BICOM

Over the course of the Israeli election campaign, BICOM is interviewing candidates from across the spectrum. On Wednesday 4 March 2015 BICOM’s Director of Research Dr. Toby Greene spoke with Ronen Shoval, a candidate for the Jewish Home party led by Naftali Bennett and a new entrant to politics with a background as a high profile writer, intellectual and activist. He is the founder of the right wing campaign group Im Tirtzu, which describes itself as a movement for the renewal of Zionism, and which runs campaigns, among other things, against what it considers anti-Israel activities of left-wing NGOs in Israel. A podcast of the interview is available here.

The Israeli right is a hotly contested space these days, what is distinctive about the agenda of Jewish Home?

I think we are actually the only party that is against a Palestinian state. Benjamin Netanyahu speaking about a Palestinian State, a two state solution, that is one issue. The second issue is obviously not only regarding our position towards [maintaining control of all of] Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel), but also we are not an apologetic movement. We are telling the truth, we are telling what we believe, even if it might be unpopular. We are saying the things which are the most important things for us, which are Eretz Yisrael and the people of Israel, and our Jewish heritage.

Economically we are leaning to the right, and we have a more capitalistic point of view, and we need to make sure we’re really going to be not only a Jewish and democratic state, but also a Jewish and democratic state with a high standard of living.

Your party is called Jewish Home and as you mentioned you are one of the few parties which is explicitly against a two state solution. Critics would argue that without a two state solution, which your party rejects, there will not be a clear Jewish majority in Israel. Even Prime Minister Netanyahu has warned of the threat of a bi-national state, without a two state solution. So, the question is: How can you have a Jewish home without a clear Jewish majority?

Well, you have a here a few mistaken assumptions. The first one is the idea that if the people have a Palestinian state, it will be a solution. You can have a Palestinian state, but it won’t be a solution because land is not an issue and Palestinians sovereignty is not an issue. The core of our problem is radical Islam and not other things.

We believe that we don’t need to have a Palestinian state because it only makes it harder for us to exist. If we have a Palestinian state, the first thing they will do is open the borders and it will get ISIS in the middle of Israel. If we want to survive here, you need to understand that the problem is radical Islam, it is not land. Therefore, the solution has to address the real problem. Why would you want to create another Palestinian state while all the states here in the Middle East are having what the world calls the Arab Spring, but what is in fact a Muslim Winter. So when all the states around us are collapsing, to create another state that is collapsing would be another opportunity fot radical Islam to flourish – it’s insane. Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing things again and again and expecting a different result. We have tried the Oslo pact for the last 22 years, and it has brought us death, death, death. More than 1,600 Israelis were murdered by the radical Islam, and we got missiles all over Israel after the disengagement. So, to speak about another Palestinian state as a solution – this assumption is completely unrealistic.

Regarding your second assumption that we are going to have an Arab majority – that is also not correct. At this moment, 99 per cent of Palestinians have the ability to vote for their own parliament. They have a parliament in Ramallah, where they vote and have elections. They are responsible for the education system, for their schools, for any aspect of life from A to Z. The only main thing that separates the Palestinian Authority from being a state is the ability to have an army. This is something that any sane person in Israel would be against.

How can you speak about us being in a minority, when they have the right to vote in their own places, in Judea and Samaria and in Gaza where we are not responsible for any aspect of life? So I just can’t understand the assumption that we cannot stay in the areas that were given to us by our historic rights, which are important for our existence. We won’t be in a minority because they don’t vote for the Israeli parliament, they vote for their own parliament.

Another aspect of Jewish Home’s proposals for the West Bank is that Israel should annex area C. Of course as far as the international community is concerned, the West Bank is occupied territory and should be earmarked for a future Palestinian state. You are very aware of the kind of reactions we see internationally when Israel moves to expand settlements in the West Bank. So, what kind of international reaction would you expect, were Jewish Home’s proposals to be carried out, and where do you see that going?

We can’t be occupiers in Judea and Samaria because a people can’t be occupiers in their own place. We were here 4,000 years ago, 3,000 years ago. We had the First Temple and the Second Ttemple before the first Muslim was born in the year 600. So, in any place that you would go here you will see the archaeological evidence of of my ancestors. So, to tell me that I am an occupier when I am staying here in my place, where Abraham, Yitzchak, and King David were walking – that is unacceptable.

And to have this type of diplomacy that doesn’t see that Jews have the right to be in Judea, to say that we are occupiers here, that is an anti-Semitic assumption, and I am completely against it. By international law, we don’t have rights in Jerusalem, we don’t have rights in Golan Heights, we don’t have rights in any place. I’m not waiting for the world to love us for existing, I didn’t see the world helping us 66 years ago. We have to take the responsibility upon ourselves and we are not hoping that the world will love us and will do something.

In 2005, we went and we did what the world asked us. We carried out the disengagement plan, and we threw out 10,000 Jews from their homes, we destroyed 25 settlements, and guess what we got? We got missiles all over Israel. And, we want to try and defend ourselves and stop the terror from Gaza, but the world is saying we can’t do it. So, I’m not optimistic about the world, and I hope that the world will start to ask itself what are the moral issues. When you look at morals, it is completely obvious that Israel is on the right side of this conflict.

Critics of the Jewish Home inside Israel describe it as an extreme party, not only in terms of territorial nationalism, but also in terms of social issues. For example, there are accusations that the party is anti-gay, also that is uses a very provocative rhetoric, attacking the loyalty of political opponents on the left, for example. How do you respond to those accusations that your party is extreme?

Well, extreme is being defined by the middle and by the sides, and unfortunately or fortunately the agenda that we are talking about is valued by the majority in Israel. The majority of Israelis love the State of Israel; a majority of Israelis love the national anthem; the majority of Israelis loves the IDF soldiers; and I’m talking about all of them. When we are talking about phenomena that we have seen in the Labour party, where they have members that are attacking the State of Israel – shame on them, who are attacking the State of Israel, saying that the national anthem is racist, and so on. I’m not going to apologise for one second for loving the IDF soldiers, and I’m not going to apologise for one second for loving my flag. If someone is calling me radical because I love my country, it defines him more than it defines me.

Now, the polls show that the combined vote of Jewish Home and Likud, which is your most natural coalition partner, have actually been in decline over the last couple of months. Why do you think that is? And do you think you could be heading to the opposition?

No, definitely not. Benjamin Netanyahu is going to be the prime minister. Our system is not based upon the question of who is going to be the biggest party, our system is based on who is going to be the biggest bloc. By any mathematics, when you look at the polls, the left cannot have any type of bloc.

From my perspective, the only question is who is going to be the important members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s next government. Whether it is going to be, again, the left, Tzipi Livni, Buji Herzog and so on, or isit going to be Naftali Bennett and the Jewish Home. And the most important thing is that Jewish Home is as big as possible, so Netanyahu will have to have us as a strong member of his coalition, and that when we will be a part of the coalition we will make sure that no more territories are going to be given to the Palestinians, and no more terrorists are going to be released. Those are the key issues for us.

Many people in Israel are speculating that a national unity government, given the mathematics and the politics, is a distinct possibility. Could you conceive of a situation in which Jewish Home would be in a coalition which included also the Labour party?

Yes, definitely that can happen. I would prefer obviously that we are going to have a right wing government. I don’t see the benefit of having a government with people from the Labour party, but at the end of the day we are making a government, and we are going to have a list of things we all agree on, and I hope that the Labour party would see our path as the right path and will join the right wing government. I don’t know if this is going to happen, it really depends on the results of the election. If we are going to be strong and big, then Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud party will not have any alternative [but] to make us a key member of the government. But if we will be small and Labour will be big [a unity government] could definitely be seen. It is up to the people to decide.