"Netanyahu, like his right- and left-wing predecessors, has been guided by his ideological guru, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who published almost a century ago his revisionist treatise, “The Iron Wall”, advising the Zionist leaders to do all to snuff out any glimmer of Palestinian hope that they might be able to prevent the transformation of “Palestine” into the “Land of Israel”.

Jabotinsky argued that the Palestinians are no fools to be deceived or bribed into giving up their homelands to the Jewish newcomers, and no reward would ever be enough to compensate them for the loss of their homeland, and therefore, they must be driven into total despair by coercion or force.

A century ago, in November 1923, Jabotinsky himself used words that seemed to suggest a very different understanding of Palestine to the one Smotrich, the Minister of Finance in Israel has outlined.“There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs […] it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting ‘Palestine’ from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority,”

Jabotinsky wrote.“Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised”

But the current government is not normal. It is a turn in Israeli history, with dangerous consequences for Israeli liberals, Arab Israelis, Palestinians, and the region.

Chaim Weizmann, a principal organizer of the Balfour Declaration, and Israel’s first President, warned in his memoirs of the “menace” of the rabbi who will “make a heavy bid for power by parading his religious convictions.”

Weizmann continued, “It is useless to point out to such people that they transgress a fundamental principle which has been laid down by our sages: ‘Thou shalt not make of the Torah a crown to glory in, or a spade to dig with.’ ” They have made a spade of Netanyahu, too—as he has of them. "