The Things They Carried:
The Israeli Settler

A peek inside the bag Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari schleps to work each day in Jerusalem.

INTERVIEW BY OREN KESSLER | MARCH/APRIL 2012

Michael Ben-Ari doesn't look like someone on the front lines, but he is -- in more ways than one. The far-right Israeli member of the Knesset was denied a visa to the United States in February because he was deemed to be a member of a terrorist organization -- likely Kach, a banned political party that calls for the expulsion of Arabs from the biblical lands of Israel. The incident caused a diplomatic uproar, as Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin wrote a letter to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro condemning the U.S. action as "unacceptable."

A settler in the West Bank, Ben-Ari represents National Union, an alliance of national-religious parties that rejects the dismantling of the settlements and the creation of a Palestinian state. The 49-year-old former college lecturer lives in Karnei Shomron -- a settlement of 6,500 people on a hilltop 30 miles northeast of Tel Aviv -- with his wife and their eight children.

He is perhaps best known as a disciple of Meir Kahane, the American-Israeli ultranationalist rabbi who served four years in the Knesset until 1988, when Kach was banned for inciting racism. Two years later, an Arab gunman murdered Kahane in a New York hotel, but his creed lives on in Ben-Ari, the first avowed Kahanist to join the Knesset since the ban. Foreign Policy paid a visit to his settlement home to peek inside the black nylon bag he schleps to work each day in Jerusalem.

 

Clean shirt and tie: "My days are long -- luckily, I have a shower in the office." The label reads "Lord Fashion."

 

 

 

 

Leftovers: Persian-style rice with carrots, raisins, and cranberries. "My kids all eat Persian food," says Ben-Ari, who is of Iranian and Afghan descent. "This makes me feel connected to home."

 

 

 

iPhone: "I have a problem with all this modernization" -- Ben-Ari's home has no TV -- "but this thing won me over. One can't go to war carrying just a sword."

 

 

 

Photos by Marc Israel Sellem

 

Oren Kessler is Middle East affairs correspondent for the Jerusalem Post.

BASE

8:27 AM ET

February 27, 2012

Thank you FP

For this gripping and hard-hitting expose. Is it really that slow of a news day? I don't think so.

 

GRANT

2:09 PM ET

February 27, 2012

They've done articles with

They've done articles with far less relevance both to foreign policy and newsworthiness. Remember the article on Newt Gingrich and sex in outer space? Of course if they really wanted to focus on something that's actually important for foreign policy and underreported they could give more attention to the constantly deteriorating situation in Libya or more on South America than the occasional article about Brazil or Venezuela. But I'm sure that even this has some niche audience that wants to read about it.

 

BETZ55

11:59 AM ET

February 27, 2012

Who cares what he has in his bag?

Israel's occupation and settlement policies are morally and politically wrong and feed the entirely valid delegitimization process that Israel currently faces abroad

Kach, a terrorist group founded by the late racist Rabbi Meir Kahane, was officially labeled as such and outlawed by the Israeli government in 1994, following the massacre of 29 Palestinians and wounding of 125 others by a Kach follower, Baruch Goldstein. Yigal Amir, another Kach follower, assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.

Since then, though officially outlawed, Kach members continue to operate in settler communities on the West Bank and have an extensive network on Facebook. As reported Kach member, Michael Ben-Ari, actually holds a seat in the Knesset; Ben-Gvir and Marzel are his aides.

The U.S. government asked Israel to intervene last fall when Ben-Ari tried to stage an official Knesset tribute to his late terrorist mentor, Kahane.

All three of these Kahanist troublemakers reside in illegal West Bank settlements. All three specialize in staging protest marches by settler extremists in Palestinian towns in Israeli and in the occupied West Bank.

This man is a terrorist. Keep this man out, his ilk are not wanted here.

 

BENIYYAR

8:45 AM ET

February 29, 2012

Oddly enough, both Bashir Assad and Achmadinejad are welcome

I find it unsettling that the Obama administration is willing to treat the Butcher of Syria Bashir Assad and the mad mullah from Teheran, Achmadinejad with the greatest respect while refusing a visa to a parliamentarian from a loyal ally and a sister democracy.
And while Meir Kahane may have had a provocative past, I don't recall that he actually ever killed or even hurt anyone, indeed, all he ever did preach was that most Arabs and Moslems hated Jews and Israel, and that made them dangerous. In point of fact, Rabbi Kahane was himself murdered by an Arab assassin, legally living in the United States.
On the other hand, Yassir Arafat, abu Mazen, all of Hamas, and most of the PLO have actually preached the murder of innocent Jews and Israelis and many of them have actually murdered Jews and Israelis.
Your silly, really almost irrational accusations that the settlements are illegal are a product of your overheated imagination. If they were illegal, the ICC and the Security Council would have stepped in long ago.
If you are concerned that Baruch Goldstein committed a mass murder, fine, you are welcome to keep him out of the US. This should not be a problem, Baruch's been dead for 17 years.

 

KUNINO

1:14 PM ET

February 27, 2012

The iPhone is mightier than the sword?

Apparently so. The parliamentarian seems to carry no pen.

 

BENIYYAR

8:54 AM ET

February 29, 2012

The Obama Doctrine

The refusal of the State Department to issue a visa to an Israeli Knesset member is just another example of the Obama Doctrine in action.
The Obama Doctrine, simply put, is to betray or abandon American allies and befriend, support, or at least remain harmless to rogue regimes and American enemies.
But the Obama Doctrine has a special animosity towards Israel, given that Obama himself views the Jewish State as a aggressive and violent colonial entity which preys on the peace loving and humane Arab Islamic states of the Middle East. This is in line with Obama's view of the United States as a militaristic and aggressive predator nation which has pillaged and raped the rest of the world with it's military and economic power to enrich Americans and impoverish everyone else.
So I suppose that at least this article is innocous, and not the usual biased, misinformed, and half fabricated anti Israel and anti Jewish nonsense that so often passes for journalism on this site.

 

JBGODZILLA

1:28 PM ET

February 29, 2012

I first heard Kahane in 1968 in Brooklyn College

during a tough period of power struggle between Brooklyn Jews and Blacks, and he went on to form the Jewish Defense League. He was a rousing Jewish demagogue, something rather unique in otherwise mostly liberal Jewish Brooklyn.

I later heard him while living in Israel, in the 1980s, in a park across the street from my then apartment, wherein he argued that the Arabs should be paid to leave, and was booed by the mostly liberal Rehovot Jewish crowd. His party, KACH, was barred as a racist party from the Knesset for merely suggesting that Arabs BE PAID to emigrate elsewhere! He was subsequently assassinated by an Arab on one of his visits back in New York.

Today, I am a Kahanist! He was right; I was Left and WRONG. The other side still wants to throw the Jews into the sea; my side wants to PAY the ARabs to go away to the 21 Arab countries.

But seeing what is going on in Arab countries, Israeli Arabs are not going anywhere, and neither are Jews. So that's where it stands.