Mrs Weiss heads a radical settler organisation called Nachala, or homeland. For decades, she has been kickstarting Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, on Palestinian land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Some in the settler movement have cherished the dream - or pipedream - of returning to Gaza since 2005, when Israel ordered a unilateral pullout, 21 settlements were dismantled and about 9,000 settlers were evacuated by the army. (Reporting from Gaza at the time, I saw many who were literally dragged out.)
Many settlers saw all this as a betrayal by the state, and a strategic mistake. Opinion polls suggest that most Israelis oppose resettling Gaza, and it is not government policy, but since the Hamas attacks on 7 October it is being talked about out loud - by some of the loudest and most extreme voices in Israel’s government. Mrs Weiss proudly shows me a map of the West Bank with pink dots indicating Jewish settlements. The dots are scattered all over the map, eating away at land where Palestinians hope - or hoped - to build their state. There are about 700,000 Jewish settlers in these areas now and settler numbers are rising fast.
This is so disgusting to read.
I look at her comments – she doesn’t deny that it’s ethnic cleansing – and I am disgusted to be associated with this woman as a Jew. Her vision is just vile. I’ve known many liberal zionists who seem confused or cowed, but these far right nationalists have a vision for domination that is completely indistinct from any nationalist movement (Nazis included). It’s just horrible to watch how gleeful she is to see these people die or forced off their home at the barrel of a gun.
These people cannot be allowed to win.
The upside–if the article is to believed–is that her opinion is not shared by the majority in Israel. But yes, the loudest/extremest voices do have a habit of getting amplified and guiding, or subverting, the majority. It truly does read like some kind of fanfic delusions from the Third Reich: completely nuts.
Maybe in the sense that she acknowledges that what she’s doing is ethnic cleansing, but the idea that “God’s chosen people” have the right to steal the subhuman Arabs’ land and kill them is very much a common idea, as seen from the amount of right wing voters in Israel.
The tone deafness is astounding. “Never again,” said Israel, “unless they are subhuman, then go for it.”