Head of Alon Moreh Yeshiva: Smotrich continues the path of Joshua ben Nun
Head of the Alon Moreh Yeshiva, Rabbi Shahar Imbar, called for expressing gratitude to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and compared his work in the field of settlement to Joshua ben Nun and David Ben-Gurion.
Assessment
A prominent religious Zionist rabbi is drawing a direct line between Finance Minister Smotrich's settlement policies and biblical conquest narratives. The comparison to Joshua bin Nun frames settlement expansion as a continuation of the divinely mandated conquest of the land, while the Ben-Gurion reference casts Smotrich as a modern state-builder. This is significant because it signals that hardline religious Zionist leadership sees Smotrich's work not as political maneuvering but as historic, even messianic, action. Watch for whether this rhetoric intensifies as coalition tensions over settlement policy grow.