Itamar Ben Gvir is the heir to the racist far-right Kach party founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane, a movement ostracized for years, including by the Israeli right, yet which now sits in government thanks to Prime Minister Netanyahu. Netanyahu had carefully avoided appearing alongside Ben Gvir during the 2022 election campaign before appointing him Minister of National Security — an act of cynical irresponsibility that has become his trademark over the years.
A lawyer for the most extreme settlers and a genuine media troll, Ben Gvir has thrived in Israeli society through his endless ability to generate buzz and provoke outrage, first to gain media attention and then political influence, eventually securing a ministerial position without ever concerning himself with realities on the ground or tangible results. The images of the humiliation of pro-Palestinian activists that circulated around the world and sparked widespread indignation, including in Israel, are merely his latest provocation, at a time when the country is entering an election campaign during which Ben Gvir will stop at no excess.
Netanyahu’s fault was to normalize Ben Gvir’s extremism within Israeli society. Because of him, Ben Gvir’s provocations are no longer those of an extremist agitator, but of a minister whose actions implicate the image and responsibility of the State of Israel itself. It is particularly telling and scandalous that he blasted the Israeli national anthem, Hatikva, at full volume to “punish” pro-Palestinian demonstrators and “teach them a lesson.” In doing so, he desecrated it, just as he had desecrated Jerusalem and the Israeli flag a few days earlier by waving it during “Yom Yerushalayim” on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif — less out of patriotism than as an incendiary provocation alongside the far-right thugs who have terrorized the city’s Arabs on that day for years.
The radical detractors of the State of Israel — an imperfect but democratic society — are mistaken when they make Ben Gvir the “ideal” symbol of Israel in their eyes. But Israel’s unconditional defenders make the opposite mistake by completely dissociating Ben Gvir from the country. Through his excesses, Ben Gvir holds up a mirror — admittedly a distorting one — to Israeli society, but it is nonetheless a mirror reflecting a certain reality that exists within the country.
The aggression and humiliation staged in these videos of pro-Palestinian activists are tolerated and even encouraged by part of Israeli society, which believes that “there are no innocents in Gaza,” sees the Palestinian flag as a symbol of terrorism and regards all pro-Palestinian activists abroad as antisemites. For this segment of Israeli society, violence — symbolic or real — is the solution to all the country’s problems, which they believe stem only from a poor image abroad that better hasbara (public diplomacy) could correct, rather than from any deeper structural or governance issue.
Ben Gvir tarnishes Israel’s image, but he is not foreign to the country. Rather, he is an outgrowth of it, one that damages all its symbols — the grotesque visible tip of a problematic iceberg that could ultimately sink the Zionist project of creating and sustaining a Jewish and democratic state. In this respect, the next elections will be a decisive moment, an opportunity for Israeli voters to say what kind of country they want and to what extent the mirror Ben Gvir holds up to them is distorted or faithful to their country’s reality. In that sense, they will be far more than elections: they will be a referendum on the very nature of the country.
Sebastien Levi
