide, the Gazans will pass through it to the rest of the world and the People of Israel will settle Gaza."
Sunday's conference may also be remembered for another landmark: the rightward drift of Israeli ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Alongside the Kahanist ministers and Knesset members from Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit and the Likud, Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf of United Torah Judaism also showed up.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir attends the convention calling for Israel to rebuild settlements in the Gaza Strip and the northern part of the West Bank, in Jerusalem on Sunday.Credit: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
"I will support correcting a historical injustice and returning to the Katif Bloc and the Gaza Strip," he said on stage to rapturous applause. "The Katif settlements will singe the consciousness of the enemy and increase the security of the people of Israel... If the Israeli government takes such a decision, as Minister of Construction and Housing, I will act to implement that decision and renew our past glory," he promised.
Among those at the conference was Avi Farhan, one of the symbols of the previous settlement in the Gaza Strip. Farhan, 77, was evicted from Yamit in the Sinai Peninsula and then settled in Elei Sinai in northern Gaza.
A man holds an Israeli flag as members of the Israeli settler community gather at a pro-settlement convention in Jerusalem, January 28.Credit: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
Ahead of Sunday's event, he reprinted a manifesto he had distributed in 2005 ahead of the disengagement, in which he had called on the government not to withdraw from three settlements in northern Gaza. "We should dig up the foundations of the homes, grind up the concrete and recycle it to build, that will be the quickest and most environmentally friendly way," he said.
Rabbi Uzi Sharbaf however denounced the compromising stance taken by Farhan and others who called to start building in only part of the Strip. "When we talk about the Gaza Strip, we aren't talking about northern Gaza, not about central Gaza and not about southern Gaza, we are talking about all of it. What is Area A, B, C? What is northern Gaza that we might start from? This whole region is one land."
As the evening came to a close, representatives of the settlement groups together with dozens of children and adults went up and danced on the stage hoisting aloft flags and banners. Singer Yonatan Razel sent the crowd into a frenzy: "We are going back to Gush Katif, with God's help, we shall soon sing this song in Gaza." Dozens in the audience joined the dancing. "We have not experienced such joy since Simchat Torah," said Razel. He was referring to October 7.