PARIS: A human rights organisation said on Tuesday that Israel’s controversial finance minister Bezalel Smotrich was “not welcome” on a planned visit to France this week.

The Human Rights League (LDH) described Smotrich as “arabophobic, homophobic, ultra-colonialist and ultra-religious”, adding that it felt “outrage” at the visit planned for Sunday and “condemns everything this character represents”.

Smotrich last year became a member in the cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which analysts have called the most right-wing government in Israel’s history. Smotrich and his Religious Zionism formation have a history of inflammatory remarks about Palestinians.

As part of his portfolio, Smotrich is in charge of Israeli settlement policy in the West Bank, where he himself is one of 475,000 Jewish settlers established in defiance of international law.

He called for a Palestinian town to be “wiped out” after two Israeli settlers were killed there last month.

Although he later said “it is possible that the word was wrong” and he “did not mean harm to innocents”, Smotrich’s comments drew international condemnation.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk denounced them as “an unfathomable statement of incitement to violence and hostility”.

The United States condemned the comments, with a State Department spokesman saying they were “irresponsible, they were repugnant, they were disgusting”.

The French foreign ministry said no official contact with the Israeli minister was planned.

Published in Dawn, March 15th, 2023