The latter is known for his fight against the evacuation, in 2017, of ‘outpost Amona’, an unauthorised colony built on the occupied West Bank. Behind this big shindig of the right-wing community was an organisation called Tekuma 23, led by one Beraleh Krombie and the Likoud MP Avichai Buaron, both pro-colonisation activists. We have never defined the statute of that land but OK, we must move forward now, support those people who have the courage to protect Israel’, is the way he summed up the situation. ‘We have 600,000 Jews in the disputed territories. Salama hoped the new government would extend its colonisation policy to the occupied West Bank. Last November, he and his wife voted for Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Might), the party led by supremacist Itamar Ben Gvir, National Security Minister, convicted several times for incitement of racial hatred. ‘Now that we have the government we want, we ought to be able to get what we voted for!’ demanded Moshe Salama, 53, a tourist guide who left Antibes in France ten years ago to settle in Jerusalem.
When he took the floor, the crowd grew quiet, was more attentive. At the microphone, several ministers succeeded one another, including the finance minister, Jewish supremacist Bezalel Smotrich. ‘Who governs this country? The people and our representatives or a handful of intellectuals who claim to know better than we do? I am pleased with this government, and I want them to know I am on their side’ said Yossi Bach, 30, come here with his wife and their five children from Otniel, a colony south of Hebron on the occupied West Bank.
This event was meant to be a show of strength in response to the crowds of tens or even hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting each Saturday since the beginning of the year the government’s judicial reform, aimed at diminishing the powers of the Supreme Court. A photo shows an Israeli journalist in the crowd bearing a placard demanding the release from prison of Yigal Amir who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. On the other hand, the ultra-orthodox parties have forbidden their flocks from joining the demo. In one corner, young people were handing out flags stamped with an image of the third temple which some extremist groups hope to rebuild on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, replacing the Dome of the Rock. The demonstrators were not really the habitual Likoud voters, Benyamin Netanyahu’s conservative right-wing party, but rather did they represent the religious-Zionist movements from the colonies, some with a messianic tendency. The crowd was mostly made up of practising Jews many had brought their whole family. It was one of the biggest demonstrations by the right-wing for nearly two decades.
In the end, this high mass in support of the far-right coalition in power brought together, in front of the Israeli Parliament, some 150,000 to 200,000 people, hidden beneath a sea of Israeli flags. The demonstration held on 27 April 2023 was dubbed ‘the march of the million’, some 7 million shekels (one and a half million dollars) had been raised and a thousand coaches chartered to bring Israelis from all over the country – and particularly settlers from beyond the Green Line – to Jerusalem. The organisers had pulled out all the stops.
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