December 3: Tzvi Succot, a member of Israel’s Knesset (parliament) from the Religious Zionism party, which is part of Israel’s governing coalition, said during a hearing of the Knesset Interior and Environment Committee that Palestinians who burn waste in the occupied West Bank should be killed by the Israeli air force, declaring:
“The Air Force should act and kill them.”
In response, Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman and Knesset member Yitzhak Kroizer, the chair of the committee, agreed with Succot.
November 28: In response to Israeli soldiers being caught on video murdering two unarmed Palestinian men who were surrendering in the occupied West Bank, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, declared he:
“provides full backing to Border Police members and IDF fighters who shot at wanted terrorists who came out of a building in Jenin. The fighters acted exactly as expected of them – terrorists must die.”
Ben-Gvir also visited the unit the soldiers came from in a show of support and announced a promotion for its commander.
November 17: The deputy mayor of the town of Beer Sheva, Shimon Tubul, lamented in a TV interview that Israel hasn’t killed every Palestinian in Gaza in its genocidal military campaign, declaring:
“We had a golden opportunity to wipe out this thing called Gaza. Kill them 100-150 thousand every day.”
On November 18, Israeli media reported that prosecutors are considering indicting Tubul for assault after he was caught on video last year beating and threatening two Palestinian Bedouin gas station attendants with his gun while in his military reserve uniform because he was angered that they were playing Arabic music loudly.
November 17: National Security Minister Ben-Gvir said Israel should assassinate senior officials of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the western-backed governmental body that administers parts of the West Bank under the overall control of Israel’s occupying army, and arrest its president, Mahmoud Abbas, if the UN Security Council approved a resolution supporting Palestinian statehood, adding that Palestinians are not a real people, declaring:
“Targeted assassinations of senior PA officials should be ordered if the UN recognizes a Palestinian State… The invented people called the Palestinian people must not have a state.”
Ben-Gvir added that once Abbas was arrested, Ben-Gvir would “take care of him” in an Israeli prison, where Palestinians are routinely beaten, tortured, and starved.
November 17: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is a settler living illegally on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and is in charge of overseeing Israel’s settlement enterprise, declared:
“My life’s mission is to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of our land… There are dozens of Arab states, and there are also several European countries that could be suitable for that, but not here.”
“For years, I have been working hard to kill the idea of a Palestinian state in practice, and with God’s help, I intend to continue doing so with full force,”
November 12: Deputy speaker of the Knesset Nissim Vaturi from Netanyahu’s governing Likud party said his party was wrong to shun the notorious anti-Palestinian racist and violent extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach party and offshoots were declared terrorist organizations by the US government, when he was in the Knesset in the 1980s, declaring:
”[Kahane was] right about many things,” adding the Likud party was “wrong to exclude him.”
In response to another Knesset member who called Kahane a terrorist, Vaturi declared: “He was not a terrorist. Believe me, today he would be revered, receiving the Israel Prize.”
In response to another Knesset member who asked: “Do you support terrorism?”, Vaturi responded, “I support it. Believe me, Kahane was right in many ways where we were wrong, where the people of Israel were wrong.”
October 23: Minister of Finance Smotrich declared during a conference:
“If Saudi Arabia tells us ‘normalization in exchange for a Palestinian state,’ friends — no thank you. Keep riding camels in the desert in Saudi Arabia, and we will continue to develop with the economy, society and state and the great things that we know how to do.”
September 28: Deputy speaker of the Knesset Vaturi from Netanyahu’s governing Likud party, declared in an interview:
“the Israeli interest is that there wouldn’t be any Arabs [in the West Bank] … If we could expel everyone, we would have done it.”
When asked if he distinguishes between Palestinian civilians and fighters, Vaturi replied: “There is no such thing.”
September 20: Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology Gila Gamliel from Netanyahu’s Likud party declared during a press conference:
“We will make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable until the population leaves, and the same thing will happen in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].”
