On the fringes of his Unite the Kingdom rally last Saturday, Tommy Robinson was asked what he would change if he became prime minister tomorrow. “I would stop Islam,” he replied baldly, before listing an inchoate set of proposals centred solely around Muslims and immigration and involving the Army.

Ever since the 2022 elections, when Ben-Gvir and his allies entered the Knesset, Israeli society has been locked in a battle for its soul

Ever since the 2022 elections, when Ben-Gvir and his allies entered the Knesset, Israeli society has been locked in a battle for its soul

Despite his knack for articulating some home truths, the man is little more than a rabble rouser. Luckily, Britain doesn’t have proportional representation, which – given his level of support – could make him a minority kingmaker in a governing coalition.

Which brings me to Israel. This week, inflammatory footage emerged of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the clownish and emetic minister of national security, humiliating leftie ideologues who had arrived on a Gaza flotilla.

In scenes that were widely condemned both in Israel and around the world, the activists were forced to kneel with their hands bound behind their backs, manhandled and mocked. “Welcome to Israel! We are the landlords!” Ben-Gvir crowed, waving the national flag.

The most controversial figure in Israeli politics, Ben-Gvir turned to radical politics as a teenager, joining the Kach and Kahane Chai party, which was proscribed as a terrorist group in Israel. His extremism disqualified him from serving in the IDF and, in 2007, he was convicted for incitement to racism and terror offences after chanting “death to the Arabs”.

To voters on the far-right fringes, however, this was no impediment to public office. During a long and disgraceful political and activist career, the 50-year-old firebrand’s greatest hits include threatening prime minister Yitzhak Rabin just before he was assassinated, hanging a portrait of the terrorist murderer........

© The Spectator