On Friday, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir posted one of his most extreme and inflammatory tweets yet. Demanding that “1,000 Lebanese mothers must weep” for every Israeli soldier or officer killed by Hezbollah fire, he declared: “All of Lebanon must burn.”

IDF soldiers are currently operating deep inside Lebanon to protect the communities of northern Israel. They are on foreign soil because Israel’s government and security cabinet — which includes Ben Gvir — opted for a proactive offensive strategy over a purely defensive posture along the international border. Yet Ben Gvir wrote as if this escalation occurred in a vacuum, calling to “wipe out,” “defeat,” and “cause all of Lebanon to burn.”

More troubling still is the collective indifference. Once again, Ben Gvir fires off outrageous invective, and once again, local analysts dismiss it as domestic political posturing, offer a cynical smirk, and move on.

This nonchalance extends to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his senior ministers — notably Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Defense Minister Israel Katz, neither of whom bothered to distance themselves from the remarks, much less condemn them.

The only one to take up the gauntlet and address the rhetoric was former prime minister Naftali Bennett, in a response to British broadcaster Piers Morgan. Yet Bennett merely argued that Ben Gvir is a clown who shouldn’t be taken seriously — an argument that carries little weight abroad.

In any case, two days later, the damage from the shocking post is already irreversible. Even X (formerly Twitter) announced that Ben Gvir’s remarks violated its platform rules (but failed to remove the tweet nonetheless).

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