User:Alon Alush/samo

Flag of Kach, a former ultranationalist political party in Israel

Far-right politics in Israel are political ideologies characterized by ultranationalist, religious, and conservative views. This term is often used to describe those who advocate for policies such as the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, opposition to Palestinian statehood, and the preservation of Jewish cultural and religious traditions.

History

Post-1967

The aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War was marked by an increased prominence of Religious Zionism and the settler movement. Many events, including the Egypt–Israel peace treaty, the First Intifada, the Oslo Accords, the Second intifada and the Israeli disengagement from Gaza caused parts of the political right to become the political far-right.

Kach party

The Kach party, founded by Meir Kahane in 1971, was a far-right Orthodox Jewish, Religious Zionist political party in Israel. The party's ideology, known as Kahanism, advocated for the transfer of the Arab population from Israel and the imposition of Israeli sovereignty over all of Palestine, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Kach earned a single seat in the Knesset in the 1984 Israeli legislative election. Following Baruch Goldstein's massacre of 29 Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarchs, Israel designated Kach, which Goldstein supported, as a terror organization in 1994. In the 2009 Israeli legislative election, Michael Ben-Ari, previously a member of the banned Kach party, entered the Knesset as part of the National Union faction. In the 2021 Israeli legislative election, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a follower of Kach, was elected as a representative of the Otzma Yehudit party.

Recent events

Current cabinet of Israel

The 37th Cabinet of Israel, formed on December 29, 2022, following the Knesset election on November 1, 2022, has been described as the most right-wing government in Israeli history, as well as Israel's most religious government. The coalition government consists of seven parties — Likud, United Torah Judaism, Shas, Religious Zionist Party, Otzma Yehudit, Noam, and National Unity — and is led by Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel's far-right ministers have made controversial comments during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter told Israeli Channel 12 that the war would be "Gaza's Nakba," using the Arabic word for “catastrophe” that many use to describe the 1948 displacement of roughly 700,000 Palestinians. Israel's Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu said in an interview that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was "one of the possibilities". Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Palestinians should be excluded from "security zones" in the occupied West Bank even to "harvest olives". He has also called for the creation of "sterile security zones" around settlements in the West Bank to "prevent Arabs from entering them". Israel's Minister for Advancement of Women May Golan said "I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza, and that every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did."

Judicial reforms

In 2023, as part of a campaign for judicial reform, a bill known as the "reasonableness" bill was passed in Israel. This controversial law limited the power of the Supreme Court to declare government decisions unreasonable. In one instance, more than 80,000 Israeli protesters rallied in Tel Aviv against the far-right's government's plans to overhaul the judicial system. In early 2024, the Supreme Court of Israel struck down the reform under the grounds that it would deal a "severe and unprecedented blow to the core characteristics of the State of Israel as a democratic state".

Courses of action

Various movements and organizations in the Israeli far-right have used a variety of ways over the years to achieve their political goals, including:

• Parliamentary representation: Some of the radical right-wing political parties in Israel (such as the Kach party led by Meir Kahane, Otzma Yehudit, Eretz Yisrael Shelanu) were represented in the Knesset in the past or tried to run for the Knesset but were not elected.
• Establishment of Israeli outposts in protest of attacks carried out by Palestinian militant organizations.
• Jewish extremist terrorism: Individuals and various organizations have carried out terrorist attacks against Arabs, including the assassination of Palestinian mayors by the Jewish Underground group, the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, the murder of the boy Mohammed Abu Khdeir, and the Duma arson attack.
• "Price tag attacks": Attacks and acts of vandalism committed primarily in the occupied West Bank by extremist Israeli settler youths against Palestinian Arabs, and to a lesser extent, against left-wing Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, Christians, and Israeli security forces.
• Political violence against political opponents, such as the murder of Emil Greenzweig, the attempted assassination of Zeev Sternhal, and the Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

Criticism

Several journalists and human rights groups such as B'Tselem, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch claim that the ideology advocated by the Israeli far-right are fascist and racist towards Palestinians, Arab citizens of Israel and immigrants. They see it as a danger to democracy, and claim that it uses violence and encourages violation of human rights. President of the United States Joe Biden said Benjamin Netanyahu's government contained "some of the most extreme" members he had ever seen.

See also

• Jewish extremist terrorism
• Israeli settler violence
• One-state solution