MK Itamar Ben Gvir, head of the Otzma Yehudit political party and Chairman of the Religious Zionism party MK Bezalel Smotrich at an election campaign event in Sderot, October 26, 2022. (Flash90)
It’s Friday, August 28, and on the surface it seems like a perfect match: both are right-wing, similar level of religiosity, and share a hobby of embarrassing Israel abroad. But despite Netanyahu’s attempts at matchmaking, Itamar Ben Gvir is not interested in getting back together with Bezalel Smotrich.
They first got together in 2021. Smotrich had just broken up with Naftali Bennett and started a new party, Religious Zionism, but was polling below the threshold. Nearby was a similarly single Otzma Yehudit, which had been running alone since 2019 and had fallen below the threshold time after time. When Netanyahu first tried to set them up, Smotrich rebuffed Ben Gvir and basically told the prime minister, if you like his votes so much, marry him yourself. There was a reason Otzma was single: disciples of the extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane weren’t considered respectable. But adversity makes strange bedfellows and one day before the registration deadline, the deal was signed, with Otzma Yehudit given the third and sixth slots.
By the time the next election rolled around, the relationship had soured. Ben Gvir was rising in the polls and wanted a new arrangement; Smotrich refused to change the terms, and it took Netanyahu hauling both to his Caesarea home for couples counseling to produce the “Caesarea agreement.” Smotrich led the list, but Ben Gvir improved his position, taking slots 2, 5, 7, 9 and 10. Together they took 14 seats, a record showing for both.
Four years of governing later, the man who once led the list is teetering on the edge of the threshold, while Ben Gvir’s is the only party in the government polling to grow. The arrival of a new right-wing party under Ofer Winter, a Religious Zionist himself, now threatens to plunge both Winter and Smotrich into the discarded-ballots bin. That’s why Netanyahu, afraid of wasting right-wing votes, released a video yesterday calling on the couple to get back together.
Smotrich indicated he was open to a reunion, declaring on X it was “Time for unity and responsibility in the national camp.” But the tables have turned, and it was Ben Gvir who said no. He had already ruled out a merger back in July, arguing that the two parties appeal to fundamentally different electorates, and that “one plus one does not always equal two” because “sometimes one party weakens the other.”
He has a point. Despite the foreign press reflexively lumping them together, there is a real difference: Smotrich’s base is almost entirely religious, while Ben Gvir reaches traditional and even secular far-right voters. Ben Gvir is built on populist provocation; Smotrich, on building facts on the ground.
Ben Gvir accused Netanyahu’s call for unity of being a deliberate attempt to shrink him. That isn’t Bibi’s primary motivation—but it’s hard to imagine him losing much sleep over a few more Religious Zionists and a bit less Jewish Power in his coalition. “Smotrich should unite with Winter instead,” he responded.
Winter isn’t interested in taking on Smotrich’s four years of baggage, and Smotrich isn’t interested in being dismembered by his replacement. He prefers the comfort of his old partner, and as much as Ben Gvir avers for now, there is a significant chance he may still end up back with his ex.
A general view of Beit Hanun in the Northern Gaza Strip as seen from the Israeli kibbutz of Netiv Haasara, April 05, 2016. (Corinna Kern/Flash90)
A giant observation tower looked out for years over the village of Netiv HaAsara. From it Hamas kept watch over the community bordering the northern Gaza Strip, gathering intelligence and, along the way, sowing dread. “The destruction of the occupiers is near,” was written in Hebrew on the poster. And in case that wasn’t clear enough, a supplementary message: “the Yamit region—Netiv HaAsara,” a nod to the moshav of the same name evacuated under the agreement with Egypt. For years Israel held off from destroying the tower—until it emerged that there was truth in the advertising. 19 Israelis were murdered in the community on the morning of October 7, and but for an operational failure by Hamas, the community’s fate would have been that of Nir Oz.
No need to dwell on Member of Knesset Zvi Sukkot and his vigilante operation to destroy a terror monument. But it is not beside the point to demand answers from the IDF as to why the monstrous monuments to the murderers of Israelis aren’t being systematically demolished. In the village of Surda in Binyamin, a monument in the shape of a map of “Palestine,” from the river to the sea, has stood for ten years now, bearing a picture of Muhannad Halabi. This is the murderer who stabbed Aharon Banita to death in Jerusalem’s Old City during the high holidays 11 years ago. He nearly murdered his wife, Adele, as well, and then murdered Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi, who rushed to help. For ten whole years we’ve been waiting for someone in the Binyamin Brigade to wake up and destroy the monument on its traffic island. How complicated can it be?
If only the phenomenon were confined to outside the Green Line. Deep inside Israel, in the heart of Haifa, the grave of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam still stands intact—one of the first leaders of the organized murder gangs against Jews in the last century, the man for whom Hamas’s military wing is named. The tent over the grave was indeed demolished, but the visits to it continue undisturbed.
For Israelis, creatures of Western thought, it’s hard to internalize what symbols mean. After October 7th it seemed a change had set in. The demolition of the monuments in Gaza marking the abduction of soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, was an important turning point—one that didn’t carry on. The existence of the terror monuments is a monument to weakness.
This is an excerpt from my weekly column in Israel Hayom.
Shabbat Shalom! We will be back on Sunday.
English Editor: Ari Tatarka
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Wasn't there a picture of a teror monument being destroyed?
I loved the first piece which says "Itamar Ben Gvir is not interested in getting back together with Bezalel Smotrich". Thank you for humanising them both, and for making me smile a lot!!!