Bezalel Smotrich is an Israeli politician and far-right activist. He holds the position of Minister of Finance and Minister of Civil Administration in the Ministry of Defense. He entered the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) in 2015, and heads the “Religious Zionism” party.
He grew up in the Beit El settlement, and joined the army at the age of 28. He is a supporter of all-out war in the Gaza Strip as well as in the West Bank, and calls for a state subject to religious laws that includes all of Palestine.
He was known for his extremist views against what is known as “Jewish Reformism,” and also against the Israeli left and the Palestinians. Some of his critics believe that he has “ill-considered” positions and comments, to the point that one of his employees said about him that “there is a lack of coordination between his brain and his mouth.”
Birth and upbringing
Bezalel Smotrich was born on February 27, 1980 in the “Hisobin” settlement south of the occupied Syrian Golan, which is a bloc of settlements with a national religious character, and is considered a center for the “religious Zionism” movement.
It is said that his surname goes back to the Ukrainian town of Smotyrysh, where his ancestors lived before his grandfather immigrated to Palestine during the British Mandate.
His father, Haim Yeruham, was an Orthodox rabbi of the Kiryat Arba religious school, one of the strongholds of the Kach movement. He was also close to the spiritual father of religious Zionism, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, and a member of the biblical nucleus that Kook sent to establish settlements in the Golan.
Smotrich spent his childhood and youth in the Beit El settlement in the occupied West Bank, and his father was a religious teacher there for 15 years.
He is married with seven children, and lives in the Kedumim settlement in an unlicensed house, according to what Haaretz newspaper reported. Israeli Channel 12 said that he seized privately owned Palestinian land near this settlement and built his house on it.
Study and scientific training
He trained in a small religious school in the “Beit El” colony, and joined the “Mirkaz Harab” school (meaning the Rabbi’s Center or “Yeshivah”, meaning the international religious school), which was founded by Rabbi Avraham Kook in 1924 (currently based in “Kiryat Moshe” west of Jerusalem). It combines the Jewish religion and Zionist thought, and it graduates the most prominent symbols of the Israeli extreme right in Israel.
He continued his education at the Higher Yeshiva of the Kedumim settlement in parallel with his studies at Ono Academic College, where he obtained a Bachelor of Laws degree with honors. He obtained a license to practice the legal profession.
After that, he joined the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and began studying for a master’s degree in public and international law, but he did not complete it.
Professional life
In 2013, he was appointed an official visitor to detention facilities by the Bar Association, and a representative of the public in the general body of the Press Council in 2014.
He directed the yeshiva in the Kedumim settlement, and was among the founders of the Association of Higher Post-Secondary Zionist Religious Schools, and a member of its administration.
Smotrich – who usually wears the kippah (Jewish hood) over his head – joined the Israeli army at the age of 28, and for 16 months he held the position of Assistant Coordinator of Major Operations in the Operations Department of the General Staff, called “Gopnik”, a department he considers Army recruits are humiliating.
He made his way to the Knesset for the first time in the 2015 elections for the “National Union (Takoma)” party, and was elected as a representative member of the right-wing “Jewish Home” bloc’s list, and was appointed Vice-Speaker of the Knesset. He was also a member of the Finance Committee, the Internal Affairs and Environment Committee, and the State Control Committee. And a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Between June 23, 2019 and May 2020, he assumed the portfolio of the Ministry of Transportation, and was a member of the mini-security government (cabinet). Then he became a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s 37th government, which gained the confidence of the Knesset on December 29, 2022.
He was appointed Minister of Finance, and assumed a new position, which is an additional minister in the Ministry of Defense within the framework of the recent changes in the Israeli Basic Law, and former Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot described his appointment as a “gamble.”
Political activity
The name Bezalel Smotrich is linked to two politically central events:
The first was during his first participation as a political activist during the implementation of the “disengagement” plan from the Gaza Strip, as he was one of the most prominent leaders of the rebellion against the evacuation of Israeli settlements in the Strip, which led to his arrest in August 2005, after 700 liters of fuel were found. At his home, he was suspected of planning to use it in acts of sabotage before he was released without indictment.
The second event is related to his joining the “Takoma” party, and his election to the Knesset in 2015, moving between the “Jewish Home”, “Yamina” and “Religious Zionism” parties.
Until the 24th Knesset elections in 2021, he was a minor figure alongside the duo Naftali Bennett and Ayalet Shaked within the framework of the “Jewish Home” party.
But his “star shone” when he separated from Bennett, became the leader of the “New Mafdal” party, and formed a joint list with the “Otzma Yehudit” party headed by Itamar Ben Gvir, as they are both considered a successor to the founder of the “Kach” movement, Meir Kahane.
In the November 2022 elections, the two-party alliance was able to be the third force in the 25th Knesset, and during this period two developments occurred that were of great importance to Smotrich’s political career:
The first was when he was able to prevent Netanyahu from forming a government with the support of the “Unified Arab List,” saying that it constituted a strategic threat that would give the Arabs (Palestinians of 1948) a power that would lead them to control the fate of the state.
As for the second event, it was linked to attacking the alliance of his former partner Bennett with the leader of the Israeli opposition, Yair Lapid. He was able to exclude Bennett, who later withdrew from politics, and Smotrich turned into the leader of the “Religious Zionism” party, which opposed the right-wing government from the beginning.
Minister with the rank of settler
Bezalel Smotrich emerged mainly through his activity in support of settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories, where he established and managed the “Regavim” settlement movement in 2006, which is active in supporting settlement and inciting the demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank and the Negev region in southern Israel.
The “Settlement Law” was introduced in the Knesset in 2015. The law stipulates that the Israeli government may delegate its powers in the field of settlement and other areas of settlement division to the Zionist Organization.
He also presented, in cooperation with Member of the Knesset Yoav Kish, the settlement law, which aims to allow the confiscation of lands in the West Bank, in 2017 (it was annulled by the Supreme Court in 2020 on the grounds that it was not constitutional).
In the spirit of “religious Zionism,” which included in its electoral program in 2022 “Israel’s policy in the areas of the West Bank: settlement and sovereignty,” the Smotrich coalition ranked third in the ranking of lists in the Knesset in the fifth elections.
The coalition agreement created a new Israeli settlement agency under his leadership within the Ministry of Defense to manage Jewish and Palestinian construction in the 60% of the West Bank controlled by Israel.
Observers say that Smotrich’s policies encouraged settler violence, as their monthly attacks increased by more than 30% in 2023 compared to 2022, according to United Nations figures.
As Finance Minister, he allocated in Israel’s 2024 budget an amount of $960 million (a quarter of the Ministry of Transport’s total funds) for a highway network linking Israel to the West Bank, and he withheld funds allocated to cities located in the 48 territories and educational programs in East Jerusalem.
Racist statements
The Israeli Minister of Finance’s extremist and anti-Palestinian statements and positions have become the subject of widespread international criticism, as American and French officials boycotted his visit to Washington and Paris in 2023.
With the exception of his apology for his demand to “erase” the Palestinian town of Huwwara in the northern occupied West Bank, the statements of condemnation that followed him did not change his positions.
In a meeting in Paris on March 19, 2023, he said that “there is no such thing as the Palestinian people,” and in October 2021 he told Arab representatives in the Knesset, “It is wrong that (former Prime Minister David) Ben-Gurion did not complete the mission and did not expel you in 1948″.
He celebrated the Knesset’s approval of canceling the ban on the return of 4 settlers to Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank that were evacuated in 2005, and he tweeted, “We have begun with a historical correction.”
He also said, “If we hit with an iron hand, there will be no children throwing stones.” He continued, “Whoever throws stones will not be here. I will either shoot him, imprison him, or expel him.” He also said, “Those who accept the rule of the Jewish state can stay, but those who do not accept, we will fight and defeat them.”
Among his most racist comments were those he made in April 2016, when he called for the separation of Jewish and Arab women in maternity wards, and admitted that Palestinian women pose a threat to the demographic structure, according to his claim.
In 2023, he issued an order to stop all transfers of tax clearance funds to the Palestinian Authority (funds that do not belong to Israel, but are obligated to transfer them according to the agreements).