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Bezalel Smotrich

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Sep 23, 2026, 3:52 PM

Hear, O Israel: Choose Healing over Hate

Cartoon by Dan Savery Raz using Adobe AI.

Ben Gvir and Smotrich must be ousted for this recovery to start. Where were you on September 11, 2001, or October 7, 2023? These are commonly asked questions, but do you remember where you were on November 2, 2022? This...

Sep 18, 2026, 6:27 PM

Why a Technical Bloc is not a Partnership

Image created by Lisa Liel using ChatGPT

Ever since Moshe Feiglin's Zehut Party signed a technical bloc agreement with Betzalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism Party, I've seen one person after another refer to this as a "partnership". It is not. A technical bloc is a political maneuver intended to...

Sep 18, 2026, 5:18 AM

Israel must challenge rather than engage ‘pro-Palestine’ performance politics

The Macklemore battle presents a trap that pro-Israel activists have yet to escape Two options: Either stay silent as more and more celebrities accuse Israel of genocide in ever more prominent forums, and hope the tide will pass, or wield...

Sagit Alkobi Fishman

Sep 17, 2026, 3:41 PM

In Smotrich’s AI Video, He Doesn’t Win by Argument. He Wins by Force.

Jewish tradition treats disagreement as a value. Pirkei Avot promises that a dispute "for the sake of Heaven" will endure. This week, during the Ten Days of Repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Religious Zionism party released...

Sep 17, 2026, 11:01 AM

Collateral Benefit

The real test raised by NAZA - the Hebrew military acronym for collateral damage - is not whether its filmmakers are right. It is whether a state confident in its force is equally confident in evidence, law and institutions...

Sep 9, 2026, 4:28 AM

Britain’s trade ban should be blamed on the Israeli government

I do not support the boycott of Israeli goods from the West Bank, such as the boycott by Britain. At the same time, however, I believe that the Israeli government deserves much of the blame for these boycotts, even...

Sep 5, 2026, 12:46 PM

Gaza: Voluntary Relocation in Name Only

Displacement produced through coercive circumstances This week, within days of each other, two members of Israel's government put new institutional weight behind something that has been implicit in Israeli policy for more than a year. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir...

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Aug 24, 2026, 11:02 AM

Netanyahu Can Lose and Still Win

Illustration by Yochanan Schimmelpfennig. Concept and composition: Yochanan Schimmelpfennig, 2026.

Israel is approaching the October 27 election under conditions of unusual political uncertainty. Likud is under pressure, Netanyahu has no guaranteed path to a majority, and the governing bloc depends on partners whose interests are increasingly difficult to reconcile....

Aug 18, 2026, 11:15 AM

Bezalel Smotrich: The Methodical Radical

Few figures in contemporary Israeli politics provoke as immediate a reaction abroad as Bezalel Smotrich. Israel’s finance minister, a minister within the Defense Ministry, and leader of HaTzionut HaDatit — the Religious Zionist Party — he is routinely portrayed...

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Jul 27, 2026, 10:10 AM

The Agreement We Were Never Shown

Three days before the Knesset formally dispersed, Bezalel Smotrich announced that the security cabinet had approved NIS 1.3 billion for the establishment of 34 West Bank settlements. He also pointed to a further NIS 1.075 billion for settlement roads—the...

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