Who is more valuable to Israel: Ben-Gvir/Smotrich or the United States? - opinion

The Hamas war makes it clearer than ever that the United States is the critical ally for the security of the State of Israel. After the October 7 massacre, the US proclaimed to the world that governments’ primary responsibility is to protect the lives of their citizens. Therefore, Israel had the right – and the obligation – to go to war to defeat Hamas and end its control of Gaza. The major European governments followed suit.

The US vetoed UN resolutions calling for a ceasefire that would leave Hamas in power, unpunished for its atrocities, and Israel’s deterrence permanently shattered.

The US resupplied Israel’s munitions – needed for the IDF’s offensive in Gaza – and the Iron Dome defense systems, which block the rocket attacks on Israel. Without America, Israel would be forced to stop its counter-offensive against Hamas prematurely, as happened repeatedly in the military operations from Cast Lead in 2008 to Guardians of the Wall in 2021. Those ceasefires left Hamas in control and able to expand its military networks and tunnels to massive proportions.

American support for Israel is to uphold America’s national interests. But the depth of the support is based on admiration for Israel as a democracy, on the emotional attachment of evangelicals and Christian Zionists (such as President Joe Biden himself), and on a broad swath of Americans who identify with shared values and respect Israel’s moral conduct. This support, however, is undermined by the behavior of ministers such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir in the ruling coalition.

The US Administration is also under pressure to show that it is a friend and protector of the Palestinian people. This is reflected in America’s push for humanitarian pauses in Gaza, in its frequent calls to Israel to obey the laws of war and minimize civilian casualties, and in Biden’s repeated denunciation of lawless violence by some West Bank settlers against Palestinians.

The US has also come out against Israel reoccupying Gaza. It has suggested that an upgraded Palestinian Authority (aided by international forces) take over governance of Gaza after the war.

Israel is fighting an existential war 

Israel is fighting an existential war and need not obey all American instructions and policy suggestions. But the last thing Israel should be doing is disdainfully flouting American policy suggestions or allowing actions that are morally repugnant to its supporters in the US.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an alliance with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir in order to create a ruling majority coalition. That is his prerogative. But now he is allowing them to function in ways that offend the Biden Administration and disgust Israel’s supporters in America.

The lawless violence against Palestinian neighboring settlements in the West Bank – including threatening people and demanding they leave – is morally wrong. These behaviors undermine Israel’s standing as a state of law and as a democracy that respects the human rights of all. Instead of ordering a police or IDF crackdown, Ben-Gvir supports these actions by describing them as equivalent to scrawling graffiti. Instead of condemning illegal behaviors and getting his backers to quiet down, Ben-Gvir winks at the abusers (much as Yasser Arafat violated his commitment in the Oslo Accords and abetted and winked at terrorism). Then he outrages the Americans by handing out rifles that the US supplied for use by soldiers and gives them to political followers under the cover that he is merely arming civilians against terrorists. For all the US knows, some of the recipients of these rifles may well be people threatening the Palestinians with them.

For his part, Smotrich suggests clearing out Palestinians from a zone around settlements. Instead of reining in potential troublemakers, he encourages their hopes to forcibly transfer Palestinians from the West Bank. He unilaterally freezes funds owed to the Palestinian Authority at a time when it is barely functioning and is losing control of the West Bank to aggressive terrorist groups. Smotrich dismisses the PA when it is struggling against the greater evil, Hamas – and at a moment when the US is pushing for recruiting new blood for the PA leadership and turning it toward constructive partnerships with Israel. Behind the scenes, Smotrich pushes to rebuild Israel’s evacuated settlements in Gaza and stops Netanyahu from joining the US in recruiting moderate Arab nations to help manage a post-Hamas Gaza.

Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are assaulting the vital American alliance every day through their policies and their anti-Arab views and by not reining in their followers’ illegal behaviors. Fearing their wrath, Netanyahu did not roundly condemn or order arrests to stop radical settlers’ vile behaviors. He belatedly said that he condemns the lawbreakers but undercut that criticism by saying that only a “tiny handful of people” take “the law into their own hands” and that Biden’s “accusations against the settlement movement are baseless.” However, Netanyahu knows better and, reportedly, has privately acknowledged that these behaviors “cause great damage to Israel.”

When Minister Amihai Eliyahu from Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party spoke of dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, he lent credibility to international defamation of Israel as an inhuman oppressor of Palestinians. Fearing Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu slapped Eliyahu on the wrist with a short, toothless ‘suspension’ of his ministerial role.

In sum, the alliance with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir is directly damaging the critical alliance with America. Netanyahu is treating Ben-Gvir and Smotrich as more important and appeasing them and their followers even though they are speaking and acting in a manner repugnant to most Americans and the Biden Administration.

In light of the remarkable national unity since October 7, I promised myself that I would not write about issues concerning the political divide in Israel’s over the past year until the war was over. I felt that Opposition leader Yair Lapid was mistaken for not entering the unity government unless Smotrich and Ben-Gvir were dropped. Well, I was wrong. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are sabotaging Israel’s most vital alliance. Their behavior constitutes a clear and present danger to Israel’s ability to wage this war successfully.

Netanyahu must choose between the two alliances. Preferably, the prime minister should fire Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, although he would never do that out of fear that they would break his ruling coalition. The least Netanyahu should do is strongly and publicly rebuke them in order to distance the government from their policies. This would also take some of the sting out of Netanyahu’s and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s aggressive rhetoric towards Gaza, which have been used to impugn Israel’s policy intentions. Netanyahu’s continuing silence risks losing American support.

The  writer is a leading Jewish thinker who has written on post-Holocaust theology, the State of Israel, and the ethic of Jewish power. He is author of The Triumph of Life (Jewish Publication Society, forthcoming).