\u201cA Jew always has a much higher soul than a gentile, even if he is a homosexual.\u201d \u2014 MK Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan, Dec 27, 2013. (Hebrew<\/a>\/English<\/a><\/strong><\/span>)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finalized the formation of a new government this week when he signed a coalition agreement<\/a><\/strong><\/span> with far-right settler party Jewish Home. As part of the agreement, Rabbi Ben-Dahan will be Israel\u2019s next deputy defense minister, responsible for the army\u2019s \u201cCivil Administration.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The Civil Administration is responsible for all aspects the occupation that don\u2019t involve boots-on-the-ground security operations \u2014 it administers planning, building<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, and infrastructure<\/a> for both Jews and Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank. It also administers the Palestinian population database<\/a><\/strong><\/span> and is responsible for granting and revoking entry and travel permits for Palestinians, controlling every aspect of their movement<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n In other words, the man slated to take charge of an organization entrusted with supervising the theft of Palestinian land<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0and supervising Palestinians\u2019 lives, is a racist who said he does not see them as human, but rather as animals (nothing against animals, of course, but we can be fairly certain Ben-Dahan didn\u2019t mean it as a compliment). That\u2019s more or less like appointing a member of the local Klu Klux Klan chapter to investigate claims of violence and discrimination against the Baltimore Police Department \u2014 that is, if Baltimore residents were deprived of citizenship and the right to vote<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n But MK Ben-Dahan wasn\u2019t appointed just to continue abusing Palestinians and to advance [Jewish Home party chairman] Naftali Bennett\u2019s apartheid annexation plan<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, an essential component of which is ethnically cleansing Area C of the West Bank. (Watch Bennett explain his plan here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.) The Civil Administration has been quite diligent about that in recent years. For instance, the forced transfer of the entire Palestinian village of Susya<\/a><\/strong><\/span> (approved this week by the High Court\u2019s settler Justice, Noam Solberg, which is almost as absurd as Ben-Dahan\u2019s appointment), or the theft of water<\/a><\/strong><\/span> from Palestinian villages in the Jordan Valley<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, whose residents are being forced to either abandon their lands or die.<\/span><\/p>\n Strange as it is, the truth is that settler representatives have been trying to shut down the Civil Administration<\/a><\/strong><\/span> for years, and time and again have tried to defund it. In the previous Knesset, for example, Jewish Home MK Orit Struck, also a settler, tried to freeze the transfer of NIS 310 million to Holocaust survivors<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>so that NIS 29 million wouldn\u2019t be transferred to the Civil Administration. That\u2019s just one example out of many. Local government officials for Jewish settlements in the West Bank have called for the Civil Administration to be shut down and its inspectors have even been attacked<\/a><\/strong><\/span> by settlers.<\/span><\/p>\n It appears that the settlers live in a parallel universe in which the Civil Administration\u2019s Jewish inspectors and Jewish workers and Jewish legal advisors, are racist toward them, despite the fact that they recent the exclusive protection of the IDF and enjoy near immunity from criminal prosecution.<\/span><\/p>\n Israeli residents, mostly from the southern Israeli city of Sderot, sit on a hill overlooking the Gaza Strip, on July 12, 2014, to watch the fighting between the Israelis and Palestinians militants. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n The thing is, that Jewish settlers don\u2019t really need the Civil Administration in order to oppress and abuse Palestinians. And according to them, the Civil Administration doesn\u2019t oppress Palestinians enough<\/em>. Sure, it has inspectors and the army and legal advisors to make every part of Palestinian life impossible in large swaths of Area C.\u00a0But that\u2019s not always enough.<\/span><\/p>\n The settlers want to feel that they, too, are taking part in the reclamation (read:theft) of Palestinian land \u2014\u00a0and not just the army and state authorities who declare entire plots to be \u201cstate land<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.\u201d The problem is that every once in a while \u2014 very rarely, actually \u2014 Civil Administration inspectors and legal advisors turn their attention to the settlers themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n That is where Rabbi Dahan comes in, reducing already rare Civil Administration enforcement, and putting to bed the whole annoying concept of laws and regulations.<\/span><\/p>\n Israelis are right to be worried about MK Ayelet Shaked becoming the next justice minister, and Naftali Bennett the education minister. But try being a Palestinian in the West Bank, where the man in charge of administering your day-to-day life doesn\u2019t even see you as a human being.<\/span><\/p>\n *John Brown is the pseudonym of an Israeli academic and a blogger on +972\u2032s Hebrew site, Local Call, where a version of this article was first\u00a0published in Hebrew<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"Rabbi](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Rabbi-Eli-Ben-Dahan-233x300.jpg\")
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