He may be the most brazen of the nation’s leaders, but his ideological spirit is found throughout its government, and beyond
No, you’re not hallucinating: western governments really are condemning Israel, one-by-one, without equivocation. Not because of the ongoing genocide in Gaza that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, of course, but because of a PR stunt in which Israel’s national security minister filmed himself taunting foreign activists.
On Wednesday morning, Itamar Ben-Gvir arrived at the port where Israel had detained hundreds of participants in an international aid flotilla that was attempting to breach the naval blockade of Gaza. In a video he posted to social media, the minister can be seen mocking the activists as they are forced to kneel in rows with their heads on the ground and hands bound with zip ties. Israel’s national anthem can be heard blasting over loudspeakers, before we see Ben-Gvir waving an Israeli flag and shouting: “Welcome to Israel. We are the landlords here.”
Ben Reiff is deputy editor at +972 magazine, an independent, online publication run by Palestinian and Israeli journalists
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