There are political missteps, and then there are moral failures. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich committed the latter on Tuesday, when he said that forming a government with the Arab party Ra’am would be worse than the October 7 Hamas massacre in 2023, in which over 1200 people were murdered, and 251 were taken hostage.
Smotrich, who made the remarks when asked if the massacre was worse than forming a government with Ra’am party leader Mansour Abbas in an interview with Radio 103FM, responded that “obviously” forming a government with Abbas was more severe.
“The October 7 massacre is a terrible failure, but it is a tactical failure,” Smotrich explained.
“Someone who knowingly sold the State of Israel to its enemies and to the Islamic Movement did something a thousand times worse than the worst failure, because it is not just a mistake, it is deliberate.”
Even when the interviewer pressed him, reminding him of the scale of the massacre, the murdered, the bereaved, the wounded, Smotrich did not retreat. “Do you want to compare disasters?” he replied. “You asked me as a politician what is more severe… that is far worse.”
"The most severe act Israeli politics has ever known"
The finance minister then attempted to mitigate the damage by issuing a clarification, arguing that the media was taking his words out of context, though the recorded segment had been published in its entirety.
In a statement posted on X, he argued that he had been referring strictly to “the more severe political act,” contrasting “knowingly and deliberately joining a government with Hamas” – his framing of the 2021 coalition – with “serving in a government during whose term a terrible massacre occurred.”
“So yes,” Smotrich wrote, “knowingly entering a government with Hamas, through lies, deception, and stealing votes, is the most severe act Israeli politics has ever known.”
This clarification, trying to backtrack as politicians often do when they do or say stupid things, does nothing to alleviate the damage caused.
For a government minister to draw a comparison between a “political act” and a national catastrophe places the two on the same scale. Once October 7 is invoked as a point of comparison, its meaning can be bent to whatever the speaker desires and weaponized.
October 7 - and we are still less than three years since that terrible day - was a moment in time when families were slaughtered in their homes, communities were destroyed, and civilians were dragged into captivity. It is, by any measure, the most traumatic event in Israel’s recent history.
To describe it as a “tactical failure” is, at best, a failure of language. To then suggest that a coalition decision, however controversial, is “a thousand times worse” is a far more serious distortion of moral reality.
For Smotrich and others on the Right, the 2021 government, which included Ra’am, represented a profound ideological breach and one they have repeatedly framed as a betrayal of voters and of the state’s Jewish character.
That argument, however, belongs in the halls of political debate. It can be made forcefully, even passionately, without invoking October 7.
The reaction across the political spectrum showed what most people thought. Critics accused Smotrich of exploiting a national tragedy for political gain. Abbas himself called the remarks “miserable and immoral,” adding that they showed “no respect” for those murdered and their families.
At a time when the country is still mourning, still fighting, and still searching for a path forward, leadership demands restraint.
It should not need to be said. But it clearly does: the massacre of Israeli civilians is not a benchmark against which political grievances are measured. It is a tragedy that should unite, not divide; that should be remembered, not repurposed.
Weaponizing it, whether intentionally or through careless rhetoric, is disgraceful and a betrayal of the very people whose memory should command something far greater than politics.
It doesn’t matter whether you vote for the Religious Zionist Party, Ra'am, Likud, or nobody. An Israeli minister trivializing October 7 in such a manner, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and an event that took place while he was in government, should disgust every single one of us.
It is indeed “miserable and immoral.” Smotrich should be rebuked by Netanyahu for his comments, and he should hang his head in shame.