Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine) 25.01.2026
This week, the Knesset held a “Salute to the Pioneers of the Settlements” conference, and who are these heroes at a conference initiated by Knesset member Son Har Melech? A repeat criminal named Elisha Rad, who is suspected of murdering a Palestinian teenager in the village of Burqa in 2023, was removed by order from the West Bank. Akiva Hacohen, who was convicted of assaulting an elderly Palestinian and was previously defined as one of the main masterminds of the “price tag” operations; Menachem Ben Shahar, who was recently arrested on suspicion of incitement to violence. A PR video screened at the event also starred Uzi Sharbaf, a Jewish underground activist convicted of murder, and Moshe Sharvit, who was sanctioned by the US and British governments for violent attacks and systematic harassment of Palestinians.
MK Son Har-Melech’s spokesperson distributed a video explaining “why Huwara should be erased.”
In her opening speech, Son Har-Melech described this group of murderers as “the beautiful face of the country.” “You Jews are so enlightened and good,” she declared, “who are facing a smear campaign that tries to portray you as lawbreakers, when in fact you are upholding the highest moral and Jewish law: settling the land.” In other words, those who carry out ethnic cleansing in the West Bank are not subject to the laws that apply to us, the ordinary citizens. Not only are they allowed to murder, beat, rob, and set fire, but it is their duty to the chosen people.
The conference represents the process of turning the hilltop thugs from the periphery to the center, and the malignant spread of Kahanism in the corridors of government. Yarad does not behave in the Knesset as a guest, but as a landlord, as he has become accustomed to behaving in the homes and land of Palestinians. He put his feet on the seat in front of him. The lumps of mud on his shoes came from his home in the settlement in the West-Bank Ramat Migron, from the hills and the farms, from the places where “facts are established on the ground” and there is no law other than the supremacy of the Jewish people. The stained shoe that rests comfortably on the chair is a symbol of victory: it marks the collapse of the last border between the outposts on stolen land and the institutions where racist laws are written.
This change is embodied by Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was convicted, among other things, of incitement and support for a terrorist organization, and is now in charge of the police, which is his private militia. In his speech at the event, he recalled the ceremony of his entry into the Ministry of National Security, in which “there was a red carpet, and all the people standing there saluted me. And I say, wait a minute, that guy stopped me for setting up an outpost, he stopped me for a demonstration… We are blessed to have the privilege of being in a completely different period.”
The conference organized by Son Har Melech illustrates the thin line between the Zionist legislators and the rioters. A conference that treads on the remnants of democracy for Jews only, with a rough foot, and enjoys total immunity. And no matter how much they try to clear the mud from the Knesset, it heralds the end of the colonialist settler state.
For Palestine, red and free from the river to the sea!