Al-Jazeera / March 20, 2023
After calling for Palestinian village to be ‘wiped out’, Israeli finance minister stirs new outrage by denying the existence of Palestinians.
Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has sparked renewed backlash after saying the Palestinian people are “an invention” of the past century, with Palestinian officials blasting the comments as proof of the “racist” outlook of Israel’s new far-right government.
Speaking in Paris on Sunday, Smotrich said there was “no such thing as a Palestinian” because “there is no such thing as the Palestinian people”.
“Do you know who are the Palestinians? I’m Palestinian,” Smotrich said, going on to describe his late grandfather, who he said was a “13th generation Jerusalemite” as “the true Palestinian”.
“The Palestinian people is an invention that is less than 100 years old,” added Smotrich, an ultranationalist who also oversees civilian administration in the occupied West Bank.
His remarks were made during a memorial for Jacques Kupfer, an activist for Israel’s right-wing Likud party who died in 2021, with a video circulating online showing attendees responding to them with applause and cheers.
Smotrich is well-known for making inflammatory statements against Palestinians, as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel, and is a staunch opponent of the establishment of a Palestinian state.
On March 1, he triggered international outrage by saying the Palestinian village of Huwara in the West Bank should be wiped out following a rampage by Jewish settlers.
These comments were slammed as “repugnant” and “disgusting by the United States Department of State and prompted the French government to boycott him during his visit to Paris.
On Monday, Mohammad Shtayyeh, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA), said Smotrich’s latest remarks were “conclusive evidence of the extremist, racist, Zionist ideology that governs the current Israeli government”.
“These inflammatory statements, which are consistent with the first Zionist claims of ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’, and that Palestinian lands are ‘disputed’, and which demonstrate the arrogance of power, do not shake our belonging to our land and history, and that all archaeological remnants and history prove the attachment of the Palestinian to his land since the dawn of human and human history,” Shtayyeh told a PA cabinet session in Ramallah.
“Israel is a colonial state established by the colonialists and settlers, and it expanded like other settler colonialism throughout history, and we have learned from history that colonialism will end, and that the will and belonging of our people are not shaken by the statements of the falsifiers of history and their false claims,” he said.
Similarly, the Palestinian foreign ministry strongly condemned Smotrich’s remarks and those by other top Israeli officials recently that included incitement against Palestinians and their economic interests, affirming that such positions reflect “the dark colonial mentality that has come to dominate” the Israeli state and encourage “the growth of Jewish extremism and terrorism” against Palestinians.
“These official calls by officials at the top of the Israeli political hierarchy aiming to create chaos and continue the cycle of violence with the aim of sabotaging efforts to achieve calm, a mentality hostile to peace and political solutions to the conflict based on the principle of a two-state solution and based on deepening and expanding settlements along the path of the gradual and creeping annexation of the occupied West Bank,” the ministry said.
Smotrich’s comments came hours after Israeli and PA delegations met on Sunday for a regional summit in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt, where they discussed containing tensions days before the start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
The meeting, joined by delegations from the US, Jordan and Egypt, was a follow-up to a recent gathering held in Aqaba, Jordan last month – the first such high-level talks between Palestinian and Israeli leaders in years.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
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Israel’s Smotrich: ‘There’s no such thing as Palestinians’
MEE Staff
Middle East Eye / March 20, 2023
Far-right minister said on Sunday that ’there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people’, and that anyway he is a ‘real Palestinian’.
“There’s no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared on Sunday at a memorial service for a late Likud activist in Paris.
The far-right lawmaker said that the Palestinian people were “an invention” cooked up in the 20th century to fight Zionism and that it was people like him and his grandparents who were the “real Palestinians”.
Speaking at a podium adorned with a map based on the crest of the Zionist Irgun militia, which shows Israel straddling the West Bank and Jordan, Smotrich said that the French and US governments needed to hear “this truth” about the Palestinians.
“Do you know who are the Palestinians?” the head of the ultra-nationalist Religious Zionism party said. “I’m Palestinian.”
Smotrich referred to his grandmother, who was born in the northern Israeli town of Metula over a century ago, and his late grandfather, who was a 13th-generation Jerusalemite.
Smotrich has previously said that his surname is derived from the Ukrainian town of Smotrych, where he has said his ancestors lived.
The map shown on the podium Smotrich was speaking at also showed parts of Syria and Lebanon, regions included in the concept of Eretz Yisrael – Greater Israel – a key part of ultra-nationalist Zionism that claims all of these lands for a Zionist state.
Last week, a team representing the British Consulate General in Jerusalem running in the Palestine marathon was heavily criticised in Israel for wearing t-shirts that showed a map of historic Palestine.
French government won’t meet Smotrich
Smotrich’s appearance at the memorial of the late Likud activist Jacques Kupfer was supposed to be sponsored by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), but the organization removed its support because of the minister’s appearance, Haaretz reported.
The French foreign ministry announced last week that government representatives in Paris did not intend to meet with Smotrich during his visit to the country.
Aside from being the finance minister, Smotrich now holds significant powers over the occupied West Bank, which human rights lawyers told Middle East Eye amounted to “de jure annexation”.
At the end of February, the minister said that the state of Israel should “wipe out” the Palestinian village of Huwwara, after it was subjected to a violent rampage by Jewish settlers.
Former Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz has said that Smotrich, who has also called himself a “proud homophobe”, wants “another Nakba”.
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Far-right Israeli minister [Smotrich] declares: I am Palestinian
Middle East Monitor / March 20, 2023
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich claimed yesterday that there is “no such thing as Palestinians” and that they are a fictitious nation invented only to fight the Zionist movement.
Speaking at a memorial service for the late Likud activist Jacques Kupfer in the French capital Paris, he said: “Do you know who the Palestinians are? I am Palestinian.”
There’s “no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as the Palestinian people,” he added. “This truth should be heard at the Elysee Palace and the White House.”
According to Haaretz, Smotrich’s appearance at the event was initially sponsored by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), however, the JNF withdrew its sponsorship and the organization’s logo from publication due to his participation.
The Palestinians, Smotrich said, are regional Arabs who arrived in the land of Israel at the same time as the first major waves of immigration at the end of the 19th century.
“What happened? They created a fictional nation and then worked for their fictitious rights to the Land of Israel to battle against the Zionist movement. That is the historical truth and the biblical truth. That is the truth and there is no alternative,” Smotrich said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh this morning condemned Smotrich’s latest remarks as “conclusive evidence of the extremist, racist, Zionist ideology that governs the current Israeli government.”
“These inflammatory statements, which are consistent with the first Zionist claims of ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’, and that Palestinian lands are ‘disputed’, and which demonstrate the arrogance of power, do not shake our belonging to our land and history, and that all archaeological remnants and history prove the attachment of the Palestinian to his land since the dawn of humans and human history,” Shtayyeh told a government meeting in Ramallah.
The comments follow remarks made by the Israeli minister last month calling for the Palestinian village of Huwara to be “wiped out“.
Following the remarks, the French Foreign Ministry announced last week that government representatives in Paris did not intend to meet with Smotrich during his visit to the country.
