On the fringes of his Unite the Kingdom rally last Saturday, Tommy Robinson was asked what he would change if he became prime minister tomorrow. “I would stop Islam,” he replied baldly, before listing an inchoate set of proposals centred solely around Muslims and immigration and involving the Army.
Ever since the 2022 elections, when Ben-Gvir and his allies entered the Knesset, Israeli society has been locked in a battle for its soul
Despite his knack for articulating some home truths, the man is little more than a rabble rouser. Luckily, Britain doesn’t have proportional representation, which – given his level of support – could make him a minority kingmaker in a governing coalition.
Which brings me to Israel. This week, inflammatory footage emerged of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the clownish and emetic minister of national security, humiliating leftie ideologues who had arrived on a Gaza flotilla.
In scenes that were widely condemned both in Israel and around the world, the activists were forced to kneel with their hands bound behind their backs, manhandled and mocked. “Welcome to Israel! We are the landlords!” Ben-Gvir crowed, waving the national flag.
The most controversial figure in Israeli politics, Ben-Gvir turned to radical politics as a teenager, joining the Kach and Kahane Chai party, which was proscribed as a terrorist group in Israel. His extremism disqualified him from serving in the IDF and, in 2007, he was convicted for incitement to racism and terror offences after chanting “death to the Arabs”.
To voters on the far-right fringes, however, this was no impediment to public office. During a long and disgraceful political and activist career, the 50-year-old firebrand’s greatest hits include threatening prime minister Yitzhak Rabin just before he was assassinated, hanging a portrait of the terrorist murderer Baruch Goldstein in his sitting room, repeatedly provoking clashes with Arabs, and wearing a sickening golden noose on his lapel to proclaim his support for the death penalty (for Palestinian terror convicts).
In 2019, he became leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, which now commands the support of no more than about nine per cent of the electorate. At the time, the country was in political deadlock, as four elections in a row had failed to deliver a conclusive majority. With the vote once again on a knife-edge, Benjamin Netanyahu made a deal with the devil. By forming a coalition with Ben-Gvir and his mob, he returned to the office of prime minister.
In many ways, Israel is a country of exceptional genius. Even during wartime, its economy and birth rate are booming, its levels of crime, family breakdown and addiction are exceptionally low, and it enjoys remarkably high levels of happiness, according to international league tables.
Its technological inventions and military are world-class, its startup culture is peerless, and it often has the highest number of unicorns – a startup that has reached a value of $1 billion or more – on Earth, measured on a per capita basis each year.
Its political system, however, is a disaster. From one point of view, the fact that it is a democracy at all is an achievement. Jews rarely flee from free countries (though that might be changing now), and few members of the pioneer generation, whether they had escaped from Fascist Europe or dictatorships across the Middle East, had cast a vote in their lives.
Perhaps that partly explains why the founding fathers plumped for proportional representation. In addition, Israel’s immigrant population was immensely diverse, both in terms of origin and ideology, and there was a strong sympathy for socialism. For these reasons, a maximally inclusive parliamentary system was favoured above a British-style, winner-takes-all model.
Hence the rise of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Tommy Robinson of Israel, whose outsized prominence is a quirk of political architecture. But this is small comfort in view of the damage he has wreaked to his country since assuming office.
Over the last four years, the firebrand politician has radicalised the police, loosened firearm regulations, empowered extremist settlers and nationalists, encouraged Jewish chauvinism in Jerusalem, and nudged the government further right on matters of security and sovereignty.
Ben-Gvir was also a powerful supporter of the judicial overhauls, which provoked the largest mass demonstrations Israel had ever seen. It is likely that the social division that ensued was a factor in Hamas’ decision to attack on October 7, 2023.
But his greatest damage has surely been to Israel’s image abroad. To be fair, the propaganda campaign conducted by Hamas and its supporters since that appalling day has been fiendishly effective, and would have succeeded even without his help. A record 60 per cent of American adults now have a negative view of Israel; in Britain, support for the Palestinians has come to dwarf that for the Middle East’s only democracy.
But Ben-Gvir hasn’t helped. His latest stunt, which went viral on social media, has only confirmed the worst suspicions of those weighing their feelings about Israel in the balance, encouraged by commentators like Owen Jones, who quickly produced a column entitled, “Ben-Gvir is the face of Israel”.
Ben-Gvir is far less popular than rightwing and centrist figures like Netanyahu, Naftali Bennett and Gadi Eisenkot. But that is of no consequence to the propagandists
It is the oldest trick in the book. You take a shred of evidence, such as a picture of a child tragically killed in an airstrike or that video of Ben-Gvir, and spin it into proof that Israel loves killing babies or is populated by chauvinist idiots. Of course, in the real world, Ben-Gvir is far less popular than rightwing and centrist figures like Netanyahu, Naftali Bennett and Gadi Eisenkot. But that is of no consequence to the propagandists.
Indeed, Ben-Gvir’s behaviour was a gift to the flotilla virtue-signallers, whose sole intention was to bolster the psy-ops campaign against Israel. Recent footage from Gaza shows abundant food and frequent discos, not famine and immiseration. The activists must have been aware of that: after all, the quantity of “aid” on their boats was paltry.
These grade-A hypocrites, who filmed themselves dancing provocatively aboard their boats in crop-tops and keffiyehs, must qualify as the most narcissistic and obnoxious people in the West. You can understand how a country that has been fighting a seven-front war, with huge trauma and loss of life, can run out of patience.
But by reacting how he did, Ben-Gvir gave them exactly what they wanted. Who will fail to believe their stories of “rape and torture” now? Thus, in the social media age, do deterrents backfire. In one clip, a Dutch activist is seen spitting on an Israeli soldier, who shows the discipline not to flinch. If only that attitude had prevailed.
Ever since the 2022 elections, when Ben-Gvir and his allies entered the Knesset, Israeli society has been locked in a battle for its soul. This, of course, has been greatly exacerbated by the pressure that fell upon the nation on October 7. The elections approaching at the end of the year will be of enormous consequence.
A result that returns Ben-Gvir and his ilk to power would be disastrous, while the restoration of sanity may help the country to put this ugliness behind it. As one of the prime ministerial candidates wrote to me this morning, “most important – get rid of this terrible government”. It is time for a new beginning.
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