Finally, Canada sanctions members of the Israeli government

Not good enough, and not soon enough

On the left, radical lunatic Bezalel Smotrich. On the right, radical lunatic Itamar Ben-Gvir. Both of these men are now sanctioned by Canada and our peer nations for inciting violence against Palestinians. | (Left) Copyright © Government Press Office of Israel, (Right) Copyright © אלון נוריאל, both licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

In a joint statement today, the five countries of the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and Canada announced they are collectively imposing sanctions on two ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, for their repeated incitement of violence against Palestinians.

Starting immediately, Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Minister Bezalel Smotrich will have any financial assets in these five countries frozen, and they will both be subject to a travel ban preventing them from entering Canada or our peers in this endeavour.

These sanctions have come after years of pressure; Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are notorious for extreme levels of bigotry, and even violence. Smotrich once said that Arab and Jewish women should be segregated in maternity wards, and also told Palestinian citizens of Israel serving as fellow elected MKs that “you’re here by mistake, it’s a mistake that Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and didn’t throw you out in 1948.”

During settler protests against the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Smotrich was interrogated by the deputy chief of the Shin Bet intelligence service under suspicion that he was part of a terrorist cell planning to use 700 litres of gasoline to blow up a highway. And now, with plans to resettle Gaza and ethnically cleanse the Palestinians who live there, he is eagerly pursuing his revenge.

And when it comes to Itamar Ben-Gvir? That lunatic has been convicted by Israel’s own courts of “incitement to racism” and “supporting a terror organization.” As Minister of National Security, Ben-Gvir is in charge of Israel’s police, despite literally being a convicted terrorist.

Having already joined the Kach terrorist movement by the age of 14, Ben-Gvir has the dubious distinction of being one of few Israelis disqualified from the military draft at 18, not because of any medical issue but because his political views were that concerning to the IDF. Considering how widespread war crimes are in the IDF, it’s actually astounding that Ben-Gvir was disqualified for crossing even their moral lines.

Between 1994 and 2020, Itamar Ben-Gvir had a framed photo of mass murderer Baruch Goldstein in his home. Goldstein was an American-Israeli who on February 25^th, 1994, wearing his IDF service uniform, went to the Cave of the Patriarchs and massacred Palestinians during Ramadan, killing 29 people with his gun and wounding 125 more until the survivors managed to overcome him.

On Ben-Gvir’s first date with his future wife, they visited Baruch Goldstein’s grave, a pilgrimage site for violent anti-Palestinian extremists, located in a park named after another violent extremist, Meir Kahane. His wife Ayala explicitly said in 2004 “what could be more special than the Meir Kahane Park in Kiryat Arba, next to the grave of Baruch Goldstein?”

In 1995, during the protests against the Oslo Accords, Ben-Gvir appeared on television having ripped the hood ornament off Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s car. In this appearance, he declared “we got to his car, and we’ll get to him too.” And then shortly after, Rabin was assassinated by a far-right extremist who hated the idea of peace.

Later, by 2015, Ben-Gvir provided legal defence to the perpetrators of the Duma arson attack, in which settlers firebombed a Palestinian home, killing an 18-month-old baby and his parents. He then attended a wedding for a couple related to the perpetrators of the attack, an event which would become infamous as “the wedding of hate”, where attendees waved guns in the air and stabbed a photo of the baby that their relatives murdered.

And again, this violent unhinged maniac is the minister in charge of Israel’s police. He decides how the law is enforced, or not enforced, for both Jews and Palestinians across Israel and the occupied territories.

The question isn’t why these two vile creatures have been sanctioned. The question is why these two weren’t sanctioned years ago! It wouldn’t even be the first time an Israeli cabinet minister faced such sanctions.

Prior to becoming Prime Minister, Menachem Begin was banned from travelling to the United Kingdom for his terrorist activities during his time as the leader of Irgun, including the deadly King David Hotel bombing in which his terrorists killed 91 people, Jewish, Palestinian, and British alike.

Begin’s ban lasted for decades after Israel’s founding in 1948, and he only gained the ability to enter Britain in 1972 after extensive lobbying efforts towards the British government. Could you imagine the West having such a backbone today? Before the announcement of these sanctions, I wouldn’t have.

For years, Canada has issued effectively the same statement about Israel and Palestine every few weeks, saying we’re “seriously concerned”, threatening that our concerns would maybe someday become concrete actions…if we felt like it. And this seems to be the first time since the Suez Crisis in 1956 that Canada does feel like it!

Such statements from both Canada and the West as a whole have the same feeling as the old Soviet joke about “China’s Final Warning.” The joke being that in disputes over the Taiwan Strait, China issued hundreds of “final warnings” to the United States, none of which ever held any consequences.

So some congratulations are in order, for finally imposing these minimal consequences. But this is not good enough, and it didn’t happen soon enough. Sanctions need to be expanded to more members of the Israeli government who are complicit in perpetuating war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, alleging their participation in such crimes. Why are they not under sanction as well?

And why is Canada violating it’s supposed “arms embargo” and still selling weapons to Israel when we believe they’re using those weapons to perpetuate heinous crimes against the Palestinian people? We’re sanctioning these two men for being violent bigoted lunatics, but we still see fit to sell them guns? Do we understand this could cause the ICC to issue arrest warrants for us?

I won’t complain about Canada and our peer nations doing something material. But I’ll certainly complain that we’ve dithered and dallied for so long that tens of thousands of Palestinians have died from our lack of action…or even worse, died because of our contribution of weapons.

How many lives could we have saved if we imposed sanctions immediately, not several years into the genocide? How many lives do we still have a chance to save, if today we imposed a full arms and trade embargo, and sanctions against every government official involved in the genocide of the Palestinian people?

I’m glad we’re doing more. It’s not enough. Nothing less than the total and complete cessation of our complicity in this genocide will be enough. And I vow to remain unsatisfied until that goal is achieved.