On 19 May 2026, Itamar Ben Gvir posted a video on Telegram that became the symbol of an era. Foreign humanitarian activists—Spanish, British, Australian, Polish—were kneeling, handcuffed on the deck of a vessel intercepted in international waters. Ben Gvir stood facing the camera, Israeli flag in hand, with the national anthem playing in the background. Around twenty countries summoned their Israeli diplomats. Netanyahu himself accused his own minister of damaging the country's image. Ben Gvir, for his part, described the act as a source of great national pride. This gap between the world's reaction and that of the minister is no accident. It reveals a deep ideological fracture that it is time to face head-on.
A doctrine, not a slip-up
The Global Sumud flotilla was transporting medicines, baby milk formula and food supplies to Gaza
Its 430 passengers, activists, journalists, lawyers and elected representatives of twelve nationalities were intercepted in international waters. They were deprived of their telephones and any means of communication and forcibly taken to the port of Ashdod.
Ben Gvir not only took responsibility for the operation, but filmed and broadcast it himself like a political trophy, openly claiming the right to treat anyone attempting to break the blockade in this manner.
In February 2026, Israeli police officers at Ofer prison filmed Palestinian detainees pinned to the ground and handcuffed, for immediate publication on social media.
This obsessive and repeated pattern is not a matter of improvisation. It stems from a worldview in which the humiliation of the non-Jew is not only legitimate, but worthy of public exhibition.
This programme is based on a popular foundation, the scale of which must be fully appreciated.
A poll published in Haaretz in May 2025 reveals that more than 80% of Israelis support the forced expulsion of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. More than half oppose any entry of humanitarian aid into the territory on the grounds that it benefits the enemy. A majority also support the forced expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel themselves, those who have held Israeli nationality for decades. These figures do not describe a marginalised radical fringe. They describe a majority opinion. And to understand where this majority comes from, we must face up to the ideology that has structured it for several generations.
When prophecy becomes a government programme
Religious Zionism: an integral political theology in which every government decision fits into a prophetic timetable
Messianic religious Zionism, of which Ben Gvir and Smotrich are the most visible representatives, is not an ordinary political movement with peripheral religious convictions. It is an integral political theology, within which every governmental decision is part of a prophetic timetable that its actors sincerely believe they are fulfilling. To grasp its internal logic, one must trace it back to its intellectual founders.
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, followed by his son Zvi Yehuda Kook, built a doctrine during the twentieth century according to which the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the conquest of Jerusalem in 1967 are not ordinary political events. They are the harbingers of the Geulah, Redemption, the beginning of the Messianic era foretold by the prophets. In this reading, the State of Israel is not just one democracy among others. It is the instrument of divine will, whose historical mission is to prepare for the advent of the Messiah. And the next act in this cosmic drama is inevitable. It is the rebuilding of the Third Temple of Jerusalem, on the exact esplanade where the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, Islam's fourth holiest site, stand today.
An ideology that does not remain at the level of abstract ideas
The Temple Institute, founded in 1987 and funded by private donations from all over the world. It is actively preparing for this event: manufacturing ritual utensils according to biblical prescriptions down to the last millimetre, training priests according to the ancient rites of the priesthood, funding detailed architectural models, and carrying out archaeological studies of the subsoil of the esplanade. It was these rabbis who came to solemnly congratulate Ben Gvir on the evening of his election in November 2022. These are not behind-the-scenes anecdotes, but the precise ideological coordinates of the minister who now controls the Israeli police and the country's internal security forces.
Netanyahu himself, despite being renowned as pragmatic and calculating, has crossed the threshold of prophetic language in the official public sphere
At the start of the war, in October 2023, he compared Hamas to the Amalekites, a biblical tribe that God ordered to be exterminated down to the last individual, without exception. He presented the military campaign as the fulfilment of biblical prophecies. Military operations bear names drawn from the Scriptures. When the Prime Minister of a state speaks to his soldiers in the language of sacred texts, it is no longer electoral rhetoric intended for his base. It is a framework of legitimation in which the rules of international law lose their authority in favour of a supposedly superior law.
Smotrich, Finance Minister and intellectual architect of the colonisation, is even more explicit in his statements
The individual concerned has publicly stated that the establishment of Greater Israel, encompassing the whole of the West Bank, Gaza and territories beyond, is the prerequisite for the coming of the Messiah. In his mind, colonisation is therefore not a questionable geopolitical strategy; it is a divine commandment from which he cannot exempt himself without betraying God Himself. This conviction explains why international sanctions, the loss of human life, growing diplomatic isolation and ICC arrest warrants do not alter his behaviour in the slightest. In the eyes of a man sincerely convinced that he is fulfilling the divine will, the objections of the secular world are simply obstacles to be overcome.
The Hierarchy of Lives: When ideology translates into action
An explicit conception of the hierarchy between Jewish souls and non-Jewish souls
This hierarchy exists in the most radical currents of religious Zionism, and particularly within the Kahanist school. Ben Gvir is a self-proclaimed and unapologetic heir to it. This concept is based on selective and extremist interpretations of rabbinic texts. The vast majority of global Jewish religious authorities reject them as heterodox and dangerous. But it is real and taught in certain religious circles close to those in power. It concretely structures the worldview of those currently governing Israel. Within this ideological framework, the life of a non-Jew, and a fortiori that of a Palestinian, equated to an enemy of God, has a radically lower value. This is not a figure of speech. It is a theological presupposition that authorises and legitimises what the rest of the world calls crimes.
This hierarchy is translated concretely and systematically in government actions
Smotrich proposed separating Jewish and Arab patients in Israeli hospitals. He has publicly denied the existence of the Palestinian people. Ben Gvir has described as heroes settlers who are the perpetrators of documented violence against Palestinian civilians. These are individuals who have burned inhabited homes with their occupants inside, killed shepherds in their fields, and destroyed wells and thousands of olive trees. He has sought to further arm these militias by granting them legal status within the national security forces.
The war in Gaza has provided the context in which this ideology has expressed itself unfiltered and unrestrained
Soldiers have posted videos on social media of destructions presented as personal trophies, exhibiting the personal belongings of killed civilians, filming themselves in the rubble of collapsed houses with smiles. The images have shown soldiers shooting down unarmed civilians walking towards supposedly safe areas. Children, infants, have died in bombed hospitals; in struck schools, in houses razed over their occupants while they slept.
The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to prevent any acts of genocide in Gaza and to allow access to humanitarian aid.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister for crimes against humanity. Without effect. Within the eschatological framework that justifies these acts, these human institutions simply have no authority over a people fulfilling the will of God.
When you believe you are mandated by God to fulfil a prophecy, international law becomes just another opinion.
The 4,185 French people: second contingent of the Israeli army
One dimension of this war remains stubbornly under-reported in the French public debate: the direct participation of French nationals in this military campaign
An investigation carried out by Europe 1 in Israel has established that 4,185 French nationals, predominantly Franco-Israeli dual nationals, were serving in the ranks of the IDF on the Gaza front. This figure makes France the second-largest foreign contingent in the Israeli army, just behind the United States and well ahead of any other European country. These soldiers are both dual nationals who have completed their mandatory military service in Israel and volunteers.
This presence is far from trivial. Some of these soldiers filmed themselves on operations and published the footage on social networks. Such nonchalance speaks volumes about their sense of total impunity. These videos now form part of the evidence in ongoing legal proceedings. In July 2025, the Human Rights League (LDH) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) filed a civil party complaint with the crimes against humanity unit of the Paris Judicial Court. Two Franco-Israeli snipers are accused therein of the summary execution of unarmed Palestinian civilians. The charges brought include war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts falling under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This is the first procedure of its kind opened in France since the beginning of the conflict.
A political question that France has hitherto refused to tackle head-on
This legal procedure raises a political question that France has hitherto refused to address head-on. How can a country that champions the Universal Declaration of Human Rights allow its nationals to serve with impunity in this army? Targeted by international arrest warrants, documented for systematic violations of humanitarian law... Without triggering the slightest proactive judicial response?
The comparison is inevitable and damning: France has put in place severe anti-terrorist mechanisms against French nationals who went to fight in Rojava alongside the Kurds against Islamic State. These fighters were opposing an organisation classified as terrorist. The asymmetry is total and indefensible. It demonstrates a double standard deeply rooted in French policy, which treats violence differently depending on the identity of the perpetrators and the victims.
The Fundamental Question: Can one face an eschatology in power?
The rise of messianic religious Zionism at the heart of the Israeli state apparatus constitutes a geopolitical paradigm shift
Western capitals are still struggling to grasp it in all its radicality.
Certain members of the French government are stuck at the stage of political foolishness: «France is a friend of Israel». Is that really the question? Which Israel are we talking about? The one whose deep distortion Netanyahu began 30 years ago?
For decades, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been analysed and handled within classical frameworks: those of national security, the dynamics of colonial power, or diplomatic negotiation between rational actors. These frameworks remain partially valid, yet profoundly inadequate when faced with a government whose decisive faction sincerely believes, without metaphor or detachment, that it is fulfilling a divine mandate from which no human authority can relieve it.
The question this raises is both simple to formulate and dizzying in its practical implications
How do you conduct diplomacy with actors who perceive any territorial compromise as a betrayal of God?
How do you threaten with sanctions leaders who are convinced that present sufferings—their own as well as those of others—are the glorious and necessary price of a future Redemption?
Is it possible to stop funding and arming a state whose allies have locked themselves into a logic of unconditional support? The classic response of international diplomacy—gradual pressure, negotiation based on interests, the threat of costs—loses a large part of its operational effectiveness when faced with a coherent eschatology that is embraced and shared by a majority of the population.
What remains available are the tools of international law
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant and, very probably, other Israeli leaders. The information is being kept secret to avoid even more massive reprisals against the ICC's very senior judges. .
The ICJ has issued its binding orders. Legal proceedings are gradually opening in several European countries, including France. International recognition of the Palestinian state is progressing slowly but steadily among UN members. These tools are imperfect, regularly circumvented by states with the political and military means to do so. But they are currently the only ones that make it possible to treat this situation for what it truly is. No longer a classic territorial conflict between two nations disputing a space. But a state systematically violating international law while invoking a divine prophecy.
Name to act
This phenomenon is not Judaism
A confusion made by many politicians, fools, more or less covert propagandists, and the rolling misinformation media.
Anti-Semitism will be hastily invoked to close the debate before it even begins. We must refuse this assimilation with the same firmness as we refuse the ideology itself. The very many Jews around the world who oppose this government, demonstrating in Tel Aviv every week and sometimes in the United States, bear witness from within at the risk of their freedom. They deserve to be unambiguously distinguished from those who commit these acts and those who support them at the ballot box.
This phenomenon is messianic religious Zionism in its Kahanist and governmental version
An ethno-theological ideology that hierarchies human lives according to religious affiliation legitimises territorial expansionism through divine prophecy. A doctrine that treats Palestinians, and more broadly all non-Jews, as obstacles to the fulfilment of a cosmic destiny, and which has captured decisive positions within the state. Israel is a country possessing nuclear weapons, one of the best-equipped armies in the world and the diplomatic support of the world's foremost superpower.
Naming all of this clearly, without euphemisms or false journalistic balance, is not engaging in propaganda. It is the essential prerequisite for any serious political response and any effective action. For one does not negotiate an eschatological agenda with territorial concessions.
We can only contain its effects, through international law applied with consistency; through assumed political pressure; through the concrete and documented refusal of complicity; and finally through the courage to treat this State exactly as one would treat any other State that violated international law with this constancy, this scale and this impunity.
And the first step in this refusal is to look directly at what is really in front of us, without looking away.
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