Israeli politician and former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin believes he is working to realize historical necessity. And that means rebuilding the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and emptying Gaza of every single Palestinian, either through mass expulsion or mass killing. But he also wants to legalize recreational marijuana.

He has been described by Reuters as a “far-right, pro-cannabis libertarian” for his policy proscription mix of drug legalization and ethnic cleansing. He has also voiced support for cutting taxes and annexing the West Bank. It should be understood, however, that this man is no libertarian and his project has nothing to do with man’s right to liberty.

According to The Times of Israel, Feiglin’s libertarian rhetoric is a “facade” and he is simply a post-Zionist, Jewish supremacist:

“Throughout all his political upheavals, Feiglin has maintained an uncompromising ideology. He was, and remains, a messianic fanatic, a vocal advocate of Palestinian population transfer and expulsion, a self-styled leader, and a devotee of a faith-based revolution intended to replace Zionism, which he believes has completed its historic and democratic mission. Feiglin’s supreme goal is the establishment of “a Jewish state and a proper Hebrew regime” centered on the rebuilding of the biblical Temple in Jerusalem. Without it, he argues, the people and Torah of Israel are incomplete.”

But the libertarian branding has worked, and now his political fortunes are on the rise. According to Antiwar.com News Editor Dave Decamp:

“Feiglin served in the Knesset from 2013 to 2015 as a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and founded Zehut in 2015. Zehut is now running on a joint electoral list with Religious Zionism, the party led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, another outspoken proponent of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.”

The “joint run as a technical bloc” means that not only does Feiglin have a clear path to the Knessett (Israel’s legislature), but that he will be up for a high-level position within the government if elected. We should all be ready to push back against potential, future headlines in the corporate press that tout Feiglin as a libertarian.

In 2017, during a debate on The Tom Woods Show over the compatibility of libertarian ideas with the creation of Israel, Rafi Farber—who identifies as libertarian—described Feiglin as “the Ron Paul of Israel.” Farber’s reasoning was that (get this) Feiglin supported ending the conflict by “paying off” all the non-Jews in the territories up to $200,000 each for their land. Forcing the American taxpayer to fund a massive eminent-domain-ethnic-cleansing is not libertarian.

We can imagine the headline, “Israeli Ron Paul Named Defense Minster,” giving unwitting people the entirely wrong idea.

Feiglin appears to have abandoned his “free market” solution and now advocates paying the “iron price” for Gaza and beyond. Last year he channeled Adolf Hitler:

Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin:

“Just as Hitler vowed to eliminate every Jew and said he couldn’t live as long as one Jew remained, I say: we cannot live in this land as long as one Muslim remains in Gaza. They must be eliminated.” https://t.co/EP84DmTAMv

— Ghassan Abu Sitta, Chair of Conflict Medicine AUB (@GhassanAbuSitt1) August 4, 2025

According to Middle East Eye, during the current election cycle, Feiglin “published election campaign adverts on public buses bearing the slogan: ‘Occupation. Expulsion. Settlement.'” That is not a libertarian advocacy of private property rights.

Feiglin’s political party is called “Zehut,” which means “Identity.” The identity in question is not human, and not even Israeli. It is Jewish. Zehut has two pillars; Jewish identity and Jewish freedom. The most charitable interpretation of Feiglin’s project is that he embraces a pre-civilizational, dualistic moral order.

The anthropologist and primatologist Richard Wrangham discussed this in his book The Goodness Paradox:

“In 1929, the anthropologist Maurice Davie summarized a consensus understanding that remains true today: people were as good to members of their own society as they were harsh to others.

‘There are two codes of morals, two sets of mores, one for comrades inside and another for strangers outside, and both arise from the same interests. Against outsiders it is meritorious to kill, plunder, practise blood revenge, and steal women and slaves, but inside the group none of these things can be allowed because they would produce discord and weakness.'”

Feiglin’s project could be summed up as blunts for his tribe and bombs for outsiders. Of course, the implication of Feiglin’s commitment to a hyper-religious conception of Jewish identity will put him at odds with Jews throughout Israel. But even if we place him in the most flattering light, he is still in no way a libertarian.

Libertarianism starts with the presupposition that all human beings have rights, and that proactive, initiatory aggression against anyone who is not aggressing is wrong. The entire nation state of Israel was built on—and is maintained—on proactive aggression against the bodies and property of Palestinians. Not to mention any Israeli Jews who get out of line.

Moreover, Feiglin has embraced a fully genocidal agenda. Last year he said that every person, even babies, in Gaza are the enemy.

“The enemy is not Hamas, nor is it the military wing of Hamas, as our military commander tells us, that we are forbidden to harm a Hamasnik unless he is part of the military wing,” Feiglin said, according to the Israeli newspaper Maariv. “Every child in Gaza is the enemy. We need to occupy Gaza and settle it, and not a single Gazan child will be left there. There is no other victory.”

In a new interview with The Jerusalem Post published last week, Feiglin said it would be “moral” to kill babies in Gaza if that’s what it would take to empty the land of Palestinians. He deployed classic talking points about “human shields” and Muslims not valuing life. He also used the Allied bombding of Hamburg and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World World War II as precedent for Israeli actions.

Libertarians are always against the intentional slaughter of civilians, always oppose policies that inflict massive “collateral damage,” and always recognize when state violence is unjust. For the same reason that we opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and we oppose America’s current war with Iran, we oppose Israel’s aggressive wars in the Middle East and especially its slaughter of Gaza.

Feiglin may masquerade as a libertarian all he wants. He’s not fooling us.