Binyamin Elon
Rabbi Binyamin Elon is an Israeli politician and former member of the Israeli Knesset. He served as an MK for the right-wing Moledet and National Union parties from 1996 to 2009. Elon lives in the Israeli settlement of Beit El in the occupied West Bank. He is married to author and journalist Emuna Elon. In 2004 whilst an MK and leader of Moledat, Elon initiated the Israel Allies Foundation an organisation that works to enlist the support of Christian lawmakers around the world in support of Israel. [1] According to Salon news website, he has a ‘reputation as one of the least tractable and most radically right of Israel’s political leaders’.[2]
In the early 1990s, Elon established the Beit Orot Yeshiva on the Mount of Olives in occupied east Jerusalem.[3]
He led a group of religious students in 1998 in taking over a compound in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, encouraging the Israeli government to start subsidising the illegal settlement of Jews there. In 1999, Elon attempted to take over another property in Sheikh Jarrah, this one owned by the Abu Jibna family.[4]
Despite the Israeli government’s intervention by making religious claims to the site, the settlers’ effort was unsuccessful when a court ruled in favour of the family’s ownership.[5] On a trip to Washington in 2003, Elon urged the 'transfer' of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan; although he claims that such a 'transfer' to ought to take place on a 'voluntary' basis, his plan would render Palestinians stateless if they refused. [2] He also wants to deny Israel’s Muslim citizens the right to vote.[2]
Notes
- ↑ Israel Allies Foundation Website Community of the Month. Accessed 27 April 2015.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Claire Tristram 'Benny Elon's long, strange trip', Salon, 14 May 2003, accessed 2 May 2015
- ↑ Uri Blau ‘The settler behind shadowy purchases of Palestinian land in the West Bank', Haaretz, 8 June 2012, accessed 2 May 2015
- ↑ Reiter, Yitzhak; Lehrs, Lior, ‘The Sheikh Jarrah Affair: The Strategic Implications of Jewish Settlement in an Arab Neighborhood in East Jerusalem’, The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, no. 404, 2010, accessed 2 May 2015.
- ↑ Danny Rubinstein, 'Saints, sinners and land ownership', Haaretz, 29 September 2013, accessed 2 May 2015.
