Jerusalem – Until last year, Itamar Ben-Gvir was best known as a far-right religious provocateur who hates Palestinians.
Now, as Israelis vote in Tuesday’s parliamentary elections, he looks set to become a key figure in the country’s fifth vote in less than four years.
As a settler in Kiryat Araba, one of the most radical settlements in the occupied West Bank (illegal under international law), Ben-Gvir was found guilty of inciting racism, vandalizing destruction of property, possession of propaganda material of a “terrorist” organization and support of a “terrorist” organization – Meir Kahane’s Outlaw Kach Groupwhich he joined when he was 16 years old.
But in the March 2021 elections, Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party managed to get into the Israeli parliament by merging with Bezalel Smotrich’s National Coalition party, becoming Religious nationalism at the behest of then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who wanted to ensure that no right-wing votes were lost in his bid to form his next government.
Who is Netanyahu? tried for corruptiondid not become prime minister, but the deal got Ben-Gvir in the door.
Now, this ranking is poised to become the third largest in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. And with Netanyahu having a 50-50 chance of forming the next government, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are bracing for their opportunistic plans that could change the very nature of Israel’s political system.
One of their goals is to undermine the Israeli judiciary by removing the charges of fraud and breach of trust – for which Netanyahu is being tried – from the penal code, depriving the Court of Justice of the ability of the Court of Justice. supreme law in repealing unconstitutional laws and giving control to parliamentarians. over-selecting judges.
On Saturday, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Yair Lapid .’s center-right Yesh Atid party be like a possible government with Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir in the wake of Adolf Hitler, said: “I don’t compare this to anything, but Hitler also came to power in a democratic way”.
Ben-Gvir also wants to deport Israeli “disloyal” Palestinian citizens. In August, an online poll by a local radio station showed that nearly two-thirds of Israelis supported the proposal.
Daniel Goldman, 53, a religious Jewish businessman and social activist from the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, is frustrated that so many Jewish converts support Ben-Gvir.
“He said that he will decide what the loyalty test is and therefore who will be allowed to become a citizen, which is unacceptable, not only from a democratic point of view, but from a democratic point of view. of the Jews,” Goldman told Al Jazeera.
“As a member of the religious Zionist community, I am saddened by the opinions [of] Smotrich and to a greater extent Ben-Gvir was accepted in the mainstream community to which I belonged. My Judaism believes that we have a responsibility to the few, not just to the majority, so that includes everyone in Israel. “
‘Bad day’
Mainstream Israeli newspapers published op-eds talking about the “fated election” and the “return to the Dark Ages”.
Former minister Limor Livnat from the right-wing Likud party wrote in the Yedioth newspaper on Friday that “a real Likudnik would not vote for Likud”, citing Netanyahu’s decision to include Ben-Gvir, “right from the edge of the extreme right-wing and madness- wing the heart of political life and make him a hero”.
Ehud Barak, a former Labor Prime Minister, has prophesied of “dark days” if Ben-Gvir joins government, while leftist leader Meretz Zehava Galon said the election would “determine whether it will there is a free nation here or a Jewish theocracy.”
Ben-Gvir has a long history of provoking Palestinians and the Israeli left.
In 1995, at the height of the Oslo Peace Accords, at the age of 19, Ben-Gvir showed a TV camera the bonnet ornament from then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s car, declaring: We went to his car. We will also find him. “
A few weeks later, Rabin was assassinated of an Israeli extremist at a rally in support of a peace agreement and a planned withdrawal from Palestinian territory.
Ben-Gvir is also famous for displaying on his wall a picture of Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli-American who massacred 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994.
Since winning a Knesset seat in the last election, he has drawn firearms at Palestinian parking attendants in Tel Aviv – where he is being questioned by police – and has been in dispute with Legislator Ayman Odehan Israeli Palestinian citizen, when Odeh intercepted him from the hospital room of a Palestinian prisoner on hunger strike.
Last month, Ben-Gvir went to Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem, where Israeli authorities are trying to evict Palestinian families, with a group of settlers slashing Palestinian car tires and attempting to storm into a family home. When the Palestinian responded by hurling stones, he drew his gun, despite the presence of police at the scene.
On Sunday, Ben-Gvir announced that if Netanyahu’s far-right bloc won a majority, he would ask to become Public Security Minister, which would give him power over police and border police.
Ben-Gvir claims the hands of Israeli police officers and soldiers are tied and he wants to relax the rules to allow them to shoot at Palestinians who throw stones – but not Jews .
“What really worries me is… the support from the youth, that people believe that using violence and power is the way we should live and not through equality and normal relations between Jews Thais and Arabs,” said Doubi Schwartz, 63, a pacifist. activist from the city of Hod Hasharon, central Israel, told Al Jazeera. “Ben-Gvir is a black flag flying over Israeli democracy.”
Fertile soil for the far right
There are several reasons for the rise of Ben-Gvir.
Violence last year in “mixed” religious towns, beginning with the attempted eviction in Sheikh Jarrah, was a contributing factor.
“The riots in Lod and other mixed Jewish-Arab towns come as a major trauma to many Israeli Jews. We are not talking about occupied Palestinians. We are talking about Israeli citizens of Palestinian descent, who set fire to synagogues and attacked random Jews on the street who attacked their neighbors,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, a member senior at the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbors, said.
“Then Ben-Gvir walked in and started doing what Ben-Gvir does best… crazy. And he organized the Jewish ‘anti-lynch’ crowd. He took to the streets and staged a rampage.”
Most Jewish Israelis are unaware that it was the police and Jews associated with the Garin Torani Jewish nationalist community in Lydd (Lod) who first attacked the Palestinians in the city in October. May 11, 2021. Palestinians responded with stoning and hours later throughout town, Garin Members opened fire on Palestinians and killed 32-year-old Moussa Hassouneh, a father of three. , whom the Palestinians say is unresolved.
In the days that followed, violence escalated as armed Jews from occupied West Bank settlements and across the country attacked Palestinians in their homes and streets, setting fire to a cemetery. Islamic pages, cars and shops. There was violence from the Palestinians, and one Jewish resident was killed, but the Hebrew media reported widespread attacks on Jews and Jewish property.
After three days, Israeli Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai blamed Ben-Gvir for the unrest in Jewish-Palestinian cities.
Ben-Gvir also benefited from the timing of the latest election and the fractured political landscape.
The peace process is no more, there has been a spate of Palestinian attacks in Israel since March, and Israeli forces conduct near-daily raids in the occupied West Bank, killing scores of people. dozens of Palestinians.
Daniel Bar explains: “In times of uncertainty and tension, when people want answers and the left doesn’t have an immediate answer, the ground is fertile for the messages of the right, who answer in a much more populist way. -Tal, a political psychologist at Tel Aviv University. “And this is the Ben-Gvir phenomenon.”
After the October incident when Palestinians threw stones at Ben-Gvir in Sheikh Jarrah, he posted a picture of himself with his two children holding giant plastic machine guns at an amusement park , with the caption: “After the Shimon Hatzadik riots, I took the kids to a video game to teach them what to do with terrorists. Happy Holidays and Shabbat Shalom. “
