How Ben-Gvir is at the centre of Jewish terror ravaging Palestinian lands

Israel’s domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet recently warned the Netanyahu government that Jewish terrorist activities, which have turned to “broad, open activity”, pose a clear and present threat to Israel’s long-term existence in the Middle East.

Shin Bet head Ronen Bar drew a sombre picture over the recent violent activities of Jewish militant groups in occupied areas, most of which are related to Israel’s racist Kahanist movement that aims to force all Palestinians out of their native lands.

Shin Bet’s warning, which was recently leaked to the Israeli press last week, came amid Israel’s brutal war that has killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza and displaced hundreds of thousands from their destroyed homes.

Barely a few days before the warning, Israel’s ultra-nationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – leader of the pro-Kahanist Otzma Yehudit party (Jewish Power) – had shown up at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third holiest site for the world's Muslims, in yet another act of provocation.

Otzma Yehudit is part of Netanyahu’s coalition, the most far-right and extremist government in Israel to date.

Right after Ben-Gvir’s visit, illegal settler attacks stepped up attacks in occupied territories. In one particularly vicious incident in the Palestinian village of Jit, settlers attacked and burned Palestinian property as Israeli police – who operate under Ben-Gvir’s command – stood by.

“(S)ome will say this activity is the implementation of the ideology of Rabbi Kahane combined with the substructure of 'Rebellion' inspired by Rabbi Ginsburgh. Both say it's easier to destroy the existing (Palestinian) social fabric than to mend,” Bar wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, referring to racist Jewish attacks in the West Bank.

Rabbi Kahane is the founder of the Kahanist movement, whose political wing, the Kach party, was banned by the Israeli government in the mid-1990s. The US has designated the party as a global terrorist entity.

Rabbi Ginsburg is another fundamentalist Jewish religious figurehead, known to be the inspiration for many violent settlers of the Hilltop Youth, a pro-Kahanist organisation, which advocates "deportation, revenge, and annihilation of Gentiles that posed a threat to the people of Israel."

Gentiles refer to non-Jews like Palestinians in the terminology of Judaism.

Most Kahanists are currently gathered under the banner of Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit.

Forcing a civil war?

Bar expressed worries that "the spectacles we saw on the Temple Mount" – the Jewish name for the Al-Aqsa Compound – can lead "to profuse bloodshed and change the state's face unrecognisably", referring to a possibility that religious fanatics like Ben-Gvir and his Kahanist followers can subvert Israel’s secular founding principles, leading to a civil war.

The visit also "created a very significant risk to regional security," he added, referring to the sensitive character of the compound in the Islamic world and rising tensions between Israel and its enemies across the Middle East. Ben-Gvir responded to Bar’s accusations by demanding that Netanyahu fire the security chief.

“The Shin Beit message to Netanyahu is a courageous and very necessary warning. The settler violence against West Bank villages is terrorism that shakes the moral foundations of our state,” says Alon Liel, the former director general of the Israeli foreign ministry.

But he also thinks that the Netanyahu government “will do nothing because some of his ministers are backing these terrorists”, referring to Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the minister of finance, who is another religious Zionist party leader.

A recent Haaretz editorial said that “it will be impossible to fight Jewish terror” as long as Ben-Gvir and Smotrich function as ministers in the current government. “As long as the former is in charge of the police and the latter is in charge of the occupied territories, Jewish terror will know that it has the backing of higher authorities,” the editorial added.

Both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich represent Kahanists and other religiously fanatic groups which feed illegal settler attacks on Palestinians.

“As somebody who was born in Israel and served the country for 35 years, I am ashamed,” Liel, a former top diplomat, tells TRT World, referring to the settler terrorist attacks and their backers in the Knesset.

On Wednesday, the US State Department and the Department of Treasury imposed new sanctions against Hashomer Yosh, a far-right non-governmental organisation based in the occupied West Bank, for its support of Jewish illegal settler violence against Palestinian civilians.

Hashomer Yosh, whose senior members have strong connections with both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, has been funded and backed by the Israeli government.

According to Bar, Jewish terrorist groups are “using” sometimes “weapons that were distributed by the state lawfully,” an indication of the Netanyahu government’s involvement in their illicit activities, ranging from “evading security forces to attacking the security forces” and to “cutting themselves off from the establishment to receiving legitimacy from certain officials in the establishment."

Does Shin Bet care about Palestinian suffering?

But the terrorism warning from Shin Bet, known as Shabak by its Hebrew acronym, did not impress Palestinians much.

“The shabak warning is an attempt to portray settler terrorism as an 'extreme', and as a matter of internal dispute. Those who are worried about it, are worried because it’s not good for Israel, not because it is terrorising Palestinians,” says Abir Kopty, a Palestinian writer and academic.

“They are afraid that it will reach Israelis if not stopped,” Kopty tells TRT World, referring to the fact that Israeli religiously fanatic groups might start targeting secular-minded Israeli citizens in the next stage following their attacks on Palestinians.

Kopty also sees Bar’s letter, which received wide coverage in Western media, as “an Israeli show to the international community” to prove that Israel is a kind of democracy. But indeed, “one hand funds and arms and directs those settlers, the other makes it seem it does not represent Israel,” she says.

However, Jewish settler violence has been continuing since even before Israel’s establishment in Palestinian lands in 1948 – with Zionist terrorist groups’ activities going back to the 1940s.

Long before the Hilltop Youth, there were Haganah, Irgun, and the Stern Gang (Lehi), which launched terror attacks against the former British forces and Palestinians alike in the 1940s.

“One should ask a question: what is the Shabak doing to prevent settlers from acts of terrorism? Nothing. The army? Nothing. Israel is a genocidal colonialist country from head to toe,” says Kopty.