Smotrich slammed after criticizing soldiers for using live fire during settler riot

Opposition politicians are pushing back at hawkish Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich over his condemnation of soldiers who opened fire while attempting to stop settlers from rioting in the West Bank Friday night, both for not backing soldiers and for appearing to discriminate between civilians based on their religion.

“I don’t get it, so live fire against Druze, Arabs, Christians, Circassians, that’s cool? Listen, you miserable racist, it’s an embarrassment that you are a minister in the state of Israel,” Yesh Atid MK Merav Ben Ari writes on X.

Throngs of rioting settlers had attacked troops, including a high-ranking officer, at the Palestinian village of Kafr Malik near Ramallah, after the forces arrived there to prevent them from attacking the village. During the incident, soldiers responded to a group of some 30 settlers throwing stones at them by firing into the air.

Smotrich, who is also a minister within the Defense Ministry, had written that “the IDF’s live fire against Jews is a forbidden and dangerous crossing of a red line which requires an in-depth investigation… those responsible must be held accountable.”

Moshe Tur Paz, another Yesh Atid MK, writes that “when a minister backs violence against soldiers and discriminates between rock throwers based on the religion of the thrower, it’s a sign that the sun is about to set,” in apparent reference to Lin Yutang’s famous maxim.

Inbar Bezek, a former Yesh Atid MK, notes that when her partner Ziv was a soldier in the mid 1990s, he would guard the Jewish settlement in Hebron, and was also spit at by a settler, naming the alleged assailant as Orit Struck, who is currently a minister in Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party.

“Instead of unequivocally condemning the attack on soldiers… [Smotrich] hems and haws and actually backs the rioters. Those who spit at first will later throw stones and go on to carrying out ramming attacks on soldiers,” she writes on X.