Ayelet Shaked made the controversial remarks as the Israeli regime continues its deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip that killed nearly 100 Palestinians. Most of the victims are women and children.
Shaked—a Knesset member of the religious nationalist Jewish Home party—took to Facebook with inflammatory remarks about the Palestinians on July 1, the day before the brutal murder of 17-year-old Palestinian Mohammed Abu Khudair, as reported first at Electronic Intifada.
“This is a war,” wrote Shaked, who has been routinely denounced in the Israeli press as an extremist. “Words have meanings. This is a war. It is not a war against terror, and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority. These too are forms of avoiding reality. This is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? Ask them, they started.”
The following day, Khudair was kidnapped in al-Quds and later burned alive. Six Israeli suspects were arrested on Sunday in connection to the murder, which set off a slew of protests throughout the region.
This this wasn’t the first time Shaked has made inflammatory remarks—and been condemned for them. In May, a columnist for the Ha’Aretz called her a “representative of an ideology unembarrassed by its racism.”
But Shaked is unapologetic, and wastes no space even suggesting that anyone in Israel is at fault for the recent uptick in violence.
She alleges that the content of the July 1 post is from an unpublished article originally written by Uri Elitzur, a former Israeli PM associate and journalist, who passed away earlier this year and goes on to say that the loss of civilian life is purely symptomatic of war, comparing the political climate of Israel to that of WWII-era Europe.
“They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads,” Shaked writes.
Shaked was the former head of My Israel, a Zionist activist group she formed in 2010 with Naftali Bennett, the current Minister of the Economy in Israel. The organization opposes BDS (Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions) and aims to increase awareness regarding illegal infiltration of migrant workers. But in the absence of Shaked’s leadership—she stepped down in 2012—the organization hasn’t been as vehemently war-hungry as the Knesset member.
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