FactualTwenty-seven years after the ban on the Kach party of extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, which advocated the establishment of a Jewish theocratic state and the expulsion of the Palestinians, Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of his followers, was elected deputy in March thanks to the support of Benyamin Netanyahu.
For a long time Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of the Jewish supremacist party Otzma Yehudit – “Jewish power” in Hebrew – had a portrait of Baruch Goldstein hung in his living room. This Jewish extremist who, at the dawn of February 25, 1994, in the middle of the month of Ramadan, shot at Palestinian faithful praying in the vault of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lie according to tradition. The carnage, stopped by worshipers who beat the killer to death, left 29 Palestinians dead and 125 injured. Shortly before running for the Israeli legislative elections in the spring, Itamar Ben-Gvir won the picture. Since March 23, the lawyer, openly racist and homophobic, entered the Knesset.
“When he removed this photo, he said it was not that important to him”, assures Noam Arnon, who judges the massacre “Terrible”. Pepper and salt beard, shoulders a little hunched and a kippah knitted on the skull, he is the representative of the Jewish settlers in Hebron, a supposedly violent community, illegally settled since 1968 in the heart of the Palestinian city in the south of the occupied West Bank. Many here gave their voice to the Religious Zionism list, which brings together the parties of the religious ultra-right: Otzma Yehudit, the Noam party, which campaigns against the granting of rights for the LGBT community, and the Religious Zionist Party of Bezalel Smotrich. . Noam Arnon voted for them, but he tempers Itamar Ben-Gvir’s weight in breaking the parliamentary list, which won six of the 120 Knesset seats.
“Fanatics”
In Hebron however, so few are those who agree to talk about it, Otzma Yehudit has many supporters, especially among the Franco-Israeli settlers. At the restaurant next to the Patriarchs’ cellar, the 33-year-old waiter has already voted several times for Itamar Ben-Gvir. “The first thing he has to do is kick out all the Arab parties. Their deputies say it openly: they do not recognize the Jewish state, they hate us, they want to destroy us! Israel is not an Arab state, so why would there be Arab MPs in the Knesset? “, loose David, blond beard and curls tucked behind his ears, kippah on his head.
This religious Jew, originally from Chechnya, claims a “Halakhic state”, based on Jewish law, in which non-Jews would have an inferior status and from whom the majority would ultimately be excluded. He dreams of a great Israel, with borders encompassing “Jordan, part of Syria and Saudi Arabia”. A vision with strong messianic accents, nourished by a visceral hatred towards those he calls “Arabs” or “Muslims”; a detestation he says he takes from his childhood in the Caucasus and attacks by Muslims against his family. “If I know that Arabs want to kill me, I will kill them first”, he swears.
You have 68.05% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
