As we’ve seen mainstream U.S. media outlets report “a victory” for Israeli protesters, a huge story has been buried.

While Netanyahu announced a delay to his proposed judiciary overhaul this week, most outlets are leaving out the concessions he made to get there: more violence against the Palestinian people.

Netanyahu has agreed to establish a new armed battalion under the control of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the ultranationalist national security minister who openly supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This new militia will pick up the mantle of the settler vigilantes who hunted for Palestinians in Lyd, Haifa, and other cities during the May 2021 Unity Intifada. Ben-Gvir already has an immense amount of power over police forces that regularly inflict violence on Palestinians. Giving him control over what is essentially a private militia would have even more grave consequences for Palestinian lives.

Tell Biden this sinister deal to create a private militia for a man already convicted of racist incitement is NOT A WIN for democracy. Israel has never been a democracy and this directly makes the problem worse.

Instead of condemning this alarming deal, Biden's administration is hosting Netanyahu at the White House’s “Summit for Democracy'' starting this evening. And earlier today, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel told Israeli outlets that Netanyahu could be invited to the White House after Passover - signaling that a long withheld invitation could be forthcoming. These moves together, signal that Biden sees this deal as acceptable and sufficient for resuming the status quo.

Biden is directly giving Netanyahu moral cover and cosigning this exchange of a paramilitary force led by a genocidal racist as somehow an acceptable compromise to preserve the illusion of Israeli democracy.

Itanar Ben-Gvir has a long history of supporting extreme racist, anti-Palestinian violence and it is especially disturbing that he will be leading this force.

In an oft-quoted 2011 interview, Ben-Gvir defended his support for Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli American who killed 29 Palestinians while they prayed at a mosque in Hebron. Ben-Gvir called Goldstein a “hero” and a “righteous man.”

The public outrage over the judicial plan is due to many Israelis seeing their own rights threatened for the first time. Meanwhile Palestinian rights have never been upheld by Israeli courts. In fact, what many people don’t realize is that Israel doesn’t have a constitution at all. Why? Because if Israel had a constitution it would have had to accept equality for all before the law and that would inhibit Israel’s central state project: settler-colonialism.

In many ways, Ben-Gvir’s militia has long existed in the settlements where armed settlers routinely carry out violence against Palestinians with the protection of the Israeli military. The new proposed militia would take this a step further by formalizing the arrangement within ‘48 and providing members with greater access to weapons and resources.

Our tax dollars should not be funding apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Our tax dollars should not be funding armed militias. Tell Biden now that this is unacceptable. Add your name now.