London: Without Ben-Gvir’s support in the Knesset, the prime minister would lose his majority and his government would fall, possibly moving Netanyahu in the direction of prison. Netanyahu is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
‘We got his car, and we’ll get him too”, shouted the bespectacled teenager holding the radiator badge from the Cadillac of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Weeks later, while getting into the same car, Rabin was assassinated at a rally in Tel Aviv by a Jewish extremist. It was November 1995 and ultra-right-wing Israelis were still furious with Rabin for signing a peace agreement with Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, two years earlier. A month before Rabin’s assassination, Benjamin Netanyahu and other right-wing politicians, who stood against him had organised a rally in Jerusalem’s Zion Square, during which the bespectacled teenager joined hundreds of protestors shouting “Death to Rabin”. Shortly after, the army chose to exempt the young activist from compulsory military service, considering him too dangerous.
The teenager calling for the death of Rabin now Israel’s Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of Otzma Yehudit, an anti-Arab party which won six seats in the 2022 elections to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Ben-Gvir is normally seen sitting in the chamber alongside fellow ultra-right-winger Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s Minister of Finance and leader of the Religious Zionist Party. They both live in illegal settlements in the Israeli occupied West Bank. Along with other far-right ultra-nationalist parties, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich hold fourteen seats in the Knesset, crucial for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s hold on power.
The son of an Iraqi father and a mother whose family came from Kurdistan, Ben-Gvir was until recently just a peripheral figure in Israeli politics. He revealed his extremist position at the age of 16 when he joined the Kach political party, later designated a terror group by the United States and banned in Israel. In 1994, a Kach member killed dozens of worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, a Palestinian city in Israel’s West Bank. After qualifying as a lawyer, Ben-Gvir defended activists from Lehava, an anti-miscegenation group which had called for the full expulsion of Palestinians from Israel.
Ben-Gvir developed a virulent hatred against any Israeli leader, who attempted to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum by peaceful means. Even right-wing politicians were in his sights. In 2005, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to dismantle illegal settlements in the Gaza Strip and evacuate some 9000 settlers in order to improve Israel’s security, hard-right Israelis were spitting blood. The following year Sharon suffered a stroke and fell into a coma, an event which a delighted Ben-Gvir celebrated with a feast and barbecue. “We are, of course, happy,” he told a TV reporter while cooking the meat; “we hope there is a message here to everyone who wants to harm the land of Israel”. His hatred of Prime Minister Rabin, who won the Nobel Peace prize alongside Arafat and Shimon Peres for the peace deal, also extended to Rabin’s family. An Israeli TV report filmed in 2012 shows Ben-Gvir harassing Rabin’s granddaughter and demanding that she “ask Israeli’s for forgiveness.”
Ben-Gvir also made no secret of wanting to deport Palestinians from their lands and homes. In an interview in August 2022, he said that “when we form the government, I will promote the Deportation Law, which will deport anyone who acts against the State of Israel or IDF soldiers.” He also insisted that even politicians deemed disloyal to Israel should be deported. This was a reference to left-leaning members of the Knesset and also those who represent Palestinian citizens of Israel. In other words, almost any politician, who doesn’t agree with his views about the exclusiveness of Judaism in Israel, should be deported.
When Israelis went to the polls in November 2022, it was the country’s fifth election in four years, simply because Israel’s political parties were unable to form a stable government. During that uncertain period, Ben-Gvir gradually improved his chances of getting into power, although he experienced some ups and downs in the process. In the September 2019 elections, the second of the year, Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party managed only 83,600 votes, before falling to under 20,000 in the following elections on 2 March 2020. He then teamed up with fellow ultra-nationalist Bezalel Smotrich, head of the National Union party, and as a result attracted 225,000 votes in the March 2021 elections. Having achieved 5.1 percent of the vote in Israel’s proportional representations system, they were awarded 6 seats in the Knesset. The successful Ben-Gvir/Smotrich union had been midwifed by Benjamin Netanyahu in an attempt to ensure that no right-wing party fell below the electoral threshold of 3.5 percent of the total vote, thus strengthening his position. Things got even better for Ben-Gvir eighteen months later in November 2022, when the partnership achieved almost 11 percent of the vote, enabling Netanyahu to become prime minister for the third time and also Israel’s longest-serving premier.
Becoming Israel’s Minister of National Security has been quite a turnaround for Itamar Ben-Gvir. Over the years since the “Cadillac” incident, he had countless run-ins with the police and courts. His long history of anti-Arab activism has led to dozens of indictments and at least eight convictions of crimes, including incitement to racism, and possession of propaganda for a terrorist organisation. To his ultra-right political fans, Ben-Gvir’s unconventional approach to politics has made him into a kind of hero, not unlike Donald Trump in America. In many countries, politics has devolved into pure spectacles, where supporters begin to relate to their political leaders in the same way they relate to their favourite entertainers and sport stars. They cheer them on as fans, rather than engaging with them as citizens or even as political clients. Through his exploits and the media attention they have garnered, Ben-Gvir has become an Israeli celebrity. Political loyalty has come with it.
But unlike other populists around the world, there is a deeply sinister side to Itamar Ben-Gvir. He has successfully tapped into feelings of fear and vulnerability within wider parts of the Israeli public. These feelings were intensified during the riots that swept mixed Jewish-Arab cities in May 2021, in which 10 synagogues and 112 Jewish residences were set ablaze and three Jews murdered. Encouraged by an outraged Ben-Gvir, Israeli Jews glimpsed a vision of their worst nightmare – Arab citizens of Israel violently undermining the most basic stability of the country. Ben-Gvir strongly promoted the fear among his growing base of supporters that they were dealing with a fifth column and, as the police appeared unable to protect them, they should do it themselves by forming vigilante groups.
In his latest shenanigans to provoke Palestinians, Ben-Gvir has yet again sparked uproar by visiting Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. The Al-Aqsa compound, administered by Jordan with access controlled by Israeli security forces, is Islam’s third holiest site and a symbol of Palestinian identity. Under a decades-old status quo maintained by Israeli authorities, Jews and other non-Muslims are allowed to visit the compound in Israeli occupied East Jerusalem during specified hours, but they are not permitted to pray there or display religious symbols. Since taking office, Ben-Gvir has visited the holy site on at least six occasions, drawing severe condemnation from even some Orthodox Jews. Shrugging off any censure, Ben-Gvir insisted that Jewish worshippers have the same rights as Muslim worshippers there and provoked even further reaction by adding that a synagogue should be built on the flashpoint site.
“Blasphemy”, shouted Israel’s Interior Minister Moshe Arbel, adding that “the ban on Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount is the position of all great men of Israel for generations”. Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant was equally critical of Ben-Gvir, posting on X, “challenging the status quo on the temple Mount is a dangerous, unnecessary, and irresponsible act,” cautioning that “Ben-Gvir’s actions endanger the national security of the State of Israel”. Palestinian presidency spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh waded in to the uproar, warning that “Al-Aqsa and the holy sites are a red line that we will not allow to be touched at all”.
But of course outrage is music to the ears of Itamar Ben-Gvir and is exactly what he lives and breathes for. He knows that the Temple Mount has been the scene of frequent clashes between protestors and Israeli security forces and therefore provides him with the opportunity to set off mass unrest in support of his stated aim to rid Israel of all Palestinians. This, of course, is nothing short of ethnic cleansing, not only condemned by all Palestinians but also by a huge majority of Jews, both in Israel and abroad. “We condemn Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir’s call for ethnic cleansing”, wrote Rabbi Rick Jacobson, the head of the largest US Jewish denomination, on X earlier this year.
Others are less subtle in their criticism of Ben-Gvir. In an editorial earlier this year, the Jerusalem Post argued that “If there is one message we could send to Ben-Gvir it would be: Shut up. Ben-Gvir is just one politician, but he has caused so much damage that it is time for us to speak a bit less diplomatically.” Describing him as a “provocateur” and someone who is “bent on humiliating Israel’s most valuable ally, Joe Biden”, the Post pleaded with Prime Minister Netanyahu to take a decisive stance against his rogue minister and sack him. Netanyahu, however, is caught between a rock and a hard place. Without Ben-Gvir’s support in the Knesset, the prime minister would lose his majority and his government would fall, possibly moving Netanyahu in the direction of prison. Netanyahu is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. Which is why Itamar Ben-Gvir remains the most dangerous man in Israeli politics.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Plymouth.