London: Without Ben-Gvir's support in the Knesset, the prime minister could lose his majority and his government would collapse, possibly moving Netanyahu toward prison. Damned if Netanyahu does, damned if he doesn't.
'We got his car, we'll get him', shouted a bespectacled young man holding a radiator badge from Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's Cadillac. Weeks later, while riding in the same car, Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist at a rally in Tel Aviv. It was November 1995 and far-right Israelis were still angry with Rabin for signing a peace accord with Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat two years earlier. A month before Rabin was assassinated, Benjamin Netanyahu and other right-wing politicians opposed to him organized a rally in Jerusalem's Zion Square, when a bespectacled youth joined hundreds of protesters in chanting “Death to Rabin.” After a while, the army exempted the young activist from conscription, considering him too dangerous.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, head of the anti-Arab party Otzma Yehudit, which won six seats in the 2022 elections to Israel's parliament, is the young man calling for the death of Rabin, who is now Israel's minister of national security. Ben-Givir can be seen sitting in the room with far-right Bezalel Smodrich, Israel's finance minister 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 Smodrich hold fourteen seats in the Knesset, crucial to Prime Minister Netanyahu's hold on power.
The son of an Iraqi father and mother from Kurdistan, Ben-Ghir remained a peripheral figure in Israeli politics until recently. He revealed his radicalism when he joined the Gach political party at the age of 16, and was later designated a terrorist group by the US and banned in Israel. In 1994, a Kach member killed dozens of worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, a Palestinian city in Israel's West Bank. After qualifying as a lawyer, Ben-Ghir supported activists from the anti-denominational group Lehava, which called for the total expulsion of Palestinians from Israel.
Ben-Givir developed a strong antipathy against any Israeli leader who tried to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum through peaceful means. Even right-wing politicians were in his sights. In 2005, hard-right Israelis spat blood when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to dismantle illegal settlements in the Gaza Strip and expel some 9,000 settlers in order to improve Israel's security. The following year Sharon suffered a stroke and fell into a coma, an event Ben-Givir celebrated with a party and barbecue. “We're definitely happy,” he told a television reporter as he cooked the meat; “We believe there is a message here for all those who wish to harm the nation of Israel.” His hatred of Prime Minister Rabin, who won the Nobel Peace Prize alongside Arafat and Shimon Peres for the peace accord, extended to Rabin's family. An Israeli television report filmed in 2012 shows Ben-Ghir harassing Rabin's granddaughter and demanding an “Israeli apology”.
Ben-Kivir has also made no secret of his desire to deport Palestinians from their lands and homes. In an interview in August 2022, he said, “When we form a government, I will promote the deportation law, which will deport anyone who acts against Israel or IDF soldiers.” He also insisted that politicians deemed disloyal to Israel should be deported. It referred to the left-leaning members of the Knesset and those representing the Palestinian citizens of Israel. In other words, any politician who disagreed with his views on the exclusivity of Judaism in Israel should be deported.
When Israelis go to the polls in November 2022, Israel's political parties have failed to form a stable government, marking the country's fifth election in four years. During that period of uncertainty, Ben-Khir gradually improved his chances of coming to power, although he experienced some ups and downs in the process. In the September 2019 elections, the second of the year, Ben-Kivir's Jewish Power Party received only 83,600 votes, falling below 20,000 in the March 2, 2020 elections. He later partnered with fellow radical nationalist Bezalel Smodrich. The National Union Party, which consequently attracted 225,000 votes in the March 2021 elections. They received 5.1 percent of the vote under Israel's proportional representation system, giving them 6 seats in the Knesset. The successful Ben-Gvir/Smotrich coalition was midwifed by Benjamin Netanyahu, strengthening his position in an effort to ensure that no right-wing party falls below the electoral threshold of 3.5 percent of the total vote. Eighteen months later, in November 2022, when the Partnership won nearly 11 percent of the vote, things were even better for Ben-Gvir, and Netanyahu became prime minister for a third term and Israel's longest-serving prime minister.
Becoming Israel's Minister of National Defense was a turning point for Itamar Ben-Gvir. Over the years after the “Cadillac” incident, he had countless run-ins with the police and the courts. His long history of anti-Arab activism has led to dozens of charges and at least eight felonies, including inciting racism and possessing propaganda for a terrorist organization. To his far-right political fans, Ben-Givr's unorthodox approach to politics has made him a hero of sorts, not unlike Donald Trump in America. In many countries, politics has become pure spectacle, where supporters begin to relate to their political leaders in the same way they relate to their favorite entertainment and sports stars. Instead of engaging with them as citizens or political clients, they cheer them on as fans. Through his exploits and the media attention they received, Ben-Ghir became an Israeli celebrity. Political loyalty has arrived.
But unlike other populists around the world, Itamar Ben-Ghir also has a deeply sinister side. He has successfully tapped into feelings of fear and vulnerability within broad swaths of the Israeli public. These sentiments intensified during riots in mixed Jewish-Arab cities in May 2021, in which 10 synagogues and 112 Jewish homes were burned and three Jews were killed. Encouraged by an outraged Ben-Gvir, Israeli Jews saw a vision of their worst nightmare – Israel's Arab citizens violently undermining the country's most fundamental stability. Ben-Givir strongly encouraged the fear among his growing followers that they were dealing with a fifth column, and since the police seemed unable to protect them, they had to form vigilante groups to do it themselves.
In one of his latest shenanigans to inflame Palestinians, Ben-Ghir has caused an uproar by returning to 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. Maintained by Israeli authorities for decades, Jews and other non-Muslims are allowed to visit the compound in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem at certain times, but are not allowed to pray there or display religious symbols. Since taking office, Ben-Ghir has visited the holy site on at least six occasions, drawing sharp rebukes from some Orthodox Jews. Defying any censorship, Ben-Khir insisted that Jewish worshipers have the same rights as Muslim worshipers there, and sparked further reaction by adding that a synagogue should be built at the flashpoint site.
Israel's Interior Minister Moshe Arbel shouted the “blasphemy,” adding that “the banning of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount has been the position of all the great men of Israel for generations.” Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was equally critical of Ben-Gvir, posting on X, warning that “challenging the status quo of the Temple Mount is dangerous, unnecessary and irresponsible.” The State of Israel”. “Al-Aqsa and the holy sites are a red line that we will not allow to be touched,” warned Palestinian presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudayneh.
But of course outrage is music to Itamar Ben-Kivir's ears, and what he lives and breathes for. He knows that the Temple Mount has frequent clashes between protesters and Israeli security forces, thus giving him an opportunity to incite mass unrest in support of his goal of ridding Israel of all Palestinians. This, of course, is nothing short of ethnic cleansing, condemned not only by all Palestinians, but by the majority of Jews in Israel and abroad. “We condemn Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir's call for genocide,” Rabbi Rick Jacobson, head of America's largest Jewish community, wrote in X earlier this year.
Others are less subtle in their criticism of Ben-Ghir. In an editorial earlier this year, the Jerusalem Post argued, “If there's one message we can send to Ben-Qur, it's this: Shut up. Ben-Qir is only a politician, but he has done so much damage that it is time for us to speak a little less diplomatically. Describing him as a “provocateur” and “bent on humiliating Israel's valued ally Joe Biden,” the Post implored Prime Minister Netanyahu to take a decisive stand against his rogue minister and fire him. However, Netanyahu is caught between a rock and a hard place. Without Ben-Gvir's support in the Knesset, the prime minister could lose his majority and his government would collapse, possibly moving Netanyahu toward prison. Damned if Netanyahu does, damned if he doesn't. This is why Itamar Ben-Ghir is the most dangerous man in Israeli politics.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat who worked in the office of UK Prime Minister John Major between 1995 and 1998. He is currently a visiting fellow at Plymouth University.
