Days after a far-right Israeli politician used a sledgehammer on a Palestinian monument, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to order the removal of 40 additional Palestinian memorials in the Occupied West Bank, according to a report first aired by Israel’s Channel 14.
Smotrich set out the request in a late-August letter, written two days after Zvi Sukkot, a member of the Knesset from Smotrich’s right-wing Religious Zionist Party, broadcast his demolition of a memorial in Madama Village. The stone facade of the structure bore the names of Palestinians killed by Israel.
Netanyahu criticized Sukkot for acting outside the law, while Smotrich defended his party colleague on X and called for the destruction of “dozens more terrorist monuments throughout Judea and Samaria.”
“These terrorist incitement (and memorial) infrastructures have existed for many years, just minutes away from Israeli cities,” Smotrich wrote in his letter, in response to Netanyahu’s criticism of Sukkot’s actions. “No systematic and sufficient work is being done to eliminate them.” He attached a table listing 40 Palestinian memorials and demanded that the prime minister instruct the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to dismantle them within 24 hours.
Netanyahu has not publicly responded to Smotrich’s demand.
