From 2022 pre Holocaustage
Itamar Ben-Gvir and the rise of the extreme religious right in Israel
By Freddie Holloway
Aggressive policing at Temple Mount (al-Haram al-Sharif) and escalatory rhetoric following Hamas rocket strikes from Gaza in early April have put Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s ultranationalist national security minister, back in the spotlight. Who is he, and what factors have driven his rise?
Pictured smiling as he entered a meeting of a badly shaken cabinet early this month, the cheerful exterior of Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, is eloquent of his adept pragmatism, his powerful position in Netanyahu’s governing coalition, and his carefully managed media image.
Netanyahu’s commitment to support the establishment of a ‘national guard’ to deal with Arab disorder in Israel represents a key concession to Ben-Gvir from the embattled Prime Minister after he was forced to postpone his government’s flagship judicial reform proposals by a wave of mass protests and nationwide strikes, and following the mutiny and aborted dismissal of Yoav Gallant, his own defence minister.
It is also the latest in a series of controversies of Ben-Gvir’s making which have set alarm bells ringing amongst the Israeli opposition, Palestinians, much of the international community.
Since the 46-year-old leader of the ultranationalist, religious, right-wing party Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) assumed responsibility on 1 January 2023 for institutions such as the police and prison service, as well as patrols in the West Bank, he has stirred his base and outraged opponents by banning the display of Palestinian flags and visiting Temple Mount (al-Haram al-Sharif), which drew comparisons to Ariel Sharon’s notorious visit in 2000 which contributed to the Second Palestinian Intifada.
Aside from his considerable popularity – and commensurate infamy – Ben-Gvir’s career is so striking because it is starkly emblematic of how the religious Zionist right has successfully, if by no means smoothly, come into the political mainstream.
The key question which poses itself is how did a man who was deemed too dangerously radical to be permitted to do his military service, and who boasts a litany of criminal convictions for racism and similar offences to boot, come to be the high-ranking cabinet minister responsible for the very police force that viewed – and part of which arguably still views – him with such suspicion?
Shifting our focus from the man to his wider movement, the second – and more thorny – question is what are the underlying factors driving the unprecedented popularity of far-right and (broadly speaking) religious candidates, further polarising the Israeli political landscape?
The unprecedented success of far-right parties in in the elections of 1 November 2022, in which the Religious Zionist coalition – including Ben-Gvir’s own Otzma Yehudit, Bezalel Smotrich’s Tkuma (Religious Zionism) party, and Avi Maoz’s fervently anti-LGBTQ+ Noam party – obtained 14 seats in total, made them the third-largest grouping in the Knesset after Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud and Yair Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid.
Together with the Haredi – ultra-orthodox – parties Shas (representing Mizrahim) and United Torah Judaism (representing Ashkenazim), the Religious Zionist coalition gives Netanyahu 64 deputies in the 120-seat Knesset, making for a slim majority but one with a strong right-wing and religious character.
Ben-Gvir’s ability to push for the post of national security minister in cabinet negotiations with Netanyahu is testament both to the strength of his electoral base and his willingness to formalise and expand the authority of far-right religious Zionists in the Israeli state.
However, this is the culmination of decades of operating outside mainstream political respectability, and in tense, both oppositional and tacitly symbiotic relationships with the institutions of the state.
Ben-Gvir’s cultivation of his media profile throughout his career has enabled him to forge a power base of supporters and reach a wide public.
Although some have justifiably cautioned against sweeping comparisons between Israeli extreme religious Zionists and the far-right in Europe and the USA, there are some significant areas of commonality in publicity strategies employed by Ben-Gvir and other far-right politicians.
Firstly, the generation of controversy is routinely employed by Ben-Gvir as a tool to gain media attention.
Prior to his provocative actions as a minister, this aim was advanced via publicity stunts such as his 2011 collaboration with the National Union MK Michael Ben-Ari to bring 40 Sudanese migrant workers to a luxurious swimming pool in Tel Aviv in what supportive media characterised as an attempt ‘to point out leftist hypocrisy’.
Such eye-catching ploys are somewhat reminiscent of tactics employed by other right-wing provocateurs, such as Trump’s campaign promise in 2016 to make Mexico pay for a ‘great wall’, and, on a larger scale, of Lukashenko’s exploitation of migrants at the Polish border as a political pawn in 2021.
Secondly, Ben-Gvir’s use of a range of different media, including both mainstream press and television, but also social media such as TikTok, have increased his exposure and connection with voters, outside the traditional public sphere of political broadcasting.
Thirdly, his often smiling, amiable, and slightly jocular public image, combined at other times with fulminating rhetoric and provocative incitement, has some echoes of styles of right-wing politics adopted by figures such as Trump and Farage which eschew decorum and offset their controversial opinions with a performative levity, though the context of violence and insecurity in Israel and the West Bank, and thus the consequences of incitement, are more extreme.
His 2019 plan to participate in a series of ‘Big Brother’, though unrealised, is indicative of his calculated self-image as someone who doesn’t take himself too seriously. Such a figure can appear to be more relatable and more of a ‘man of the people’, and has echoes of, for example, the half tongue-in-cheek posturing of Spain’s Vox party leader, Santiago Abascal, as a conquistador in a 2019 tweet.
Within and without the law
Ben-Gvir’s career as a lawyer has also been instrumental in enabling his political rise, forming a key bridge in his transition from being beyond the pale to enjoying greater respectability and substantial power within the state apparatus.
Though his previous convictions made his initial authorisation as a lawyer highly controversial, he and his Kahanist allies developed a strategy of working both within and outside the law, first as an activist, and later as a legal representative for Jewish settlers and extreme religious Zionists accused of crimes against Palestinians.
This included notorious cases such as the 2015 Duma arson attack in the West Bank, in which two Palestinian parents and their infant son were killed.
He thus provided extreme voices with a legal and political mouthpiece, boosting his profile and creating a niche as a more respectable, eloquent, and established arm of the Kahanist movement and its sympathisers.
See below
en.wikipedia.org
