Israel’s Human Wrecking Ball

On Wednesday, after Israeli forces intercepted a protest flotilla headed to Gaza and brought the participants to an Israeli port, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli minister of national security, posted a video on social media. The short clip shows the far-right politician taunting the detainees with nationalist slogans as the handcuffed prisoners are forced to kneel. One activist shouts “Free Palestine!” and is pushed to the ground by security personnel. “This is how we receive supporters of terror,” Ben-Gvir posted.The latest provocation by Ben-Gvir proved something that many Israelis have suspected for years: Ben-Gvir is not merely a nightmare for Israeli liberals, but the fulfillment of the fantasies of Israel’s enemies. He provides them with precisely the ammunition they need to argue, time and again, that Israel, in its fight against Hamas and Hezbollah, is the aggressor, and a cruel one at that. Ben-Gvir is a gift to the terrorist groups and the countries that seek Israel’s destruction. The flotilla activists did not actually plan to “break the siege” of Gaza, as they claimed. They wanted to provoke Israeli authorities and document their reaction. In their wildest fantasies, they could not have imagined that the Israeli official in charge of the country’s police would fulfill their hopes by posting videos humiliating and taunting them. And they must be equally delighted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pathetically restrained reaction. In February 2021, on the eve of parliamentary elections, Netanyahu declared that Itamar Ben-Gvir “is unfit” to serve as a minister in the government, adding “his positions are not mine.” Netanyahu lost that election, and Naftali Bennett became prime minister. But after Netanyahu won the next election, in November 2022, his views on Ben-Gvir suddenly evolved, and he appointed this previously unfit man to his cabinet. As absurd and outrageous as that appointment sounded in the early days of the “full-right government,” it has tur