Haaretz reports: Israeli democracy must be dismantled and in its place a halakhic state, based on Jewish law, should be established, says settler leader Benny Katzover in an interview to a a messianic journal of Chabad.

In an interview with Beit Mashiach, the journal of the messianic faction of the Chabad Movement with ties to settlers, Katzover says that “the main role of Israeli democracy now is to disappear. Israeli democracy has finished its role, and it must disassemble and give way to Judaism. All leads toward recognition that there is no other way but to place Judaism at the center, above all else, and this is the answer to every situation.”

Earlier in the interview Katzover commented on the campaign against the exclusion of women, saying that his group had information of the pending campaign.

“Our activists are linked to all the networks of the left, and we knew they were planning an incitement campaign. This is just another wave of incitement, targeting the hilltop youth and the Haredi community. The leftist activists prepare well-timed campaigns against anything which smells of holiness, and their aim is twofold: political, to undermine the government and score points among the public, and to strike at all the fundamentals of Jewish faith.

“In Jewish faith, the Land of Israel is central… The media campaigns over insignificant issues in order to undermine Jewish identity. I think there can be cooperation between the Haredim and the religious [national] communities. Incitement against us stems from the same anti-Jewish root which seeks to uproot everything,” Katzover said in the interview.

Since 2008 Katzover has headed the Committee of Samaria Settlers, an NGO which has fought against the freeze of settlement construction and the razing of outposts. Katzover believes that Jews should stay in the territories even after they are evacuated. He is well respected among the hilltop youth because of his views. His ideological line has been gaining popularity among settlers since the evacuation of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip.

Katzover was one of the first leaders of the settler movement, joining Gush Emunim, and then the nucleus of Elon Moreh, which was established in Samaria in 1979.

“I think that Israeli democracy, under its current structure, is in constant conflict with its Jewish identity, and in recent years, every time it bends its Jewish identity backwards. This structure of democracy has only one mission: to dismantle,” he told Haaretz.