This week, Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir became an unlikely target of derision across the Israeli political spectrum, including the right-wing. His offense? Revealing the true face of Israel to the world.
The story begins with the latest Gaza freedom flotilla, which again was sending boats and activists to try to break Israel’s illegal and inhumane siege on Gaza. Similar to past flotillas, Israel hijacked the boats at sea, and detained the activists. 430 activists were kidnapped in Israel’s recent act of piracy, coming from over 40 countries.
This time, all of the activists were to be taken to Israel. Ben-Gvir was waiting for them and made a video mocking the activists for social media. “This is how we welcome the terror supporters”, he wrote in Hebrew, where his English title was “Welcome to Israel”.
At the beginning of the video, an activist who is standing up, chanting “free free Palestine” is seen being pushed violently to the floor by security who shout “quiet, quiet,” Ben-Gvir continues to march in, waving an Israeli flag, and a mass of kidnapped activists is seen being forced into stress positions with their heads down to the floor. “Good work”, Ben-Gvir says to the guards, and shouts to everyone: “Welcome to Israel! We are the masters of the house!”
It is important to note that this is a common scenario in these arrests, and there is nothing really new about it. It is a light variation of what is being done to Palestinians every day, and various snuff videos showing such systemic torture have been aired on mainstream Israeli television channels. These videos have also commonly included Ben-Gvir’s mantra “We are the masters of the house”, which was his election slogan.
The Israeli Prison Service even went as far as issuing a statement to Ha’aretz, saying that the detention was “carried out in accordance with procedure and professional considerations.” Times of Israel notes that this was done “as media outlets suggested the prison officials present in the clip were acting against political and military policies”. These are, in fact, their procedures, these are their policies.1
Yet, despite this, and perhaps in a sign of how Israel’s international standing has fallen, Ben-Gvir’s video set off an international firestorm, and has become a PR problem of its own. Both Poland and France have issued entry bans against Ben-Gvir with French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Noël Barrot saying, “we cannot tolerate French nationals being threatened, intimidated, or brutalized in this way, especially by a public official” and calling for other EU countries to issues sanctions against him. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni said it was “unacceptable” that “these demonstrators, including many Italian citizens, are subject to this treatment.” British Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper was “truly appalled” by the video, which “violates the most basic standards of respect and dignity in the way people should be treated.”
Of course, no such outrage is to be found when it’s Palestinians, but that’s always another story. Now it’s a problem that internationals, including Europeans, are being jeered at by Ben-Gvir as they were paraded through detention like animals.
Given the response, Israel’s hasbara central turned to damage control mode, and Ben-Gvir was thrown under the bus as a bad apple.
Prime Minister Netanyahu claimed that Ben-Gvir’s video was “not in line with Israel’s values.” It wasn’t the what, it was the how: “Israel has every right to prevent provocative flotillas of Hamas terrorist supporters from entering our territorial waters and reaching Gaza. However, the way that Minister Ben-Gvir dealt with the flotilla activists is not in line with Israel’s values and norms,” he added.
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who thus heads the hasbara office, shared Netanyahu’s message, but had a message of his own, even more condemnatory of Ben-Gvir, claiming Ben-Gvir wasn’t the face of Israel: “You knowingly caused harm to our State in this disgraceful display – and not for the first time. You have undone tremendous, professional, and successful efforts made by so many people – from IDF soldiers to Foreign Ministry staff and many others. No, you are not the face of Israel”, he wrote in his sharing of Ben Gvir’s tweet.
And then the Foreign Ministry posted a tweet with one video and three photos:
A video of a guard giving water to a hostage; A photo of another offering water to a hostage; a hostage being questioned at a table; a woman smiling (presumably a hostage).
“These are our values,” says the caption.
All we’re missing is candy being handed around, and maybe a choral performance to top it off.
The reality of the situation was that the activists had been held in these stress positions for many hours, and the human rights organization Adalah reported that activists were sent to the hospital, suspected of having broken ribs due to breathing difficulty, having been subject to electric shock, and shot with rubber bullets. Activists also reported sexual assault, including rape. On one particular Israeli ship, at least 12 sexual assaults were documented, “including anal rape and forcible penetration by a handgun.” This is, of course, standard procedure when it comes to Palestinians, including the systematic use of rape, which was effectively legitimized when the Sde Teiman gang rape case was recently closed.
So this moral panic over Ben-Gvir’s crude behavior is really an attempt to draw attention away from this abuse, and it appears to be working. He is being made out to be an obnoxious fascist outlier, when in fact Ben-Gvir represents the true face of Israel.
This is all about Israel, as a whole. It’s Israel’s siege, it’s Israel’s genocide, and the world needs to awaken to this understanding. It’s not just about a few rotten apples, a particularly vile minister, or a few bad cops.
Jonathan Ofir
Jonathan Ofir is an Israeli musician, conductor and writer based in Denmark.
Note
- It is also notable, that Transportation Minister Miri Regev, of Netanyahu’s Likud, posted a similar video, where she claimed the activists were “terror supporters” who come “drugged and filled with alcohol”, who try to “hurt the sovereignty of the state of Israel”. Her video captions once again the hostages in the same stress position. Regev’s video did not get much attention. ↩︎
The hasbara line on Ben-Gvir is that he’s an extremist but he doesn’t represent Israel; in fact none of what we see currently – the settler violence in the West Bank, young Israelis chanting ‘Death to Arabs ‘, etc – is the real Israel, which is good and kind and likes apple pie. We’re just seeing some temporary aberration.
It warms my heart to see that this idea is getting some pushback from the Jewish community. No, Ben-Gvir is exactly who we are. From the Forward:
…while many Israelis still prefer to think of the controversy-courting minister as a fringe embarrassment attached awkwardly to an otherwise respectable nationalist movement, he is the true face of the Israeli right today….For years, the mainstream nationalist camp, with Netanyahu as its most prominent figure, has sold Israelis an illusion: Israel can permanently control the West Bank — and perhaps Gaza, once more, as well — while forever suppressing Palestinian national aspirations, and still somehow remain both democratic and fully accepted by the democratic world….The terminology changes: “managing the conflict,” “security control,” “economic peace.” But the underlying proposition remains the same. And it is a fantasy….A country that indefinitely controls millions of disenfranchised people — where almost half the population does not have the right to vote — does not remain a true democracy. A state ruling another nation forever does not remain democratic either, even if elections formally continue among the population allowed to vote.
Don’t dismiss Israel’s most rage-baiting minister as fringe – The Forward