The Israeli far-right just committed their own Jan. 6
Israeli extremists rejected laws, accountability and democracy in their efforts to break into IDF bases
Left: Rioters attempting to break into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Right: Protesters attempting to break into an Israeli army base, July 30. Photo-illustration by Victor J. Blue/Amir Levy/Getty Images
Adina Vogel Ayalon July 31, 2024
This week, Israel’s justice system has struggled to hold soldiers accountable over allegations of rape and torture against Palestinian detainees. We’ve seen infighting within the Israel Defense Forces; far-right protesters, including members of Knesset, breaching military bases; and extremist ministers brawling with the army and the courts.
Dahlia Scheindlin, a leading Israeli political analyst, described it as the “closest I’ve ever experienced to state breakdown” in a post on the social platform X.
The rejection of laws and accountability, and the similarities with MAGA rhetoric that we are seeing in Israel, draw chilling parallels to Jan. 6, and it fills me with dread.
The chaos was triggered Monday, following the arrest of nine soldiers alleged to have engaged in horrific, Abu Ghraib-style abuse of Palestinian prisoners at the Sde Teiman army base. The details are truly distressing, including reports the soldiers inflicted extremely severe injuries to one detainee by sodomizing them with a blunt object.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir announced he was heading to the facility himself to demand their immediate release, and dozens of right-wing protesters heeded the call. Video shows soldiers shouting at each other over the arrests. Protesters violently broke into two military bases, including a military court building, forcing police and soldiers to barricade themselves inside.
Intolerable reports of profound human rights abuses of Palestinian detainees at Sde Teiman have been surfacing for months. They include — according to numerous Israeli human rights groups — more than two-dozen deaths, indefinite restraints resulting in amputations, medical procedures with no anesthesia, sleep deprivation, denial of medical care, sodomy, beatings and sexual humiliation.
As an Israeli-American, and the chief of staff of J Street, a pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy political advocacy organization, I find this to be a disgrace, and I know that I am not alone in this feeling. While there are some in Israel who say the prisoners, many of whom may be suspected Hamas terrorists, deserve this treatment, I am ashamed of those seeking to justify such inhumanity.
“I couldn’t believe an Israeli jailer could do such a thing,” said Dr. Yoel Donchin, who treated the detainee. “If they maintain a hospital only for the sake of defending ourselves at the Hague, that’s no good.”
Who have we become? The reported abuse is a horrific violation of human rights and my values as an Israeli, an American and a Jew. It is a stain on everything I would hope Israel stands for.
Yet the response from Israel’s extreme right — including far-right ministers and members of the Knesset — was as predictable as it was caustic.
“Get your hands off” our “heroic warriors” said Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. The detention of soldiers “is unacceptable to me,” said Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein, who will hold hearings into the arrests (not the alleged abuse of detainees). Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Minister Yariv Levin said he was “shocked” by the arrests.
In the Knesset, depravity was also on display. “To insert a stick in a person’s anus, is that legitimate?” cried Arab Israeli lawmaker Ahmad Tibi in exasperation. “Shut up! Yes!” yelled Likud minister Hanoch Milwidsky in response. “If he is Nukhba [Hamas’ armed commando unit], everything is legitimate!”
Many right-wing politicians appear, appallingly, to still be siding with (and cheering on) the rioters. Their actions mirror those of many American politicians like Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz who, after Jan. 6, continued to spread baseless claims of a stolen election or Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who claimed that the rioters were mistreated.
Thankfully, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have clearly condemned the protests, with the latter saying it “gravely harms our democracy.” Smotrich himself issued a Trump-like “stand back and stand by” statement, calling for protesters to “calm down” and leave military bases alone. Yet unlike in the U.S. after Jan. 6, there have not been any arrests made of the protesters who broke into the bases.
Gallant noted the very real operational impact the crisis has had on the IDF’s ability to respond to security challenges both in Gaza and to Israel’s north, where tensions with Hezbollah risk spiraling into a full-scale war. Protesters not only broke into bases, but blockaded troops returning from the Gaza front. To witness Israeli civilians and soldiers fighting other soldiers and police officers in an attempt to enter these bases was eerily reminiscent of watching Trump supporters — a group that is typically highly supportive of law enforcement — violently assault police officers on Jan. 6.
“The shock from fellow Israelis is significant,” my colleague Nadav Tamir, a former IDF officer and the current director of J Street’s Israel office, told me. He compared the images to rioters storming the Capitol on Jan. 6. “It feels like we are at risk of some kind of civil war.”
The Public Committee Against Torture, an Israeli human rights group, has said of the protests that, “instead of absolute condemnation, some Israeli far-right leaders have rallied to support the suspects of abuse, which is emblematic of the root causes that enable such abuse to happen in the first place.” These Israeli ministers egging on the protesters are echoing the response of certain Republican politicians in the U.S., who not only minimized violent Jan. 6 rioters as peaceful protesters, but collaborated with Trump to attempt to overthrow the election in the first place.
The continued impunity, not just for guards in military prisons but for violent settlers and soldiers on the West Bank, government ministers spewing incitement and leaders alleged to have violated the laws of war in Gaza, is absolutely caustic to Israel’s democracy, its security and to its core liberal democratic and Jewish values. Unless Israelis publicly and forcefully reckon with this internal rot, the Jewish state will descend into sectarian chaos.
In the United States, those who count themselves as pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy Americans must be alert to the significant risk the Israeli far-right pose to Israel’s security, democracy and the very fabric of Israeli society. Just as MAGA extremists are becoming more radicalized toward violence and attacks on courts and democracy, so too are Israeli right-wingers.
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