Why is an Israeli politician calling for a village to be ‘wiped out’?

‘I think the village of Huwara needs to be wiped out. I think the State of Israel should do it.’ 

I have read those words and read them again – and again. I have checked various news sources to be sure there was no error in translation or transcription. I have tried to parse the words to construe a meaning other than the one I know in my gut to be true. But it won’t work. The words mean what they say. They are a call for ethnic cleansing. 

The words were spoken by Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister and leader of Tkuma, a religious nationalist party of the far right. Smotrich was interviewed yesterday morning at a conference hosted by Tel Aviv based financial newspaper, The Marker. He was asked why he had ‘liked’ a tweet calling for Huwara, a Palestinian village in Samaria, to be ‘erased’. On Sunday, two Israelis were murdered by a Palestinian terrorist while driving through the village, which prompted dozens of Israelis to riot, setting fire to Palestinian houses and cars.