 After the recent elections, Israel's extreme right-wing has emerged stronger. Benjamin Netanyahu is said to be the new Prime Minister. But key allies like Itmar Ben-Guir and Bezalel Smotrish are likely to be the power behind the throne. While Israel's politics has steadily been moving towards the right, the growing influence of figures such as Ben-Guir and Smotrish marks a new phase. What is the ideology of this extreme right-wing? And what are its key planks? What influence is it likely to have on Israel's next government? What does this mean for the Palestinian resistance? Rania Khalik of Breakthrough News explains. So Israeli extremists are of course celebrating their recent electoral triumph of the far right and the religious bloc specifically, led by this figure Itzmer Ben-Guir and Israel's recent general elections. And it's understandable why they're celebrating and it's also understandable why so many people are upset. I mean, even liberal Zionists are very upset about the ascension of people like Ben-Guir, who they've actually equated with being like equivalent to a KKK leader. You even had the chief rabbi of like reform Jews in the U.S. actually compare him to David Duke. And this is because he's an incredibly hateful figure, not just towards Palestinians. He goes beyond the pale in a lot of people's minds because he's hateful towards non-religious Jews or liberal Jews. He's even called for revoking the state recognition of reform Jewish conversions, which has deeply upset a lot of American Jews who support Israel because most American Jews are actually reform Jews. So he's and he's also gone on this witch hunt against groups perceived as against Jewish groups in Israel perceived as being leftist. And he now he's Israel's new kingmaker and this frightens a lot of people because for a couple of reasons it gives Israel this very, you know, extreme face to the world. It makes it much more difficult to frame Israel as this kind of liberal bastion in a sea of Arab extremism, Muslim extremism, which is often how liberal Zionists try to sort of portray Israel to the international community, particularly to the West. And, you know, it's again, this is more about his religion, his extreme religiosity, sort of like messianic religiosity, rather than his anti-Palestinian racism. Now, to be clear, Ben Gavir is a part of this far right party called either it's it, you know, there's different names for in English. Some people call it the Jewish National Front. Others call it the Jewish Power Party. Either way, it's an extreme right religious party that is actually called for, like I mentioned, you know, revoking the recognition of reform Jewish conversions and really wanting to turn Israel into this ultra orthodox country. But beyond that is also called for more recently, the extradition execution of Palestinian resistance leaders. He actually did so just a week ago and after a teenager was killed and others were injured in these two bombings in Jerusalem. And Netanyahu is seeking to appoint this guy as Israel's next public security minister, which would give him increased power over national security policy in Israel that would supersede other policing bodies. Like Netanyahu actually made a deal with Ben Gavir that would see the new coalition government pass legislation that would allow the public security minister, essentially what would be him to set police policy, which could lead to like the police commissioner effectively being subordinate to Ben Gavir on every aspect of police policy. So this would have an extremist who is openly called for exjudicially executing Palestinian resistance leaders be in charge of policing policy. But I also want to be clear here because Israeli leaders have across the political spectrum have actually called for the extra judicial execution of Palestinians. This is actually nothing new. I mean, the collective punishment of their families, which Ben Gavir also called for is basically already Israeli policy. The Israelis routinely punish family members and even sometimes entire communities connected to Palestinians who are accused of carrying out armed attacks. That said, his rise is still incredibly disturbing because he is a follower of Rabbi Meyer Kahana, who's, you know, the late Meyer Rabbi Kahana, whose genocidal teachings we have to remember inspired the 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinian men and boys at the Ibrahim Mosque in in Hippron. And there's, of course, like shrines to this guy and parts in settler communities across the West Bank and the support for him. I mean, even though his party was banned in the past and has even he's even it's even been considered a terrorist party by the United States in the past, people who follow him have been rising in Israeli politics for the last couple of decades. So, you know, Ben Gavir's pick being picked to lead the office of the Ministry of National Security, the guy that he wants to appoint is also a guy called Shana Mel Dorfman. And I just raised him just to give you an idea of how extreme these people are. This guy that again, Ben Gavir wants to appoint him to lead the Ministry of National Security. This guy, Shana Mel Dorfman was once quoted as saying, the only problem with the Nazis is that I was on the losing side. So what you have here is a collection of people who in the Israeli context are like the equivalent of neo-nazis who are rising to power in this country. Ben Gavir. It's also important to note he's instigated settler mobs in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where settlers are regularly trying to force Palestinians from their homes to, as they say, Judea is the neighborhood. And it's an act of ethnic cleansing. And this has actually led to, this ended up leading to the war in Gaza in May of 2021. And then during, you know, one settler rampage in Sheikh Jarrah last month, he actually took out a pistol, Ben Gavir, as he led a mob of vigilantes and told them if Palestinians throw stones, shoot them. So this guy is very extreme. And Israel's police chief actually even blamed him for provoking the violence that we saw in May of 2021 across East Jerusalem. He also, it's important to note that Ben Gavir wants to change the status quo of the Temple Mount, which is pretty typical of the far right religious, religious parties in Israel who want to basically demolish the al-Aqsa mosque, which is a holy place in Islam. It's very important in Jerusalem and build in its place a third temple to bring about the end times. I mean, that's how these people think. It's very, it's, it's, it's very, you know, sort of in, it's very in collab, like they're on the same page as like Christian Zionists where they want to demolish al-Aqsa, build a new Temple Mount and like sacrifice animals to bring about the end times. That's how these people think. So this of course doesn't represent the majority of Israeli society, but these people are increasingly coming, they're gaining more power in Israeli society. And honestly, you know, this is the natural evolution of Zionism. You know, as Zionism started out as more of a secular ethno-nationalist or ethno-religious ideology, if you can believe those two things can go together, where the entire idea was to have a Jewish state, but one that isn't necessarily ultra-orthodox and religious. I mean, historically speaking, the ultra-orthodox have not had control or power in Israel. It's pretty typically been like secular religious, or I'm sorry, secular liberal Zionists. The labor party has had power for the majority of Israel's history. But of course, in recent decades, that's changing Israeli society, while it may not be, you know, majority religious or majority end times in the kind of like Ben-Gavir idea that I'm talking about. Like that said, the country is moving more to the right, especially its younger generation in terms of its anti-Palestinian racism, and it's a lack of tolerance for what it's considered to be leftist or liberal ideas, where you even have like teachers across Israel scared of their students because their students harass them and bully them if they're perceived to be in any way liberal or leftist. So you also have a country that's moving in a more right-wing direction because of Zionism, because of the occupation, because of the hate that you have to instill in the society in order to continue to carry out the settler colonial ideology that seeks to take more and more Palestinian land and, you know, in order to act as this sort of aggressive policing arm of the Americans in the Middle East. And I mean, I will add this comes on top of, again, like we've seen this as a part of a trend in Israel. We've had people like Naftali Bennett be Prime Minister. Naftali Bennett called for beheading Israeli Arabs at one point who were disloyal to the state. We've had Ayelet Shackad, somebody who got to be justice minister in recent years in Israel, who also a far-right figure not too long ago back during the 50-day long war on Gaza in 2014, she called Palestinian babies essentially snakes and talked about killing like Palestinian mothers so that they can't birth snakes. I mean, this is very, very, very genocidal language that we've been hearing for years from Israeli figures. So it really shouldn't be surprising that it's reached this point and, you know, as long as Israel continues to get a blank check from the West, from the US, from the international community to do as it wants with zero accountability, it's going to continue to move in this far-right direction because that's the only place it has to go to continue to maintain this occupation and the settler colonialism. And the last point I'll make here is that, you know, I think that this is also speaks to a kind of failure of their parliamentary system, right? It seems to be failing in many ways just like the ones that we see in other parts of the world, particularly in Europe, like in the UK, in Sweden and Italy. I mean, those are the most stark examples where you have these right-wing parties that are increasing in both popularity and in the level of power that they're gaining. You know, either right-wing parties who, in some cases it's right-wing parties who don't, maybe they don't necessarily get a majority, but they do end up having a lot of control over government. And like in Sweden or Italy, for example, or the or in other cases the government simply fails repeatedly, like in the case of the UK or as in the case of France, where we see the right sort of catching up to the mainstream. But in all cases, the point here is that it's because there's no real left alternative that has any power. So that applies to France, that applies to the UK obviously, where like the left was just, you know, really destroyed and attacked when Jeremy Corbyn was in charge of the Labour Party in a very interestingly concerted effort that the Israel lobby had a lot to do with. But at the end of the day, all you have as the alternative is this like centrist status quo, sort of neoliberal neoliberalism, these neoliberal parties, and you see a similar trend in Israel. So as a result, you see Israel's equivalent of like neo-Nazis, assuming these important positions much in the same vein as you see in certain in a certain European contexts.