[News] Itamar Ben-Gvir is suddenly the villain of Israeli politics for one reason: he revealed Israel’s true face to

[Anti-Imperialist News]

mondoweiss.net
<https://mondoweiss.net/2026/05/itamar-ben-gvir-is-suddenly-the-villain-of-israeli-politics-for-one-reason-he-revealed-israels-true-face-to-the-world/?ml_recipient=188349502465246777&ml_link=188349477988337295&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2026-05-24&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation+-+8am>
Itamar Ben-Gvir is suddenly the villain of Israeli politics for one reason:
he revealed Israel’s true face to
Adam Horowitz
May 23, 2026
------------------------------

This week, Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir became an
unlikely target of derision across the Israeli political spectrum,
including the right-wing. His offense? Revealing the true face of Israel to
the world.

The story begins with the latest Gaza freedom flotilla, which again was
sending boats and activists to try to break Israel’s illegal and inhumane
siege on Gaza. Similar to past flotillas, Israel hijacked the boats at sea,
and detained the activists. 430 activists were kidnapped
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/21/israel-begins-deporting-gaza-aid-flotilla-activists-amid-global-outcry>
in Israel’s recent act of piracy, coming from over 40 countries.

This time, all of the activists were to be taken to Israel. Ben-Gvir was
waiting for them and made a video mocking the activists for social media.
“This is how we welcome the terror supporters”, he wrote in Hebrew, where
his English title was “Welcome to Israel”.

At the beginning of the video, an activist who is standing up, chanting
“free free Palestine” is seen being pushed violently to the floor by
security who shout “quiet, quiet,” Ben-Gvir continues to march in, waving
an Israeli flag, and a mass of kidnapped activists is seen being forced
into stress positions with their heads down to the floor. “Good work”,
Ben-Gvir says to the guards, and shouts to everyone: “Welcome to Israel! We
are the masters of the house!”

It is important to note that this is a common scenario in these arrests,
and there is nothing really new about it. It is a light variation of what
is being done to Palestinians every day, and various snuff videos showing
such systemic torture have been aired on mainstream Israeli television
channels
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/03/we-are-the-masters-of-the-house-israeli-channels-air-snuff-videos-featuring-systematic-torture-of-palestinians/>.
These videos have also commonly included Ben-Gvir’s mantra “We are the
masters of the house”, which was his election slogan.

The Israeli Prison Service even went as far as issuing a statement
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/ben-gvir-posts-video-of-himself-taunting-bound-and-detained-gaza-flotilla-activists/>
to *Ha’aretz*, saying that the detention was “carried out in accordance
with procedure and professional considerations.” Times of Israel notes that
this was done “as media outlets suggested the prison officials present in
the clip were acting against political and military policies”. These are,
in fact, their procedures, these are their policies.1

Yet, despite this, and perhaps in a sign of how Israel’s international
standing has fallen, Ben-Gvir’s video set off an international firestorm
<https://www.arabnews.com/node/2644315/middle-east>, and has become a PR
problem of its own. Both Poland
<https://notesfrompoland.com/2026/05/21/poland-to-impose-entry-ban-on-israeli-security-minister-over-treatment-of-gaza-activists/>
and France have issued entry bans against Ben-Gvir with French Foreign
Affairs Minister Jean-Noël Barrot saying
<https://x.com/jnbarrot/status/2058157334740820131?s=20>, “we cannot
tolerate French nationals being threatened, intimidated, or brutalized in
this way, especially by a public official” and calling for other EU
countries to issue sanctions against him. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni said it
was “unacceptable” that “these demonstrators, including many Italian
citizens, are subject to this treatment.” British Foreign Minister Yvette
Cooper was “truly appalled” by the video, which “violates the most basic
standards of respect and dignity in the way people should be treated.”

Of course, no such outrage is to be found when it’s Palestinians, but
that’s always another story. Now it’s a problem that internationals,
including Europeans, are being jeered at by Ben-Gvir as they were paraded
through detention like animals.

Given the response, Israel’s hasbara central turned to damage control mode,
and Ben-Gvir was thrown under the bus as a bad apple.

Prime Minister Netanyahu claimed
<https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/2057095673669918753?s=20> that Ben-Gvir’s
video was “not in line with Israel’s values.” It wasn’t the what, it was
the how: “Israel has every right to prevent provocative flotillas of Hamas
terrorist supporters from entering our territorial waters and reaching
Gaza. However, the way that Minister Ben-Gvir dealt with the flotilla
activists is not in line with Israel’s values and norms,” he added.

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who thus heads the hasbara office, shared
Netanyahu’s message, but had a message of his own, even more condemnatory
of Ben-Gvir, claiming Ben-Gvir wasn’t the face of Israel: “You knowingly
caused harm to our State in this disgraceful display – and not for the
first time. You have undone tremendous, professional, and successful
efforts made by so many people – from IDF soldiers to Foreign Ministry
staff and many others. No, you are not the face of Israel”, he wrote in his
sharing <https://x.com/gidonsaar/status/2057075559021043833?s=20> of Ben
Gvir’s tweet.

And then the Foreign Ministry posted a tweet
<https://x.com/IsraelMFA/status/2057108578230476978?s=20> with one video
and three photos:

A video of a guard giving water to a hostage; A photo of another offering
water to a hostage; a hostage being questioned at a table; a woman smiling
(presumably a hostage).

“These are our values,” says the caption.

All we’re missing is candy being handed around, and maybe a choral
performance to top it off.

The reality of the situation was that the activists had been held in these
stress positions for many hours, and the human rights organization Adalah
reported
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/gaza-bound-aid-flotilla-activists-subjected-to-electric-shocks-severe-abuse-in-israeli-custody-rights-group/3944064>
that activists were sent to the hospital, suspected of having broken ribs
due to breathing difficulty, having been subject to electric shock, and
shot with rubber bullets. Activists also reported
<https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fx.com%2Fi%2Fstatus%2F2057108578230476978%3Ffbclid%3DIwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAYnJpZBExZXFpRE4wTVJTWkxOZFFwdnNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR7HfNTQXijtsS1xKZJFTriiV8dpMlaJ2_MpwY1J2XaYANSjKA7APmW9zbV8-A_aem_YWdncwCsXGTFwTmkeLOvhmJ6xllq%26brid%3DYWdncwEOWbD0RL3J30LGlbi_Ir7s&h=AUDd-ALL50U-E2hCZ10DTWN-OPRnnsGCf0ZRvDp1mfvqGjwoxmLWArwhqFn9wMPmLEH6LannDz2UCMbiBjYqYZ3BPTVkQ-dU3KND4QpWoYp01heKvtsouEoaBSRWImihGK5KOGDEHZFqZw&__tn__=-UK-R&c[0]=AUCnikdC1FNocFUOjLioeZfoso-Jz1dUNgCosB-IL-XTSPnAHOALI2u4LAb3kS7xLfwT0It-fiZLbNeDkrOEdpeIHTPRWTbibz8_lizqJgtJpxEUrPNpHxA_jWYIZ_9OmRj4mNDNsQ88gX4Gh4nbUdwTWruv5a7zV7P1Pvz9uYaLBuluuEC0PZmpPUoaqA9mZWgFYrptcELc1KGWasnNLQ>
sexual assault, including rape. On one particular Israeli ship, at least 12
sexual assaults were documented, “including anal rape and forcible
penetration by a handgun.” This is, of course, standard procedure when it
comes to Palestinians, including the systematic use of rape
<https://mondoweiss.net/2025/11/understanding-the-mindset-behind-israels-usage-of-rape-as-a-weapon-of-genocide/>,
which was effectively legitimized when the Sde Teiman gang rape case
<https://mondoweiss.net/2026/03/israeli-soldiers-who-gang-raped-palestinian-prisoner-are-now-free-to-return-to-military-service/>
was recently closed.

So this moral panic over Ben-Gvir’s crude behavior is really an attempt to
draw attention away from this abuse, and it appears to be working. He is
being made out to be an obnoxious fascist outlier, when in fact Ben-Gvir
represents the true face of Israel.

This is all about Israel, as a whole. It’s Israel’s siege, it’s Israel’s
genocide, and the world needs to awaken to this understanding. It’s not
just about a few rotten apples, a particularly vile minister, or a few bad
cops.
------------------------------

*Jonathan Ofir*
Jonathan Ofir is an Israeli musician, conductor and writer based in Denmark.
------------------------------

*Note*

   1. It is also notable, that Transportation Minister Miri Regev
   <https://x.com/regev_miri/status/2057043359848440192?s=20>, of
   Netanyahu’s Likud, posted a similar video, where she claimed the activists
   were “terror supporters” who come “drugged and filled with alcohol”, who
   try to “hurt the sovereignty of the state of Israel”. Her video captions
   once again the hostages in the same stress position. Regev’s video did not
   get much attention.   ↩︎
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