Ben-Gvir is the face of Israel

The outrage isn't over Israel's abuses - but targeting Westerners and causing a PR crisis

Suddenly, there is outrage over Israel’s abuses - and it comes from Israel’s own cheerleaders.

And as strange as it may seem to say it: but that outrage is grotesque.

The Global Sumud Flotilla, an international solidarity mission attempting to break Israel’s siege and starvation of Gaza, was intercepted by the Israeli army in international waters while trying to deliver humanitarian aid to the occupied Gaza Strip.

Those on board were detained - kidnapped, in plain English - and taken to Israel.

Then Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, posted footage of himself taunting and abusing activists from across the world.

In his tweet accompanying the video, he cooed in Hebrew: “This is how we accept the supporters of terrorism.” Followed, in English, by “Welcome to Israel.”

Now just pause for a moment and imagine if this were Iran. Imagine the Iranian state kidnapped a group of Westerners in international waters as they tried to deliver aid to a besieged population. Imagine Iranian officials then filmed themselves abusing those detainees, jeering at them, parading them before the cameras.

There would be wall-to-wall outrage. Emergency statements. Demands for action. Talk of hostages. Talk of barbarism. Talk of the “civilised world” having to respond.

As the official account of the State of Palestine put it clearly:

If this was how white Westerners are treated when an Israeli minister deliberately films and posts it - what do you think is happening to Palestinian in detention when there are no cameras?

Yet the outrage from Israeli ministers and cheerleaders is not driven by moral horror. It is panic about the reputational consequences for Israel when white Westerners get the tiniest taste of what Palestinians are subjected to.

“You are not the face of Israel”

The Israeli foreign minister, who sits in Ben-Gvir’s own government, responded furiously:

But actually, yes. Ben-Gvir is the face of Israel.

He is not some random crank shouting from the sidelines. He is Israel’s national security minister - appointed by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He is in charge of the Israeli police. He is in charge of the Israeli prison service. He is in charge of the border police and guards.

That means he is directly responsible for how detainees are treated. That includes Palestinian detainees. That includes the people Western governments rarely mention, rarely defend, rarely even humanise. Indeed, the primary victims of the Israeli violence which the West facilitates through military, economic and diplomatic support.

The polling is very clear. Israel is a settler-colonial state in the grip of genocidal mania. What Ben-Gvir represents is completely mainstream.

76% of Jewish Israelis believe “there are no innocents in Gaza”.

82% believe that the entire Palestinian population should be expelled from Gaza.

Months into the genocide, 50.2% believed “an appropriate use of force” was being used in Gaza. Another 43.4% thought Israel was using too little force. Just 3.2% thought too much force was being used.

Last year, another poll found that 47% believed that, when the Israeli army conquered an enemy city, it should act similarly to the Israelites when they conquered Jericho. In that Biblical narrative, every man, woman, child and animal was killed.

This is genocidal mania. Ben-Gvir is no aberration.

Western passports change everything

And because the victims here are Westerners rather than Palestinians, Western governments have suddenly discovered outrage.

Giorgia Meloni, the far-right prime minister of Italy, said:

It should be noted that Italy has been vetoing attempts to impose EU sanctions on Israel. These words are meaningless.

Now, there are British citizens among the detainees too. But Keir Starmer has not followed Meloni’s lead. Instead, it was left to Yvette Cooper to say:

Again, empty words. Britain continues to arm, excuse, enable and protect the very state carrying out these abuses.

By contrast, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez - who has actually has taken action - was far more forceful:

Spain has correctly described what is happening in Gaza as genocide. Spain is trying to push for sanctions. Other European countries are blocking that effort.

The panic among Israel’s leaders and cheerleaders is that public opinion in the West has already shifted dramatically against them. They fear the abuse of Westerners will accelerate that trend - and make arms embargoes, sanctions, and isolation far more likely.

The scandal is not abuse. The scandal is exposure.

Netanyahu himself responded by saying:

First, smear the activists as supporters of terrorism. Then insist Israel has every right to stop them. Then gently admonish the man who exposed too much of the truth.

But Ben-Gvir’s treatment of those activists is absolutely in line with the values and norms of the State of Israel - at least as Palestinians have experienced them for decades. Indeed it is a far more diluted version.

They are worried about Israel, not the victims

Take Eylon Levy, the British-Israeli former paid propagandist for Netanyahu. He posted a screenshot from an intern working on an initiative that, in his words, “fights for Israel’s good name in the global media.”

That phrase - “Israel’s good name” - alone is delusional. Israel’s “good name” is not being destroyed by bad messaging. It is being destroyed by mass killing, siege, starvation, apartheid, occupation, torture, humiliation and impunity - in short, a live-streamed genocide.

Read that carefully.

There is nothing there about the victims.

Nothing about the people abused. Nothing about the terror of being kidnapped in international waters and dragged before a far-right minister to be humiliated. Nothing about the Palestinians who endure far worse, every day, without cameras and without the diplomatic support of a Western state.

The concern here centres exclusively Israel’s image. The concern is ammunition for “our enemies” - that te cruelty was strategically inconvenient.

This is the moral disgrace at the heart of the whole saga. Human beings were abused, and the reaction from Israel’s defenders is: look what you’ve done to our PR campaign.

“A Palestinian with a kippah”

Take as an example this post from an Israeli influencer named Ido Halbany:

In supposedly condemning Ben-Gvir, he uses ‘Palestinian’ as a racist slur.

This whole episode again repeats a message clear throughout the genocide, and for decades before. It’s about whose lives matter, and whose do not.

There is no pretence that Palestinian life has any worth. The crime of Ben-Gvir was to abuse Westerners, and do it on camera - thus embarrassing Israel and its cheerleaders.

What a nauseating spectacle.