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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The Two Extremists Driving Israel's Policy
They are the leading extremists in the most right-wing government in Israel's history: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir are both West Bank settlers. They ran together on the same ticket in Israel's most recent election, gaining more votes than ever before for the far right. They both want Israel to reoccupy all of Gaza, to renew Israeli settlement there, and to 'encourage' Palestinians to emigrate. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's dependence on their support to stay in power is a key reason, possibly the main reason, that the war in Gaza continues. They are also rivals, evidence that extremism comes in more than one form. A case in point: The Israeli army's new offensive, Smotrich declared in a May 19 video clip, 'is destroying everything left in [the Gaza] Strip, simply because it is one big city of terror.' The population, he said, would not only be concentrated in the southern end of Gaza, but would continue on, 'with God's help, to third countries'; meanwhile, the army was 'eliminating ministers, officials,' and other members of the Hamas administration. Smotrich presented all of this as proof that the government had at last adopted his approach to conducting the war. He ended with a slang term translatable roughly as 'We're kicking the enemy's face in,' and a verse from the Bible. Smotrich's speech can be read simply as a testament to the brutality of the Israeli campaign in Gaza, and to the far right's claim of responsibility for dictating it. But Smotrich was also defending himself against criticism from Ben-Gvir, someone he describes as always trying to be 'to the right of the right.' Smotrich supported Netanyahu's plan, presented the night before in a meeting of senior ministers, to end the total blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza and allow in what Smotrich called 'a minimum of food and medicine.' He described this concession as essential so that Israel's allies would defend it in the United Nations Security Council and allow the war to continue. Ben-Gvir opposed the decision and, in Smotrich's account, selectively leaked bits of the debate at the meeting to the media. Israeli journalists, myself included, promptly received a flurry of anonymous text messages backing Ben-Gvir's position and blasting Smotrich's. In other words, while Smotrich was claiming credit for getting things done, Ben-Gvir was outperforming him on the public stage. This is a starting point for understanding the difference between the two men who are driving Israel's push to the extreme. The Leninist of the Right When I spoke with the Brandeis University professor Yehudah Mirsky, a Jerusalem-based scholar of religious Zionism, he described Smotrich as a 'Leninist': Smotrich 'believes he has the correct philosophical understanding of history,' Mirsky told me, and thinks he's 'part of the revolutionary vanguard that is supposed to seize the reins of power.' Smotrich's 'understanding of history' derives from the theology of a radical rabbi, Tzvi Yehudah Kook, whose teachings became fundamental to the settler movement that sprang up after 1967's Six-Day War. Kook held that the establishment of Israel was part of the process through which God was bringing final redemption to his chosen people. Israel's victory in the Six-Day War, and its conquest of the West Bank and other territory, were proof that God was fulfilling biblical prophecies. [Read: Netanyahu takes desperate measures] Kook's disciples came to regard permanently holding the 'redeemed' territories conquered in 1967 as an absolute religious requirement. Their central project was establishing settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights—mostly membership-only communities of like-minded people that grew more and more separate from mainstream Israel. Smotrich, 45, is a second-generation settler, schooled in religious institutions faithful to Kook's political theology. His public statements suggest a dedication to seeing in every circumstance a step in the 'great divine process of redemption.' That includes political setbacks: In a Knesset speech when his party was out of power in 2021, he quoted a Talmudic description of the moral decay that would precede the coming of the Messiah. This is a closed system in which nothing can serve as disproof. Smotrich first rose to public notoriety in 2005. At the time, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, of the Likud Party, was preparing Israel for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the evacuation of its settlements there. The move was not only a political shock for religious Zionists, but also a theological earthquake. How could Israel, an instrument of God's plan, violate that plan by giving up sacred ground? A month before the withdrawal, the Shin Bet security service and police arrested Smotrich and three other activists in an apartment east of Tel Aviv. The men were interrogated for three weeks on suspicions that included conspiring to endanger lives on the roads; then they were put under house arrest, but finally released without charges, apparently after the withdrawal. Smotrich has asserted that he was suspected only of planning protests to block roads—as demonstrators against the current government have done regularly without being arrested. In a 2023 television interview, a former Shin Bet agent who'd arrested the activists insisted otherwise: He said that revealing what Smotrich and his associates had planned would expose Shin Bet sources—but that if they had carried out their plans, Smotrich would now 'not be a minister; he would also would not be a Knesset member.' The Shin Bet was involved, the former agent said, because its mandate is 'preventing terrorism.' Because no trial was held, neither version has been tested in court. [Read: Israel plunges into darkness] The affair did not impede Smotrich's ascent as a settler activist and politician. He was elected to the Knesset in 2015, representing a hard-line faction in an alliance of small religious nationalist parties. His new prominence furnished a platform for statements that shocked many Israelis with their extremity. In 2016, Israeli news media reported that three hospitals were segregating Jewish and Arab mothers in their maternity wards. The hospitals denied the practice—but Smotrich defended it. 'It's natural that my wife wouldn't want to lie next to someone who just gave birth to a baby who might murder her baby in another 20 years,' he tweeted. After the 2021 election, Smotrich blocked Netanyahu's bid to include an Arab party in his coalition and said, 'Arabs are citizens of Israel—for now, at least.' The same year, he blamed a resurgence of COVID on Tel Aviv's gay-pride parade. 'In the long term,' he once told an interviewer, he wanted Israel to be 'run according to the laws of Torah,' as in the days of King David. Israel's most recent election, in 2022, catapulted Smotrich to greater power. A short-lived, uncomfortable electoral alliance among his party, Ben-Gvir's, and a splinter religious group won 14 seats in the 120-member Knesset, seven of them for Smotrich's Religious Zionism party. In the new government, Netanyahu made him finance minister. More significantly, he was given a new ministerial post within the Defense Ministry, with wide powers over settlement planning and building. Moving these responsibilities from the army to a civilian official has been aptly criticized as a significant step toward formal annexation of the West Bank—a strategic goal of the settlement movement. Smotrich has used his authority to speed settlement expansion at an extraordinary pace, effectively serving his settler constituency. Despite its small size, the Religious Zionism party has been an equal partner to Netanyahu's Likud in the government's effort to transform Israel's regime. Indeed, it was Religious Zionism, not Likud, that ran in the last election on a platform of hobbling the judicial system. A Religious Zionist Knesset member, Simcha Rothman, chairs the committee responsible for constitutional changes and has pushed along measures designed to give the prime minister and ruling coalition autocratic power. To a large extent, Likud is carrying out Smotrich's program. Then came the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. Smotrich treated the catastrophe as an opportunity. In a post on X a year after the war began, he wrote that he'd been expecting the reconquest of Gaza ever since the evacuation of settlements in 2005. 'In the end there will be Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip,' he wrote. In other words, the setback would be reversed, and history would proceed on its divinely determined track. [Read: Ben-Gvir can't bring himself to pretend] In January, when Israel reached a two-stage hostage deal with Hamas, Smotrich pledged that his party would bolt the governing coalition if Netanyahu proceeded to the second stage, which would include a cease-fire ending the war. Ben-Gvir did quit the coalition, promising to return 'if the war is resumed.' Smotrich's threat amounted to the same thing: Ending the war would mean the fall of the government. In March, after the first stage of the deal, the government chose to resume the war, and the coalition survived. If being the vanguard means exerting power, Smotrich has succeeded. If it means leading the masses, he has failed. Polls consistently cast doubt on whether Religious Zionism would receive the 3.25 percent of the national vote it would need to enter the Knesset in new elections. Its success in the last election was likely attributable to Ben-Gvir's relative popularity, which brought votes to their joint ticket. The Rabble-Rouser Ben-Gvir, 49, comes out of a separate stream of the radical right, with a different theological progenitor. The American-born rabbi Meir Kahane, who founded the Jewish Defense League in New York, had his own perverse religious doctrine. In traditional Judaism, a Jew who is dishonest or cruel 'desecrates the Name of God.' In Kahane's theology, Jewish weakness was the sacrilege, and Jewish strength sanctified God. He made vengeance a central religious value. Kahane moved to Israel in the 1970s and established a party called Kach, or 'Thus!,' whose platform included expelling all Arabs from Israel. In 1984, Kach won a single Knesset seat. In an act of what's known as defensive democracy, the parliament responded by banning racist parties from elections. Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1990. His movement survived him. Ben-Gvir became a Kach activist as a teenager growing up in a Jerusalem suburb. He was 17 in early 1994, when the Kahane disciple Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians at the Hebron shrine known to Jews as the Tomb of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque. The rampage ended when Palestinian worshippers managed to kill Goldstein; Kahanists and others on the Israeli far right elevated him as a martyr. The Israeli government declared Kach to be a terrorist organization, effectively outlawing it. But its members formed new groups, some of which were also declared illegal. These groups vehemently opposed the peace process with the Palestinians that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was pursuing through the Oslo Accords. In October 1995, during the Knesset debate on Oslo II, Ben-Gvir was one of the right-wing protesters who surrounded the prime minister's armored Cadillac as his driver brought it to the Knesset. Someone ripped off the hood ornament and gave it to Ben-Gvir, who afterward held it up before a TV cameraman and said, 'Just as we got to the ornament, we can get to Rabin.' Weeks later, another far-rightist assassinated Rabin. Ben-Gvir was not involved, but the ornament clip was shown repeatedly to illustrate the incitement that had led to murder. He'd achieved his first 15 minutes of fame, but not his last. In the years that followed, as an activist on the far-right fringe, Ben-Gvir acquired a long list of arrests and a shorter list of convictions. They included guilty verdicts for support of a terrorist organization—Kach—and incitement to racism. Meanwhile, he moved to Kiryat Arba, a West Bank settlement next to Hebron; got a law degree; and became known as a defense lawyer for right-wing extremists. In their living room, he and his wife hung a photograph of Goldstein. He once sued a journalist who called him a Nazi. The court awarded him one shekel in damages. In his testimony, he said he was 'in favor of expelling Arabs.' He also testified that he'd read all of Kahane's books, and that Israel should be ruled by biblical law. [Read: The hostage I knew] Nonetheless, Ben-Gvir's rhetoric lacks Kahane's theological flavor. 'It's about tribes and revenge,' Yehudah Mirsky told me of Ben-Gvir's political style. 'It's very primal.' But what Ben-Gvir seems to have learned from his master, most of all, is the value of public provocation and displays of anger. In a typical move, he showed up at the site of a Palestinian terror attack in Jerusalem in 2014 with a handful of supporters to demand that the government take harsh steps against Arabs. The media paid attention. To be elected, Ben-Gvir toned down his rhetoric just enough to avoid being disqualified under the anti-racism law. The supreme court, historically reluctant to bar parties, gave him a pass. 'I'm not for expelling all the Arabs,' he said in one interview. 'I'm for expelling the terrorists, the people who throw stones.' The Goldstein photo came down from his wall. After several failed attempts, Ben-Gvir made his way into the Knesset as the head of the Jewish Power Party in 2021, running together with Smotrich's party. After the alliance's success in the following election, Ben-Gvir demanded and received the ministry that administers the national police. Violating law and tradition, Ben-Gvir has politicized the force. In the West Bank, settler violence against Palestinians has soared, and law enforcement has faded. Inside Israel, at Ben-Gvir's urging, police have responded harshly to the constant protests against the government. Meanwhile, the rate of traffic deaths has climbed sharply—due to a lack of enforcement, according to a state agency. In Ben-Gvir's first year as minister, the murder rate in Israel nearly doubled, and it has stayed high since. That record seems to have little effect on Ben-Gvir's popularity. Polling shows that if elections were held now and his party ran on its own, it would win eight or nine Knesset seats. Smotrich's message may appeal to a small ideological sect, but Ben-Gvir's ideology-lite anger connects him to a significant slice of the public—one moved less by political philosophy than by hostility toward Arabs, the left, and liberal institutions. When elections are held, Netanyahu will most likely press the two rivals to run again on a single ticket. That's what he did last time, out of fear that one of the parties would not pass the electoral threshold, costing his bloc the election. Indeed, Netanyahu's role is key to understanding the power of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. The rise of chauvinistic, illiberal parties and movements is an international phenomenon. What that means for any particular country, however, depends on how mainstream conservative parties respond. Do they form coalitions with the insurgent right, as has happened in Croatia and the Netherlands? Or do they shun them, as in Portugal and Germany, forming alliances with the center and left instead? In Israel, Netanyahu has become anathema to moderate parties. To stay in power, he has helped engineer the electoral success of the far right. He has legitimized it for part of the public by bringing it into government. At the same time, he has competed with it by adopting much of its antidemocratic program. If Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have power beyond their numbers in his government, they are monsters Netanyahu has helped create. *Illustration by Mel Haasch. Sources: Saeed Qaq / Anadolu / Getty; Atef Safadi / AFP / Getty. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
2 days ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
The Two Extremists Driving Israel's Policy
They are the leading extremists in the most right-wing government in Israel's history: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir are both West Bank settlers. They ran together on the same ticket in Israel's most recent election, gaining more votes than ever before for the far right. They both want Israel to reoccupy all of Gaza, to renew Israeli settlement there, and to ' encourage ' Palestinians to emigrate. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's dependence on their support to stay in power is a key reason, possibly the main reason, that the war in Gaza continues. They are also rivals, evidence that extremism comes in more than one form. A case in point: The Israeli army's new offensive, Smotrich declared in a May 19 video clip, 'is destroying everything left in [the Gaza] Strip, simply because it is one big city of terror.' The population, he said, would not only be concentrated in the southern end of Gaza, but would continue on, 'with God's help, to third countries'; meanwhile, the army was 'eliminating ministers, officials,' and other members of the Hamas administration. Smotrich presented all of this as proof that the government had at last adopted his approach to conducting the war. He ended with a slang term translatable roughly as 'We're kicking the enemy's face in,' and a verse from the Bible. Smotrich's speech can be read simply as a testament to the brutality of the Israeli campaign in Gaza, and to the far right's claim of responsibility for dictating it. But Smotrich was also defending himself against criticism from Ben-Gvir, someone he describes as always trying to be 'to the right of the right.' Smotrich supported Netanyahu's plan, presented the night before in a meeting of senior ministers, to end the total blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza and allow in what Smotrich called 'a minimum of food and medicine.' He described this concession as essential so that Israel's allies would defend it in the United Nations Security Council and allow the war to continue. Ben-Gvir opposed the decision and, in Smotrich's account, selectively leaked bits of the debate at the meeting to the media. Israeli journalists, myself included, promptly received a flurry of anonymous text messages backing Ben-Gvir's position and blasting Smotrich's. In other words, while Smotrich was claiming credit for getting things done, Ben-Gvir was outperforming him on the public stage. This is a starting point for understanding the difference between the two men who are driving Israel's push to the extreme. The Leninist of the Right When I spoke with the Brandeis University professor Yehudah Mirsky, a Jerusalem-based scholar of religious Zionism, he described Smotrich as a 'Leninist': Smotrich 'believes he has the correct philosophical understanding of history,' Mirsky told me, and thinks he's 'part of the revolutionary vanguard that is supposed to seize the reins of power.' Smotrich's 'understanding of history' derives from the theology of a radical rabbi, Tzvi Yehudah Kook, whose teachings became fundamental to the settler movement that sprang up after 1967's Six-Day War. Kook held that the establishment of Israel was part of the process through which God was bringing final redemption to his chosen people. Israel's victory in the Six-Day War, and its conquest of the West Bank and other territory, were proof that God was fulfilling biblical prophecies. Kook's disciples came to regard permanently holding the 'redeemed' territories conquered in 1967 as an absolute religious requirement. Their central project was establishing settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights—mostly membership-only communities of like-minded people that grew more and more separate from mainstream Israel. Smotrich, 45, is a second-generation settler, schooled in religious institutions faithful to Kook's political theology. His public statements suggest a dedication to seeing in every circumstance a step in the 'great divine process of redemption.' That includes political setbacks: In a Knesset speech when his party was out of power in 2021, he quoted a Talmudic description of the moral decay that would precede the coming of the Messiah. This is a closed system in which nothing can serve as disproof. Smotrich first rose to public notoriety in 2005. At the time, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, of the Likud Party, was preparing Israel for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the evacuation of its settlements there. The move was not only a political shock for religious Zionists, but also a theological earthquake. How could Israel, an instrument of God's plan, violate that plan by giving up sacred ground? A month before the withdrawal, the Shin Bet security service and police arrested Smotrich and three other activists in an apartment east of Tel Aviv. The men were interrogated for three weeks on suspicions that included conspiring to endanger lives on the roads; then they were put under house arrest, but finally released without charges, apparently after the withdrawal. Smotrich has asserted that he was suspected only of planning protests to block roads—as demonstrators against the current government have done regularly without being arrested. In a 2023 television interview, a former Shin Bet agent who'd arrested the activists insisted otherwise: He said that revealing what Smotrich and his associates had planned would expose Shin Bet sources—but that if they had carried out their plans, Smotrich would now 'not be a minister; he would also would not be a Knesset member.' The Shin Bet was involved, the former agent said, because its mandate is 'preventing terrorism.' Because no trial was held, neither version has been tested in court. The affair did not impede Smotrich's ascent as a settler activist and politician. He was elected to the Knesset in 2015, representing a hard-line faction in an alliance of small religious nationalist parties. His new prominence furnished a platform for statements that shocked many Israelis with their extremity. In 2016, Israeli news media reported that three hospitals were segregating Jewish and Arab mothers in their maternity wards. The hospitals denied the practice—but Smotrich defended it. 'It's natural that my wife wouldn't want to lie next to someone who just gave birth to a baby who might murder her baby in another 20 years,' he tweeted. After the 2021 election, Smotrich blocked Netanyahu's bid to include an Arab party in his coalition and said, 'Arabs are citizens of Israel—for now, at least.' The same year, he blamed a resurgence of COVID on Tel Aviv's gay-pride parade. 'In the long term,' he once told an interviewer, he wanted Israel to be 'run according to the laws of Torah,' as in the days of King David. Israel's most recent election, in 2022, catapulted Smotrich to greater power. A short-lived, uncomfortable electoral alliance among his party, Ben-Gvir's, and a splinter religious group won 14 seats in the 120-member Knesset, seven of them for Smotrich's Religious Zionism party. In the new government, Netanyahu made him finance minister. More significantly, he was given a new ministerial post within the Defense Ministry, with wide powers over settlement planning and building. Moving these responsibilities from the army to a civilian official has been aptly criticized as a significant step toward formal annexation of the West Bank—a strategic goal of the settlement movement. Smotrich has used his authority to speed settlement expansion at an extraordinary pace, effectively serving his settler constituency. Despite its small size, the Religious Zionism party has been an equal partner to Netanyahu's Likud in the government's effort to transform Israel's regime. Indeed, it was Religious Zionism, not Likud, that ran in the last election on a platform of hobbling the judicial system. A Religious Zionist Knesset member, Simcha Rothman, chairs the committee responsible for constitutional changes and has pushed along measures designed to give the prime minister and ruling coalition autocratic power. To a large extent, Likud is carrying out Smotrich's program. Then came the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. Smotrich treated the catastrophe as an opportunity. In a post on X a year after the war began, he wrote that he'd been expecting the reconquest of Gaza ever since the evacuation of settlements in 2005. 'In the end there will be Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip,' he wrote. In other words, the setback would be reversed, and history would proceed on its divinely determined track. In January, when Israel reached a two-stage hostage deal with Hamas, Smotrich pledged that his party would bolt the governing coalition if Netanyahu proceeded to the second stage, which would include a cease-fire ending the war. Ben-Gvir did quit the coalition, promising to return 'if the war is resumed.' Smotrich's threat amounted to the same thing: Ending the war would mean the fall of the government. In March, after the first stage of the deal, the government chose to resume the war, and the coalition survived. If being the vanguard means exerting power, Smotrich has succeeded. If it means leading the masses, he has failed. Polls consistently cast doubt on whether Religious Zionism would receive the 3.25 percent of the national vote it would need to enter the Knesset in new elections. Its success in the last election was likely attributable to Ben-Gvir's relative popularity, which brought votes to their joint ticket. The Rabble-Rouser Ben-Gvir, 49, comes out of a separate stream of the radical right, with a different theological progenitor. The American-born rabbi Meir Kahane, who founded the Jewish Defense League in New York, had his own perverse religious doctrine. In traditional Judaism, a Jew who is dishonest or cruel 'desecrates the Name of God.' In Kahane's theology, Jewish weakness was the sacrilege, and Jewish strength sanctified God. He made vengeance a central religious value. Kahane moved to Israel in the 1970s and established a party called Kach, or 'Thus!,' whose platform included expelling all Arabs from Israel. In 1984, Kach won a single Knesset seat. In an act of what's known as defensive democracy, the parliament responded by banning racist parties from elections. Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1990. His movement survived him. Ben-Gvir became a Kach activist as a teenager growing up in a Jerusalem suburb. He was 17 in early 1994, when the Kahane disciple Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians at the Hebron shrine known to Jews as the Tomb of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque. The rampage ended when Palestinian worshippers managed to kill Goldstein; Kahanists and others on the Israeli far right elevated him as a martyr. The Israeli government declared Kach to be a terrorist organization, effectively outlawing it. But its members formed new groups, some of which were also declared illegal. These groups vehemently opposed the peace process with the Palestinians that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was pursuing through the Oslo Accords. In October 1995, during the Knesset debate on Oslo II, Ben-Gvir was one of the right-wing protesters who surrounded the prime minister's armored Cadillac as his driver brought it to the Knesset. Someone ripped off the hood ornament and gave it to Ben-Gvir, who afterward held it up before a TV cameraman and said, 'Just as we got to the ornament, we can get to Rabin.' Weeks later, another far-rightist assassinated Rabin. Ben-Gvir was not involved, but the ornament clip was shown repeatedly to illustrate the incitement that had led to murder. He'd achieved his first 15 minutes of fame, but not his last. In the years that followed, as an activist on the far-right fringe, Ben-Gvir acquired a long list of arrests and a shorter list of convictions. They included guilty verdicts for support of a terrorist organization—Kach—and incitement to racism. Meanwhile, he moved to Kiryat Arba, a West Bank settlement next to Hebron; got a law degree; and became known as a defense lawyer for right-wing extremists. In their living room, he and his wife hung a photograph of Goldstein. He once sued a journalist who called him a Nazi. The court awarded him one shekel in damages. In his testimony, he said he was 'in favor of expelling Arabs.' He also testified that he'd read all of Kahane's books, and that Israel should be ruled by biblical law. Nonetheless, Ben-Gvir's rhetoric lacks Kahane's theological flavor. 'It's about tribes and revenge,' Yehudah Mirsky told me of Ben-Gvir's political style. 'It's very primal.' But what Ben-Gvir seems to have learned from his master, most of all, is the value of public provocation and displays of anger. In a typical move, he showed up at the site of a Palestinian terror attack in Jerusalem in 2014 with a handful of supporters to demand that the government take harsh steps against Arabs. The media paid attention. To be elected, Ben-Gvir toned down his rhetoric just enough to avoid being disqualified under the anti-racism law. The supreme court, historically reluctant to bar parties, gave him a pass. 'I'm not for expelling all the Arabs,' he said in one interview. 'I'm for expelling the terrorists, the people who throw stones.' The Goldstein photo came down from his wall. After several failed attempts, Ben-Gvir made his way into the Knesset as the head of the Jewish Power Party in 2021, running together with Smotrich's party. After the alliance's success in the following election, Ben-Gvir demanded and received the ministry that administers the national police. Violating law and tradition, Ben-Gvir has politicized the force. In the West Bank, settler violence against Palestinians has soared, and law enforcement has faded. Inside Israel, at Ben-Gvir's urging, police have responded harshly to the constant protests against the government. Meanwhile, the rate of traffic deaths has climbed sharply—due to a lack of enforcement, according to a state agency. In Ben-Gvir's first year as minister, the murder rate in Israel nearly doubled, and it has stayed high since. That record seems to have little effect on Ben-Gvir's popularity. Polling shows that if elections were held now and his party ran on its own, it would win eight or nine Knesset seats. Smotrich's message may appeal to a small ideological sect, but Ben-Gvir's ideology-lite anger connects him to a significant slice of the public—one moved less by political philosophy than by hostility toward Arabs, the left, and liberal institutions. When elections are held, Netanyahu will most likely press the two rivals to run again on a single ticket. That's what he did last time, out of fear that one of the parties would not pass the electoral threshold, costing his bloc the election. Indeed, Netanyahu's role is key to understanding the power of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. The rise of chauvinistic, illiberal parties and movements is an international phenomenon. What that means for any particular country, however, depends on how mainstream conservative parties respond. Do they form coalitions with the insurgent right, as has happened in Croatia and the Netherlands? Or do they shun them, as in Portugal and Germany, forming alliances with the center and left instead? In Israel, Netanyahu has become anathema to moderate parties. To stay in power, he has helped engineer the electoral success of the far right. He has legitimized it for part of the public by bringing it into government. At the same time, he has competed with it by adopting much of its antidemocratic program. If Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have power beyond their numbers in his government, they are monsters Netanyhau has helped create.
Time of India
4 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
The Weekly Vine Edition 44: Indian growth, Gill-i Danda, and #FundKaveriEngine
Nirmalya Dutta's political and economic views vacillate from woke Leninist to Rand-Marxist to Keynesian-Friedmanite. He doesn't know what any of those terms mean. Hello and welcome to the 44th edition of the Weekly Vine. As one writes this, one is still wrapping one's head around the fact that over 2 lakh people are now subscribed to the Vine on LinkedIn, which is remarkable considering 90% of LinkedIn is just ChatGPT prompts and faux motivational posts. In this week's edition, we discuss India becoming the fourth-largest economy in the world, explain why Black Lives Matter has faded into the background, pore over Peter's Principle in Washington, ponder the Gill-I Danda phase of Indian test cricket, and discuss the meme of the week: #FundKaveriEngine. India – The Greatest Story Ever Told India recently became the fourth-biggest economy in the world, which promptly brought the usual have-thoughts out of the closet. Armed with economic jargon and overall apathy, they rushed to explain why there was absolutely no reason to celebrate. Of course, whether the have-lots are more beneficial to the economy than the have-thoughts is a separate debate altogether—but let's just say the former build things, while the latter build Twitter threads. That's a discussion for another time. India's economic journey is even more remarkable because we achieved it without turning into a one-party authoritarian state that bans Winnie the Pooh—and despite having the word 'socialist' shoehorned into our Constitution's preamble. That's not to say India is a WENA utopia. Far from it. But we've always been a million mutinies away from slipping into autocracy. Democracy is a funny thing. Just look at our neighbours—born around the same time—who haven't had a single Prime Minister last a full term and stage coups like we stage item numbers in our movies. India's growth story becomes even more astonishing when you consider that we've built world-class industries from scratch, launched rockets to the dark side of the moon, and still had enough talent left to be brain-drained into becoming CEOs of American companies. We did all this despite being perennially surrounded by combustive neighbours, by world powers constantly cocking their snooks at us, and an Anglosphere press still trapped in colonial simulacrum—forever trying to mock the natives like it's still 1890. Our system is so remarkable, we even managed to tame the communists—forcing them into the indignity of contesting elections rather than discussing revolution in coffee shops. And we did it while keeping all our identities intact, never losing the five-thousand-year thread of our civilisational self. We did it with 700 languages and dialects. With six major religions. With states that are bigger than most countries. And with a complicated yet robust democracy that stretches from the panchayat to a bicameral parliamentary system. Take mine. I'm a slightly anglicised Bengali who has lived in Chhapra, Kolkata, Gwalior, Kota, Udupi, Mumbai, and now Delhi—and I'm married to a Telugu woman. Which means I can now appreciate Aara Heele Chhapra Heele with the same fervour as Ami Chini Go Chini and Naatu Naatu, realising that all of them are essential strands in the national cultural identity. It doesn't matter if the naysayers are focused on the negative. That's their job. Ours is to keep calm and carry on. Because no matter the size of our economy, India's national identity has been forged by one thing: an unwavering refusal to let any other nation dictate our actions. Even the things the critics complain about—poverty, inequality, infrastructure—will be fixed. Not through sermons, but through sheer, stubborn grit. One day, every Indian will be lifted from poverty. One day, the clear stream of reason will no longer lose its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit. Why? Because India is the greatest story ever told. Fade in Black With the benefit of hindsight—and hindsight always arrives wearing glasses sharper than Anderson Cooper's—the moment Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd's neck, he didn't just snuff out a man's life. He accidentally lit the fuse that would blow a hole through the Democratic Party's moral centre and turn a nation's rage into a meme economy. Black Lives Matter, once the rallying cry for a better, fairer America, mutated into the ultimate Republican bogeyman. What began as a movement against state brutality became, for Middle America, the poster child of liberal overreach. It came with sides of transgender pronoun policing, drag queen story hours, CRT in kindergarten, ESG mandates at corporate retreats, and an unshakable sense that the culture was being hijacked by hashtags and guilt-tripping TED Talks. And just like that, dissent became a brand. Anger got monetised. And Marshall's America—the one where 'we must dissent from apathy'—was replaced by an algorithmic fatigue that made people apathetic to even care. Thurgood Marshall once thundered that democracy could never thrive in fear. But fear wasn't the problem. The problem was saturation. People got tired. Tired of moral lectures, tired of being told their silence was violence, tired of being policed by suburban sociology majors on Instagram. BLM didn't just become an albatross around the Democrats' neck—it became a parody of itself. The streets emptied. The slogans faded. And in their place? Shrugging cynicism. Because in the end, when every protest looks like performance, and every grievance is branded, Americans didn't rise up. They tuned out. Read: Why Black Lives Matter made America apathetic to dissent Gill-i Danda In a country where cricketing transitions are usually measured in years, not innings, Gill's elevation is a statement of intent. The selectors, perhaps emboldened by the memory of a young Sourav Ganguly or the legend of a 21-year-old Tiger Pataudi, have decided to skip the waiting period and hand the keys to the kingdom to a player who still gets asked for ID at pubs in London. But if history tells us anything, it's that Indian cricket loves a coming-of-age story. Pataudi took over after a car crash ended Nari Contractor's career, Ganguly stepped in when match-fixing threatened to sink the ship, and Kohli inherited a team that needed fire after the ice of Dhoni. Each time, the gamble paid off—eventually. Of course, history also teaches us that the crown can weigh heavy. For every Ganguly or Kohli, there's a Srikkanth or Dravid—great players whose captaincy stints were more footnote than folklore. The challenge for Gill will be to avoid the fate of those who were handed the baton too soon, only to find it a poisoned chalice. The difference this time? The team around Gill is young, hungry, and unburdened by the ghosts of past failures. There is no senior statesman to second-guess his every move, no shadow looming over his shoulder. This is his team, for better or worse. If you're a betting person, the odds on Gill are tantalising. He has the technique, the temperament, and—crucially—the time. But Indian cricket is a cruel tutor. The same crowds that serenade you with 'Shub-man! Shub-man!' can turn with the speed of a Mumbai monsoon if results don't follow. So, what does Gill's captaincy portend? It's a bet on youth, on audacity, on the belief that sometimes you have to leap before you look. If it works, we'll call it vision. If it fails, well—at least it won't be boring. Peter's Principle in Washington Peter's Principle argues that in a corporate setup, everyone rises to their level of incompetence. And Trump's Washington is the prime example of that, or as I like to call it: St Petersburg. Let's take a roll call of the Trump swamp. We have a Director of Homeland Security who can't protect her own handbag, a Secretary of Education who can't differentiate between steak sauce and AI, a Secretary of Defence with a drinking problem, a NSA who added the editor of a major publication to a Signal war chat, a technocrat who destroyed decades of American soft power—all of them with utmost fealty to a leader whose morals can be bought by a Happy Meal or a plane. Read: Why Washington is the new St Petersburg Meme of the Week: #FundKaveriEngine Ah, the internet has spoken—and this week, it roared in full-throttle desi defence mode. The hashtag #FundKaveriEngine lit up X (formerly Twitter), with a simple message: 'Bhaiya, stop buying overpriced foreign jet engines and invest in our own.' For those late to the hangar—India's Kaveri Engine was meant to power the Tejas fighter jet. Dreamed up in the 1980s, it was India's engineering moonshot. But like all great Indian projects, it got stuck somewhere between 'pending approval' and 'budget constraints.' Enter memes. Fuelled by frustration and national pride, the internet's best minds whipped up memes faster than a MiG does a barrel roll—mocking politicians, foreign lobbies, and even the eternal 'chai pe charcha.' From SpongeBob holding HAL blueprints to Gadar scenes re-edited with 'Give me funds or give me death,' this was patriotism with punchlines. But beneath the memes lies a real demand: India needs to invest in indigenous defence tech. Not just for swadeshi pride, but because no superpower ever outsourced its jet engines. So yes, meme-makers are laughing—but they're also asking the right question: If we can put Chandrayaan on the moon, why can't we fund Kaveri on Earth? Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Indian Express
7 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
What was the Radical Students Union, which gave rise to many Maoist leaders in India?
In April 1972, a young student leader of Osmania University (OU) in Hyderabad, George Reddy, was allegedly killed by members of a right-wing group. While this led to widespread protests and student mobilisation at the time, almost three years later, on February 20, 1975, a students' outfit — Radical Students Union (RSU) — was born out of the embers of this incident. The outfit was banned by the government of India in 1992. While the RSU as an outfit gradually lost steam, 50 years after its formation, its influence is still alive, as two of the top Maoists in the country – the slain Nambala Keshava Rao alias Basavaraju and the next in command Thippiri Tirupathi alias Devuji – are both products of RSU. So is the spokesperson and the current ideological fountainhead of the Maoist party, Mallojula Venugopal Rao alias Sonu. As the Communist Party of India (Maoist) seems to be nearing their endgame, with the Centre setting a deadline of March 31, 2026 to mark the end of Naxalism in India, The Indian Express takes a look at the banned students' outfit that contributed the rank and file of the party. Early days 'The RSU was a prominent student organisation born out of several incidents, including the Naxalbari movement of the 1960s and '70s which led to widespread students' uprising in the country. George Reddy's killing was a trigger,' said a former students union leader on the condition of anonymity. An intelligence official from Telangana who has mapped the origins and growth of the RSU said, 'At the time, campuses were up in flames, including Osmania University and REC (Regional Engineering College, which later turned into National Institute of Technology) Warangal. From these students' movements, several people were recruited into the underground party.' At the time, RSU was considered the student union of People's War Group (or the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) People's War). 'There was a student outfit that represented PWG, the Progressive Democratic Students Union (PDSU). But the PDSU split in 1975 to form the RSU, which was more radical in its outlook,' the official said. These students considered academics only a tool for social revolution, a student leader said. 'Across campuses, students used to talk about issues gripping the country, such as poverty and casteism. In those days, the students led protests in villages against feudal landlords,' said the former student leader. For example, students were part of the Srikakulam Peasant uprising in the undivided Andhra Pradesh that lasted between 1967 and 1970. 'The RSU basically referenced several social movements and built its cadre. The cadre later went underground,' an internal security official told the Indian Express. There were times when the reach of the RSU was such that their underground and overground cadre roamed freely in the villages of Warangal and Karimnagar, a state official explained. These were called the 'Go to the Villages' campaigns. 'The RSU even contested elections in some campuses, including REC-Warangal. Most of the top leadership of the Maoist party — many of whom are from the Telugu-speaking states — have some link to the RSU,' the official said. Ban, and decline In Hyderabad, a 50-year remembrance event of the RSU was held on February 20. One of the organisers of the event, N Venugopal, later wrote, 'There was not a single student issue left unaddressed by the RSU. The RSU's commitment to bringing social awareness to students and the people and involving them in struggles for their community's rights, along with building relationships with the masses, was crucial.' After the party was banned, its members remained involved with other Maoist groups. A top internal security official said, 'RSU's influence waned because of the ban. But the cadre was always active in some or the other frontal organisation of the Maoists.' In 2004, when the People's War and Maoist Communist Centre merged to form the CPI (Maoist), the RSU was fully subsumed underground. 'Offshoots came only in the form of some writers' collectives and such. The state managed to curb this militant outfit even before it could complete its silver jubilee,' the official said.
Time of India
21-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
The Weekly Vine Edition 43: With the Stars; Free Speech vs Democracy; and Influencer, Baiter, Lover, Spy?
Nirmalya Dutta's political and economic views vacillate from woke Leninist to Rand-Marxist to Keynesian-Friedmanite. He doesn't know what any of those terms mean. In this week's edition, we begin by mourning the passing of two Indian science giants—Jayant Narlikar, the cosmologist who challenged the Big Bang, and M R Srinivasan, the nuclear pioneer who quietly powered a nation. We shift from the passing of scientific giants to an influencer-spy scandal, shrinking free speech, Pakistan's self-promoting generals, and an AI future that wants your job, your face, and your existential dread. With the stars In a span of hours, India lost two towering figures of modern science — one who peered deep into the cosmos, and another who harnessed the atom to power a nation. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar and M. R. Srinivasan were men of parallel gravities, bound not by discipline but by the immense force of their intellect, vision, and quiet patriotism. Their passing marks the end of an era where scientific pursuit was not just a career, but a calling. Jayant Narlikar was more than a scientist — he was a philosopher of the universe. Known for his pioneering work on Steady State Cosmology, Narlikar dared to challenge the Big Bang theory at a time when few would speak against scientific consensus. Alongside Fred Hoyle, he built mathematical models that sought continuity in the universe's creation, emphasising an eternal cosmos over an explosive birth. This spirit of intellectual rebellion — backed not by ego, but inquiry — was what defined him. But Narlikar was not content being a voice in rarefied academic circles. He believed that science, like starlight, should reach everyone. From his leadership at IUCAA, which he founded in 1988, to writing science fiction stories in school textbooks that inspired generations, Narlikar saw communication as no less important than cosmology. He was a rationalist in the truest sense — one who brought planetariums to villages, wrote papers debunking astrology, and believed that critical thinking must begin in childhood. Even in his final blog, written just weeks before his passing at 86, he spoke of graceful exits — quoting the Bhagavad Gita not as scripture, but as timeless wisdom on detachment from one's own accomplishments. If Narlikar searched for the origins of the universe, M. R. Srinivasan built the future from its smallest building blocks. As a mechanical engineer turned nuclear scientist, Srinivasan was part of the generation that worked directly with Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai — architects of India's atomic energy programme. From overseeing the construction of the Apsara reactor in the 1950s to founding the Nuclear Power Corporation of India, he was the steady hand behind 18 functional nuclear power units that now help fuel the country. A tireless institution builder, Srinivasan's contributions went beyond engineering marvels. In the 1980s, he was the first to organise a public debate on nuclear safety—a move that marked him not just as a scientist but as a democrat of ideas. His intellect was matched by his humility, and those who worked with him — from students to secretaries — called him a 'walking dictionary' of nuclear science. Both men shared something rare: the belief that science must be as human as it is precise. They mentored, built institutions, inspired through action and words, and never sought the spotlight they richly deserved. As India races forward into an age of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, the legacy of Narlikar and Srinivasan reminds us that great science begins with great questions — and ends not in noise, but in quiet, lasting impact. This week, two stars have faded from our sky. But their light, like the universe they studied and powered, endures. Free speech vs democracy After a brief truce during the fog of war, all the warring factions of the Indian political circus are back in action, filing cases and taking potshots—which brings us to a tale of two comments. Two individuals, a minister from Madhya Pradesh and a professor from rich people's JNU and poor people's Columbia, are under the cosh for their comments about Colonel Sofiya Qureshi. Now, one is not getting into the merit of either speech, but neither would pass what is called the Brandenburg Test of free speech. For the uninitiated, the Brandenburg Test is the gold standard for determining the limits of free speech, which is used in the US (a country with free speech laws relaxed enough to make Trump president) to determine whether a speech is criminally prosecutable, and came up with the description that it can only be so if it's imminent lawless action or/and likely to produce it—it's protected under free speech. That would allow a host of speech that is already punishable under Indian laws. Now, India has never been a fount of free speech since the First Amendment (which is the complete antithesis of the American one), but that brings us to the question—why, as a nation, are we so bothered about free speech when we have a host of more pressing issues, like figuring out whether the War 2 teaser warrants a visit to the theatre to see a bulked-up Hrithik fight a carb-free NTR Jr? That is because we, as the world's youngest stable democracy, are the only one which has inherited the baggage of all democracies, from the city-states of Greece to the ideals of Americana. That means, at the same time, we are living in various phases of a democracy, grappling with some very complex problems—from trying to feed our populace, create industrial growth, and maintain sustainability—issues that other developed nations never had to deal with on their way to being developed. They could simply use opium money or slaves to industrialise or build railroads without bothering too much about human rights and other mundane issues. But perhaps that's what makes India the most unique experiment to ever exist, where Vedanta vies for attention with WENA wokery. But I am sure we will figure it out. After all, we are a (at least five-thousand-year-old civilisation) that couldn't be wiped out no matter how many invaders tried. Influencer, baiter, lover, spy? During the Cold War, spies came in trench coats, not tank tops. Back then, reverse honey traps involved moustachioed men seducing lonely secretaries in foggy alleys. But in the age of reels and ring lights, espionage has been given a makeover—and now, it wears highlighter and hashtags. Meet Jyoti Malhotra, the vlogger behind Travel with Joe, who went from posting street food reviews in Lahore to allegedly leaking Indian security info through Telegram, Snapchat, and what investigators believe was a deeply encrypted crush. Perhaps the modern spy game—of baiting influencers—is a tribute to Aldous Huxley, whose dystopia won over George Orwell's. For the uninitiated, the two greatest dystopian novels are Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and 1984 by George Orwell (who was, for a brief period, Huxley's student). Both these novels painted distinctly bleak but contrasting futures; 1984 had the entire human race enslaved by their government, while Brave New World featured a future where humans completely gave in to their consumerist desires. Orwell and Huxley saw dystopia differently. The case shows that one doesn't really need surveillance when one has hashtags. As social critic Neil Postman summed up: 'What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.' Perhaps, the Jyoti Malhotra case—where influencing won over Big Brother-style surveillance—shows that Huxley got it more right than Orwell. Mein apna favourite hoon Asim Munir clearly took notes. Because after overseeing a military embarrassment in the form of Operation Sindoor—a swift and decisive series of Indian strikes on Pakistani terror camps—General Munir has been awarded the highest honour in the Pakistani Army: Field Marshal. Yes, you read that right. Not for winning a war. Not for achieving military parity. Not even for staging a successful coup. But for presiding over a ceasefire that followed a spanking so sharp, even the Pakistani drones returned home confused. Let's pause for a moment to appreciate the irony. India has had only two Field Marshals in its history: Sam 'Bahadur' Manekshaw, the architect of the 1971 victory that birthed Bangladesh, and K. M. Cariappa, the man who Indianised the Army post-Independence and led troops during the 1947 war. Both earned their titles after decades of service and historic victories. Manekshaw oversaw the surrender of 93,000 Pakistani troops. Munir, meanwhile, oversaw the surrender of logic. It gets better. The only previous Pakistani to hold this rank was Ayub Khan—who also gave it to himself in 1959. He later became a military dictator, proving that Pakistan's Field Marshal tradition is less about military brilliance and more about megalomania with medals. Google I/O 2025 At Google I/O 2025, Google's relentless AI invasion took another giant leap, making your boring jobs its prime target. With Gemini 2.5 Pro, Google introduced an assistant so intelligent it could out-reason your manager and debug code faster than your over-caffeinated intern. More unnervingly delightful was Gemini Live, a tool that transforms your camera and screen into conversation starters, allowing AI to handle tedious observations about your surroundings, thus sparing you awkward small talk. The company rolled out new AI subscription tiers—'AI Pro' for $20/month, promising relief from routine drudgery, and an eye-watering 'AI Ultra' for $250/month, suggesting it might also manage your existential ennui. Google Search, traditionally reliable but boringly manual, now boasts conversational AI summaries and virtual try-ons, enabling you to 'virtually experience' products without the dreary physical effort of visiting a store. In wearable tech, Android XR emerged to eliminate tiresome manual searches, with smart glasses delivering real-time translation, instant research, and handy context—freeing your brain to tackle more enjoyable pursuits, like daydreaming or scrolling endlessly. For creatives tired of monotonous edits, Veo 3 and Imagen 4 step in, automating high-quality video and image creation. Flow promises filmmakers the joy of focusing solely on vision while AI handles tedious scripting, scene-setting, and post-production drudgery. Google Beam (formerly Project Starline) revolutionises mundane meetings with immersive 3D video calls, while real-time translations in Google Meet eliminate tedious misunderstandings (unless intentional). Gmail's smart replies even adopt your writing style, sparing you the dullness of composing polite refusals yourself. Lastly, developers received Jules for tedious coding tasks, Project Astra for proactive AI assistance, and Project Mariner to automate the boredom of repetitive web chores. In short, Google's message is clear: embrace AI—your boredom deserves better. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
