Acceptable Till it Wasn’t: Itamar Ben-Gvir and the Global Sumud Flotilla |
It has been a sorry though predictable exercise. When he lived up (or down) to expectations of atrocious conduct befitting the proud bigot that he is, Israel’s Minister for National Security had to be seen as aberrant, the man who strayed, if only slightly. The conduct in question involved Itamar Ben-Gvir’s posting of footage on social media mocking the fate of activists of the Global Sumud Flotilla who had made a failed humanitarian effort to break the blockade of Gaza. The activists, seized in international waters by Israeli forces off the coast of Cyprus, had been blindfolded, their hands bound, and forced to kneel on the floor at the Port of Ashdod.
The caption of the posted video featured the warming caption “Welcome to Israel”. Ben-Gvir can be seen waving an Israeli flag, taunting the detainees with bellowing remarks. One bound man can be seen having to hear the words “The people of Israel live” shouted in his face.
Much of this would have been filed in a drawer under the title of “acceptable conduct” and gone unremarked. Ben-Gvir oversees the running of his country’s police and prisons, which he has served to corrupt and politicise with impunity. He has been given vast latitude to be brutal and brutish, most notably to Palestinians. With clear relish, he regularly posts videos of how Israel’s Prison Service treats its Palestinian inmates, which number somewhere in the order of 9,500. (About half are held under the Unlawful Combatants Law, a ghastly statute that negates due process and opportunities for the detained to rebut allegations made against them.)
He has also been riding the wave of foamy intolerance stimulated by the attacks of October 7, 2023 by Hamas on Israel, leading a successful campaign to apply the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of attacks on the State of Israel and the Jewish people (that same penalty does not apply to Israelis for acts of terrorism).
On the occasion of his 50th birthday, his upstanding wife, Ayala, thought it fitting to present........