Not by assassination, but by suicide.
No More Ben-Gvir: The Israeli Right Officially Killed Itself
From Begin’s recognition of the Palestinians to Netanyahu’s capitulation in Gaza, Israel’s so-called “right-wing” has completed its transformation — from a nationalist movement to a hollow echo of the left it once vowed to defeat.
It didn’t happen overnight. The death of the Israeli right has been a long process, marked by milestones that, in hindsight, chart a humiliating ideological collapse.
It began in 1977, when Menachem Begin, the first Likud prime minister, formally recognized the existence of the Palestinian people, something no Zionist leader before him had done.
Then came 1986, when Yitzhak Shamir, quietly and through intermediaries, opened indirect talks with PLO representatives in the West Bank.
By 1991, at the Madrid Conference, Israeli officials sat, albeit indirectly, with the PLO’s Tunis delegation. And by 1993, after the Oslo Accords, every so-called “right-wing” government since has embraced, in deed or in rhetoric, the framework of a Palestinian state - no matter what they said to the English or Hebrew speaking media.
Now, after decades of this slow erosion, it is official: the Israeli right is dead.
The government currently in power, ostensibly the most right-wing since 1981, has delivered nothing but total capitulation to Hamas, while staging cynical performances to manipulate public opinion.
The right-leaning two-thirds of Israel’s Jewish population, consumed by hatred of the left and paralyzing fear of anyone not named Netanyahu, has become ideologically hollow and helpless.
What remains of Israel’s “right” today? Roughly 800,000 settlers, the last vestige of genuine conviction. The rest? They could be convinced to accept a Palestinian state tomorrow if the right salesman delivered the pitch.
This is not just a political obituary for Israel; it’s a moment of triumph for Europe, the Arab world, and the United States. Israel’s demographics may still lean conservative, but administratively and executively, it no longer possesses the will or the capability to govern as a right-wing state.
And as for the once-defiant figures of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who dominated headlines as symbols of “extreme nationalism,” they folded like laundry in a housewife’s hands.
Indeed, the Israeli right has always excelled, perhaps more than any other conservative movement in the world, save Britain’s, at telling itself comforting stories to sweeten bitter and constant defeat. But the truth is now impossible to deny: what once called itself the ideological right in Israel has revealed its true face. It was never more than an illusion, a short, shabby footnote in the long history of Zionism, perhaps with the brief exception of Ariel Sharon’s years as agriculture and defense minister.
The Israeli right is officially dead — not by assassination, but by suicide.