[Salon] Understanding Itamar Ben-Gvir - ArabDigest.org Guest Post

Understanding Itamar Ben-Gvir Summary: Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security minister is a politician who revels in violent, racist language whilst pursuing a messianic vision of a greater Israel, one from which the Palestinians have been erased. The war against Iran has served as useful cover for Itamar Ben-Gvir’s drive to achieve his vision of Israel as a theocratic powerhouse. With ongoing attacks in Lebanon and the creation of ‘buffer zones’ in South Lebanon and Southwest Syria the IDF serves his purposes well. Settler violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 28 February has accelerated unchecked by the authorities. In Gaza the line of separation between the occupying IDF and Gaza survivors of the genocide has been further shrunk. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done much to facilitate and enable Ben-Gvir largely because the alliance his Likud party has with Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party and other extremist groupings in the Knesset has enabled the prime minister to avoid appearing in court on fraud and corruption charges. Ben-Gvir recently celebrated his fiftieth birthday with a cake presented to him by his wife decorated with a noose. It was deliberate and calculated provocation something that, like Donald Trump, the minister excels at. The noose was tribute to a bill that he had shepherded through the Knesset which received final assent on 30 March. It allows the execution by hanging of those convicted of deadly attacks deemed to be motivated by terrorism i.e. Palestinians while exempting Jewish terrorists from a similar fate. The last time the death penalty was used in Israel was in 1962 when Adolf Eichmann was hanged. Genocidal ethnosupremacist Itamar Ben-Gvir’s wife gifted him a birthday cake featuring a noose symbol, in reference to the law allowing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners. The cake carried the message: “Happy birthday Minister Ben-Gvir, sometimes dreams come true.” Amnesty International in condemning the bill notes the following: In the West Bank – excluding East Jerusalem – the law imposes the death penalty as the default sentence for those convicted of intentional killings classified as acts of terrorism under Israeli legislation, allowing life imprisonment – and life imprisonment only – in “special circumstances” that are not specified in law. Military courts may impose capital punishment by a simple majority, even without a prosecutorial request. Sentences cannot be commuted or pardoned and must be carried out within 90 days. Notably, Israeli settlers in the West Bank are explicitly excluded from the scope of this provision. Within Israel, civilian courts may impose the death penalty or life imprisonment for intentional killings, if they are committed with the aim of “negating the existence of the State of Israel.” Therefore, while the law does not explicitly reference ethnicity or nationality, it is effectively designed to target Palestinians exclusively. It also introduces an exceptional execution regime by hanging, characterised by secrecy, and limited access to legal counsel and external oversight. In the Knesset Ben-Gvir was exultant: “From today, every terrorist will know, and the whole world will know, that whoever takes a life, the state of Israel will take their life.” This from a man who celebrates the murder of Palestinians and denounces the extremely rare efforts to prosecute their killers no matter how half-hearted and limited those efforts are. A recent article by the anti-Semitism and racism scholar Neil Bar for the online magazine Hazman Hazeh (These Times) sheds much light on what has propelled Ben-Gvir to stand on the threshold of becoming arguably the most powerful and successful politician in modern Israeli times, an ailing Benjamin Netanyahu notwithstanding. Bar explores the backdrop to Ben-Gvir’s ideology of Arab hate. It is rooted in the teachings of the extremist preacher Meir Kahane. The Kahanist movement is known most prominently for the 1994 massacre of Palestinians by Baruch Goldstein. Less well understood is what drives the movement and Ben-Gvir. It is what Bar calls Kahane’s rejection of Western values and norms: Beyond violence, Kahane offered a whole worldview that posed a fundamental question: Who is the real enemy of the Jewish people? For Kahane, the answer was clear: not the Iranians or even the Palestinians, but rather the very Jewish aspiration to identify with and imitate the culture of the Gentiles, especially the West. For Kahane the purity of Judaism was polluted by filthy Western values: "The problem of Western influence is not only in the secular public, but also in the religious public. […] These people are infected with the disease of Satanism – a little bit of Judaism and a little bit of Western culture.” Kahane warned against allies who stand in the way of the Jewish people finding redemption in God: "As long as we have 'friends,' the Messiah will not come, because as long as we have a 'friend,' the people of Israel will not hang their love on it.” Ben-Gvir, Bar argues, embraces the concept of Israel standing alone, a modern Sparta that rejects liberal democratic values: “In Ben-Gvir’s view, diplomatic advice is something to be despised, international condemnation is a sign of honor, and initiating provocations and boycotts is something to be proud of.” Thus in response to sanctions being imposed on him and his Knesset ally Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich by several western countries including the UK, Ben-Gvir seized upon the action as evidence that the world is against Israel. The sanctions enable Ben-Gvir to claim that "the Gentiles hate us, and therefore we must not take them into account." Bar writes: This is the logic of reinforcement through rejection: the further the West moves away, the purer Israel becomes, the more true to itself. The sanctions become medals of honor, proof that the minister did not succumb to Western pressure but spoke the “truth,” contrary to all his critics. The irony that this new Sparta can stand alone only with the armaments supplied by America appears lost on Ben-Gvir. Still the threat his ideology poses to Israel and to the Levant should not be underestimated. Increasingly writes Bar young Israelis find his message attractive and compelling: A generation of Israelis is growing up while senior politicians present the West not as a natural ally but as a source of illegitimate pressure. This generation sees senior ministers absorb European sanctions and respond with pride. The message that is getting through is that perhaps there is no need to be part of the West; perhaps isolation is not only tolerable, but even desirable. An Israel armed to the teeth by America, standing as Sparta in the Middle East, driven by a messianic and fascistic ideology with Itamar Ben-Gvir as its leader is as dangerous and as lethal to the world as it has already become for Palestine and its people.