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No, you’re not hallucinating: western governments really are condemning Israel, one-by-one, without equivocation. Not because of the ongoing genocide in Gaza that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, of course, but because of a PR stunt in which Israel’s national security minister filmed himself taunting foreign activists.
On Wednesday morning, Itamar Ben-Gvir arrived at the port where Israel had detained hundreds of participants in an international aid flotilla that was attempting to breach the naval blockade of Gaza. In a video he posted to social media, the minister can be seen mocking the activists as they are forced to kneel in rows with their heads on the ground and hands bound with zip ties. Israel’s national anthem can be heard blasting over loudspeakers, before we see Ben-Gvir waving an Israeli flag and shouting: “Welcome to Israel. We are the landlords here.”
The international reaction was swift and unequivocal – including from Britain’s foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, who said she was “truly appalled” at the video, and that it “violates the most basic standards of respect and dignity in the way people should be treated”. Representatives of the French, Italian, Canadian, German, Dutch, Spanish, Polish, Greek, Irish, Australian and New Zealand governments joined the chorus, with some of them additionally summoning their respective Israeli ambassadors for formal censure. Even the Trump administration voiced its condemnation, with the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, asserting that Ben-Gvir had “betrayed [the] dignity of his nation”.
Many of those speaking out, including Huckabee, consoled themselves with the fact that Ben-Gvir’s actions were denounced by his own government. While describing the flotilla activists as “Hamas terrorist supporters”, Benjamin Netanyahu’s office stated that the national security minister’s stunt was “not in line with Israel’s values and norms”. Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, went further. “You knowingly caused harm to our state in this disgraceful display,” he exclaimed on X. “No, you are not the face of Israel.”
Except, he very much is. In fact, there is no one who more plainly epitomises today’s Israel than Itamar Ben-Gvir – and it is high time the international community woke up to that reality.
Let’s start with the obvious: far from being a marginal figure in Israeli politics, Ben-Gvir is one of the most senior ministers in the government. The national security ministry, which was created specifically for Ben-Gvir, grants him supreme authority over Israel’s regular and militarised police forces both within and beyond the state’s internationally recognised borders. It is in this capacity that he has waged a mass crackdown on the freedom of expression of Palestinian citizens of Israel; distributed 10,000 assault rifles to Jewish-Israeli civilians, including West Bank settlers; and worked diligently to upend the decades-old, highly sensitive religious status quo on the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa compound.
He is also in charge of Israel’s prison system, which, in the words of B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights organisation, has become a network of torture camps. Palestinian captives in those jails report being raped and sexually abused and almost 100 are known to have died in custody since 7 October 2023. And perhaps most infamously, he has used his position to pioneer the newly passed legislation imposing a death penalty on Palestinians only. (After B’Tselem’s report was released, the Israel prison service told Haaretz that it believed the cited claims to be “unfounded” and that the “basic rights” of prisoners are fully provided.)
But Ben-Gvir’s influence on Israeli politics extends far beyond the limits of his ministry. Over the past five years, he has forced into plain sight the racist undercurrents of Israeli politics that have been present since the state’s foundation, but which have largely been reined in for the sake of international audiences.
A longtime supporter of the virulently racist rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was deemed so extreme that it was banned in Israel in the 1980s, Ben-Gvir has breathed new life into his hero’s agenda of expelling Palestinians en masse – whether in Gaza, the West Bank, or inside Israel. And he has been able to do so precisely because of the helping hand he received from none other than Benjamin Netanyahu.
Upon realising that his chances of returning to the premiership ahead of the 2022 election were waning, Netanyahu, then in opposition, brokered a merger between Ben-Gvir and his partner-in-crime, Bezalel Smotrich. Their joint slate became the third-largest party in the current Knesset, paving the way for Netanyahu to form the most rightwing coalition in Israel’s history and grant Ben-Gvir his dream ministry.
It is for this reason that Netanyahu cannot simply “fire” Ben-Gvir, as some have suggested after this latest episode: the prime minister’s political security (and, relatedly, immunity from criminal proceedings) now depends on keeping this coalition together.
But Ben-Gvir’s true victory is not only what he has been able to achieve through policy. It is the extent to which he has mainstreamed the ideology of Kahanism throughout Israeli society.
Whereas Kahane himself was boycotted by the entirety of the Knesset when he spoke in 1987, today there is little that separates Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party from several others in Israel’s government – not least Netanyahu’s Likud, Israel’s mainstream rightwing party. For one thing, absent from most of the coverage of Ben-Gvir’s PR stunt and the international backlash was the fact that he was accompanied by Miri Regev, a Likud minister.
Moreover, it was members of Likud who, after the Hamas attacks of 7 October, called to “eras[e] the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth”, “eliminate everything”, and carry out “a Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of [19]48”. It was the whole government, along with the vast majority of the opposition, that gave their full backing as the Israeli army did almost exactly what these politicians thirsted for. And it was Netanyahu himself who spent much of the past year and a half seeking out potential locations for the mass transfer of Gazan refugees.
While Ben-Gvir may be the most provocative and brazen of Israel’s current leaders, the truth is that he’s in good company – and not only in the political sphere. His ideological spirit can increasingly be felt among the country’s youth, in its police and army, and at the top of its security agencies.
What better face could there be for Israel today?
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Ben Reiff is deputy editor at +972 magazine, an independent, online publication run by Palestinian and Israeli journalists
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