Bezalel Smotrich likes to call himself a "fascist" and a "homophobe," and he makes no secret of it. He also claims to be racist, anti-Arab, supremacist, colonialist, pro-annexation and revisionist. Smotrich is no less than the finance minister of Israel's far-right government. And governor of the occupied West Bank.
And now he has been invited to visit Paris on November 13, for a gala by the Israel Is Forever organization to rally "French-speaking Zionist forces to the service of Israel's power and history." This organization, which is close to extremist Israeli settlers, is headed by the French-Israeli lawyer Nili Kupfer-Naouri, who has maintained that there is no such thing as an innocent civilian population in Gaza − while advocating the blockage of humanitarian aid entering the bombed-out, bereft Palestinian enclave.
Described as a 'war criminal'
Smotrich, himself a settler in the occupied West Bank, is the man who pointed to three possible options for Palestinians back in 2017: Live under occupation without rights, leave their land, or rebel and be eliminated.
Smotrich is the minister described as a "war criminal" by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and who, in February 2023, called for "annihilating" the Palestinian town of Huwara, in the occupied West Bank, after two settlers were killed there and far-right settlers set fire to the town. The same settlers who have been carrying out massacres since 2023.
Smotrich is the minister invited to Paris back in March 2023 by the same Israel Is Forever organization, to pay tribute to the organization's founder, Jacques Kupfer [1946-2021], a former Betar activist who decried the Oslo Accords and, after the assassination by an Israeli Jewish extremist of then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, called the latter a "traitor." Smotrich declared in Paris: "The Palestinian people is an invention that is less than 100 years old ... is there a Palestinian history or culture? Nothing."
"There is no such thing as the Palestinian people," he added. His lectern displayed a map including not only Israel and occupied Palestine, like the one presented to the UN by Benjamin Netanyahu, but also the territory of present-day Jordan. For this supporter of "Greater Israel," annexation is part of a program that transforms the Torah into a new property map.
Amputees without anesthesia
Smotrich is not content with his hateful rhetoric and his calls for murder. He acts. By speeding up colonization, which is illegal under international law, to prevent any possibility of a Palestinian state. By arming the supremacist settlers who expel Palestinians and confiscate their land and homes. By embezzling the finances of the Palestinian Authority. Above all, by refusing Gaza any ceasefire, even one that would allow the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas fighters and their allies since October 7, 2023, and of Palestinian prisoners.
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