Rabbi Avraham Zarbiva operated a bulldozer in Gaza and has called for Israel to ‘flatten’ the Palestinian territory
by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, April 22, 2026 at 4:52 pm ET | Gaza, Israel
During an independence day ceremony in
Israel on Tuesday, the Israeli government honored an extremist rabbi
known for bulldozing homes in Gaza and calling for Israel to “flatten”
the Palestinian territory.
According to The Guardian, Rabbi Avraham
Zarbiv was one of fourteen people chosen by the Israeli government for
their “extraordinary contribution to society and the state” to light a
torch at the ceremony.
Zarbiv serves as a rabbinical judge for an
illegal Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and an
Israeli state ombudsman recently ruled that he violated ethical
guidelines by expressing “extremist views,” which included his call to
flatten Gaza and boasting about the destruction of civilian homes and
the IDF’s mass killing of Palestinians.
“Israel, let me tell you, we
have crushed them. There are tens of thousands of dead. The dogs and the
cats ate them because no one collected them,” Zarbiv said in a TV
interview last year. “Tens of thousands of families – they have not a
piece of paper, no childhood photo, no IDs, they have nothing. No home,
there is nothing. They come, they have no idea where their house is.
It’s something unbelievable.”
Zarbiv became well known in Israel for
posting videos of himself destroying homes in Gaza, and his name has
become slang for destruction. “We’re here in Beit Hanoun attacking this
cursed village until we finish it,” Zarbiv said in one of his videos,
which was shared by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem. “All the way to
victory, to settlement. We will not give up until this village is
erased.”
B’Tselem strongly condemned the Israeli government’s move to
honor Zarbiv. “Bestowing one of the highest civilian honors in Israel
on a citizen who committed war crimes illustrates how deeply the
dehumanization of Palestinians has taken root in the Israeli mainstream.
It is yet another terrifying signal that genocide has officially become
part of the national ethos,” the group said.
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