Oakland, CA (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The Israel Likud party under PM Benjamin Netanyahu had made Israel a rogue, pariah state even before the bombing of military and civilian areas in Iran this week. A casual observer might expect an onslaught of global sanctions against Israel as a result. But five Western allies of the US (UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway), got a jump start on that earlier in the week, when they formally sanctioned Israeli cabinet ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezelal Smotrich for their visible roles in promoting settler violence in the West Bank, and genocide in Gaza. Though the sanctions of freezing personal assets and travel bans may not be consequential for Israel, this is the most visible rebuke and condemnation of the current Israel government on the world stage. Their statement said in part, “Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights. These actions are not acceptable. This is why we have taken action now—to hold those responsible to account.”
Before PM Benjamin Netanyahu elevated these men to be Likud cabinet ministers, their political standing was no more legitimate than that of the Proud Boys in the US. Both of these Israeli politicians were born and raised on illegal West Bank settlements, and have been steeped in the ideology of militant squatter-settlers. Ben-Gvir joined Meir Kahane’s outlawed Kach Party when he was 16, and was convicted in an earlier, different Israel of incitement to racism, destroying property, and distributing “terror organization” propaganda.The two figures merged their respective Jewish Power and National Union parties in 2021 to form the Religious Zionism Party at Netanyahu’s prompting.
These men uphold a doctrine of Jewish Supremacy, encouraged by Netanyahu. As in the US under Trump, fringe ideas have become mainstream in Israel, including annexing the West Bank and summary expulsions of millions of indigenous Palestinians. Smotrich is unapologetic about his hatred of both Palestinians and progressive Jews. Just as proponents of Jim Crow in the American South excoriated whites who supported rights for African-Americans, Smotrich’s ilk is hostile toward Jews who support Palestinian rights.
Now both men face a reckoning on the global stage.
The Israeli right wing has brought us to a painful time in Jewish history, as the Likud Party under Netanyahu has mutated the idea of Zionism into something it was not in the beginning. Zionism began in the late 19th Century as a search for a Jewish homeland, away from the pogroms and killing grounds of Europe. It was a secular, agrarian movement. Things changed decisively in the 1967 War, when Israel captured territories in Palestine, Egypt, Syria and Jordan. While they bargained some of this land for peace — with Egypt and Jordan — some powerful Israeli politicians became increasingly attached to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, settling Israeli squatters on them from the 1970s. The rise of the far right wing Likud Party to power in 1977 and its increasing alliance with obscurantist forces of the religious Right accelerated this turn to territorial imperialism and messianism.
The genocide in Gaza has become a stain of shame to many Jews worldwide, thus many are crying, “Not in my name,” “not in our name,” and divorcing their Judaism, the religion; from Zionism, the mutated political ideology. Many Jews I know, however, still avoid facing the reckoning at hand.
When confronted with the ugly realities of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) actively committing genocide in Gaza and war crimes in the West Bank, many Israeli and American Jews reflexively cry out about the brutal horrors of October 7, 2023, as if that’s when the problems started.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio articulated this myopia, saying in response to the sanctions, “We remind our partners not to forget who the real enemy is. The United States urges the reversal of the sanctions and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel.” Yes, Hamas is a murderous organization, which directed unspeakable humanitarian crimes against innocent Israelis and music festival-goers. But the Likud-led military response has become one of world history’s most heinous examples of overkill, including weaponizing mass starvation and withholding of medical necessities. Just as many Israeli October 7 victims were activists in sympathy with Palestinian goals, many (if not most) Gaza residents had no affection or Hamas, and just wanted to live in peace.
Israeli officials and apologists have a horrible habit of blaming Hamas for their own crimes. No one has called this out more eloquently or forcefully than Norman Finkelstein. In this debate with former Israeli National Security Advisor Yaakov Amidror, Finkelstein argues, “Gaza was already one of the most densely populated areas on earth. Now they’re being herded into the South, Already starved on the verge of famine. I said in the beginning that Israel’s going to start firing on the people, accusing them of rioting. . . The massacres were committed by Israelis, according to all humanitarian organizations.” To his point, Israel’s Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) seems designed to weaponize food and medicine, while apologists such as Amidror will go repeating the party line lies.
“Extremists Sanctioned,” Digital, Midjourney, 2025.
The sanctions against Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are called “Magnitsky” sanctions, used specifically for human rights abuses. They were named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian whistleblower, who was murdered in a Moscow prison. Some, such as former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy, have expressed the fear that this sanctioning of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir may be “more performative” than effective in pressuring changes to Israeli policy. But the move has the virtue of punishing two of the three men most politically responsible for the escalating settler violence in the West Bank, and the consequences are more damning than they may appear.
© 2025 All Rights Reserved