Too extreme for the army and a self -proclaimed ‘fascist homophobic’. Who are the Israeli ministers who are no longer welcome in the Netherlands?

The Dutch cabinet came on Monday with an entry ban for the extreme right-wing Israeli ministers ITAMAR BEN-GVIR (National Security) and Bezalel Smotrich (Finance). The Netherlands is the seventh country that sets sanctions against the two.

“In a place where terrorism is tolerated and terrorists are welcome, a Jewish minister from Israel is undesirable,” Ben-Gvir responds on Tuesday morning X FOOD The Dutch decision. According to Smotrich admits the Netherlands “to the lies of radical Islam.” For outgoing Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp (NSC), the measure is full because of violent statements that the two made about, among other things, the colonization of the West Bank. Those statements are anything but new.

Ben-Gvir: Too extreme to be allowed

Ben-Gvir, of the extreme right-wing religious-Zionist party Otzma Yehudit (Jewish force), has been living in an illegal settlement on the West Bank for years. Already in 2007 he was convicted of fueling racism and for membership of a terrorist organization. As a National Security Minister, he is now responsible for the police who picked him up several times in his extreme, activist past. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, now fierce critic of the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, described Ben-Gvir years ago as a greater danger to Israel than a nuclear armed Iran.

In his struggle for the West Bank, which he calls in Biblical terms ‘Judea and Samaria’, there is little taboo for Ben-Gvir. He is a pronounced in favor of a total Israeli annexation of the Palestinian territories. The militant minister himself never served in the army. For his military service, he was found too extremist at the age of eighteen.

As a sixteen-year-old son of moderate parents, Ben-Gvir became a member of the later prohibited party of the extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, who encouraged violence. On his wall, until 2020, even a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, who shot 29 Muslims in Hebron in 1994, nearby where Ben-Gvir now lives. At his first date with his current wife the couple visited his grave.

As a lawyer, Ben-Gvir assisted radical settlers if they were on trial for violence against Palestinians. For a long time, his party – with six of the 120 seats in the Knesset was still a small party – also seen too extreme in Israeli politics. Until Prime Minister Netanyahu formed his right -wing coalition to date after the 2022 elections. This also includes the extreme right -wing party Hatzionut Hadatit (Religious-Zionist Party, fourteen seats) Van Bezalel Smotrich, the other minister who is no longer welcome in the Netherlands.

Although the two extreme right -wing parties are relatively small, they put their mark firmly on the coalition, by regularly threatening to drop it. Elections in particular Netanyahu, who is standing for corruption, would be poor. Ben-Gvir left the cabinet at the beginning of this year because of a ceasefire with Hamas, which according to him would destroy the “achieved results of the war”. Less than two months later, when Israel had resumed the heavy attacks on Gaza, he returned.

Smotrich: self -proclaimed ‘fascist homophobic’

Bezalel Smotrich was born on the occupied Syrian Golan heights and now lives just like Ben-Gvir on the West Bank. Gaza is also inhabited as quickly as possible by Israeli settlers. Just like Ben-Gvir, he firmly believes in the law that the Jewish people have in his vision of the Biblical country of Israel.

In the past, among other things, he committed himself with an important right -wing NGO for expanding the occupied territories. As a minister, he openly chases ethnic cleansing. He said in May that Gaza would be completely destroyed within a few months and the Palestinian population would “leave for third countries.”

In addition to his efforts for colonization, he has been strongly against the queer community for years. Already in 2006 he organized a protest march Against the pride and compare homosexuals with animals. In 2023 he called himself in a recorded telephone conversation with a businessman a ‘fascist homophobic“.

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