Israeli ‘extremist’ tells Australian audience Gaza should have been reduced to ashes
A former Israeli parliamentarian who once held a position in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government told an online gathering of Australian Jews this week that Israel should have abandoned adherence to international law and reduced Gaza to ashes.
In a series of incendiary claims, Moshe Feiglin, the leader of Israel’s far-right Zehut party, said there was no such thing as Palestinians, Palestinian statehood was the biggest lie of the 20th century and that Gaza should be resettled by Jewish Israelis and Arab families encouraged to leave.
Former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin addressed Australian Jewish community members from his West Bank home.
“What Israel should have done to Gaza, on the 8th of October, was exactly what the British people did in Hamburg and Dresden, and exactly what the American people did in every Japanese city they could reach,” he told a Zoom meeting hosted by the Australian Jewish Association (AJA).
“They burnt them to ashes. No ridiculous humanitarian aid. They burnt those cities.
“If we had done that, we would have won the war in a few days and many of the hostages would be free today.”
The association’s invitation for Feiglin to speak, at a time when the war has bitterly divided Australian communities and unleashed antisemitic attacks on Jewish people, businesses and politicians, was condemned by Palestinian and Jewish community organisations.
The Melbourne office of Jewish MP Josh Burns was vandalised this week.Credit: Chris Hopkins
Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler denounced Feiglin’s views and the association’s decision to host him.
“He is an extremist, who does not reflect the mainstream views of Israelis, nor of Australian Jews,” Leibler said. “No mainstream Jewish community organisation would provide him with a platform.
“It is outrageous and unacceptable to hold any Israeli or Jewish Australian responsible for the hate promoted by Moshe Feiglin because we have as much sway over this unelected extremist as we do over any other far-right extremist in Australia.”
The Australian Jewish Association is a non-representative public affairs organisation with a punchy social media presence and political views to the right of more established Jewish community organisations.
Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni said the association was “promoting fascist ideologies” and said Feiglin had no place in civil discourse.
Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni.Credit: Eddie Jim
“It should alarm all Australians that the AJA, which has been linked to extremist Israeli settler movements, and has a history of promoting anti-Palestinian racism, should choose to actively amplify Feiglin’s dangerous and genocidal message,” Mashni said.
The Jewish Council of Australia, a self-appointed expert panel of largely anti-Zionist Jewish intellectuals, accused the AJA in a submission to a Senate inquiry into right-wing extremism of being violently Islamophobic and supporting ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
“It’s disgraceful that the AJA platforms figures like Feiglin,” the council’s executive officer, Sarah Schwartz, said. “We should all be concerned that extremist views such as Feiglin’s are becoming more and more normalised within Israeli society and political discourse.”
Palestinians at the site of an Israeli strike on buildings in the Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza, this month.Credit: Bloomberg
AJA president David Adler defended the decision to host Feiglin, who he said was previously a “major player” in Israeli politics and remained a frequent media commentator in Israel and through international outlets including the BBC.
Feiglin also has strong family ties to Australia. Although born in Israel, his great-grandfather was a prominent fruit grower in the Victorian town of Shepparton, and his family lived here until the 1960s. During his time in the Knesset, Feiglin chaired the Australia-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group.
“AJA has hosted hundreds of speakers from across the political spectrum,” Adler said. “We never claim to share particular views, but we don’t do censorship or cancel culture.”
Feiglin spoke from his West Bank home to an online audience of about 500 people on Wednesday in livestreams arranged by the AJA. When asked whether his comments would make life more difficult for Jewish people living in Australia, Feiglin was unapologetic.
Two weeks ago, one of his grandsons, IDF sergeant Yair Levin, was killed serving in the southern Gaza town of Rafah when he and other Israeli soldiers entered a booby-trapped building.
“We are losing the war because we tie our hands to these rules, these European rules that did not help one Jew in Europe,” he said.
“My grandson was killed because he was sent into the building instead of destroying the building from air as we should have done, and with bulldozers. Destroying the building was the moral thing to do. Sending my grandson inside was immoral.”
He said antisemitism was rising not because of civilian deaths in Palestine, but due to Israel’s inability to win the war.
The Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) in Dresden in 1967. The Allies bombed it in World War II and it was deliberately left in ruins until after Germany’s reunification.Credit: AP
“They don’t care if one Arab was killed or not,” he told the AJA event. “It is not about the Arabs, it is about the Jews. When the Jews are weak, it means there is no room for the Jews in the world. It is not about what you do or don’t do to the Arabs – it is about are you winning or losing.”
Feiglin’s reference to the bombing of Dresden in 1945 – an indiscriminate, British-led attack that caused an inferno in the German industrial city and killed an estimated 25,000 civilians – invokes one of the most contentious operations by allied forces in World War II.
Feiglin is part of broader Jewish nationalistic movement which supports the idea of a Greater Israel – expanding the national borders to include the boundaries of the “promised land” that God is fabled to have described to Abraham.
Taken literally, this would expand Israel west to the Nile River and east to the Euphrates. In contemporary terms, it means abandoning the Oslo Accords and the establishment of a sovereign Palestine state and annexing occupied territories seized in 1967 during the Six Day War – Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
Feiglin and Benjamin Netanyahu in 2019. Feiglin was a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party and served as deputy speaker of the Knesset before leaving parliament to form his own nationalist party.Credit: AP
Although Feiglin’s policy proscriptions are extreme, his vision of post-war Gaza is consistent with what Israel’s hardline government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich publicly advocate.
National Security Minister Ben-Gvir this week posted a message on Telegram encouraging “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from Gaza and reiterating his commitment to West Bank Jewish settlements. Finance Minister Smotrich has also called for the return of Jewish settlements in Gaza. “We will occupy the Gaza Strip,” he said earlier this month.
Since the October 7 atrocities in which Hamas killed 1200 Israelis and took 251 hostages, and the subsequent war in Gaza, estimated to have killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, public opinion in Israel appears to have hardened on the question of Palestinian self-determination. A survey by Channel 12 news taken in November found that about one-third of Israelis supported a permanent IDF presence in Gaza and the return of Jewish settlements along the strip.
The mood among Australian Jews shortly after the October 7 attacks was captured in a survey conducted by the Monash University Australian Centre of Jewish Civilisation, in partnership with the Sydney-based Jewish Community Appeal. The results, published last week, reflect an “extraordinarily high level of distress” in the community, with two-thirds of respondents agreeing that antisemitism was a big problem and nine out of 10 expressing an emotional attachment to Israel.
The centre’s director, associate professor David Slucki, said while they represented a small number of right-wing Jews, the survey results suggested that October 7 had shifted Jewish community sentiment in Australia. “After what happened in October, there was a heightened sense of fear among Jews in Australia about what that will mean for them,” he said. “That does shape political attitudes.”
Feiglin served as the Knesset deputy speaker between 2013 and 2015 as a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party before breaking away to form Zehut, the Hebrew word for identity. At previous elections, his party failed to secure the minimum 3.5 per cent of the vote required for representation.
Michael Chaitow, chief executive of the Australian chapter of the New Israel Fund, an international organisation which supports human and civil rights projects in Israel, said Feiglin offered an “extremely dangerous perspective” which had the potential to distort public debate in Australia.
“The average punter isn’t following this too closely,” he said. “They see that this is someone who used to sit in the Knesset and therefore, might make the assumption that this is where the Israeli government is trying to lead the direction of the war. That is really harmful to the Australian public, to see this kind of narrative permeating through local Jewish groups.”
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