Ruth Marks Eglash

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.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir is a reputational arsonist. Yesterday’s fire involved the minister visiting a detention center holding the latest batch of Gaza flotilla activists. There, he paraded around the bound and bowed detainees, waving the Israeli flag and blasting the national anthem. Are the participants in this flotilla criminals and determined enemies of Israel? Yes. Were some of the activists associated with ISIS? According to my sources, yes. Should we shed a single tear for them? Absolutely not. And were the embassies that summoned Israel’s ambassadors to reprimand them for Ben-Gvir’s actions the truest friends to begin with? No. But despite all of that, what Itamar Ben-Gvir did is a complete scandal—for three reasons. First, it is a brazen subversion of established policy. The government had already decided to deport these participants. Like it or not, that was the directive. For a minister to go rogue and hijack the situation reeks of cheap political theater—a desperate grab for attention that directly sabotages the government’s agenda. Second, this stunt is the political equivalent of the Davidka, Israel’s notoriously loud but functionally useless mortar from the Independence War—all noise, zero payload. In practice, Ben-Gvir’s photo-op achieved absolutely nothing, yet the diplomatic bill is staggering. It runs on the exact same playbook as his poorly planned death penalty law for terrorists: it will likely never result in a single execution, but it guarantees that Israel suffers maximum international blowback and disastrous headlines. If the goal was deterrence, I’m highly skeptical of its effectiveness. I can think of few things more guaranteed to fuel an activist’s anti-Israel obsession and ensure their booking on the very next flotilla than a forced, front-row seat to Ben-Gvir’s cheap political theater. Third, it actively sabotages vital, ongoing diplomatic efforts. Israel has been staring down the barrel of severe EU sanctions after losing the protective veto of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. As Ben-Gvir was busy planning his stunt, Israel secured a critical victory: the Czech Republic agreed to step in and veto the sanctions in Hungary’s place. The Czech commitment has not been withdrawn, but why would one possibly want to make the lives of our diplomats and allies that much harder? Just as the international pressure was naturally defusing, Ben-Gvir dragged the world’s hostile glare right back onto Israel. Yes, the detainees may be criminals. But to the rest of the world, they just see a vulgar politician—one already synonymous with everything critics hate about Israel, with a Hague arrest warrant hanging over his head—screaming at captives of unclear guilt. I wish I could say it was an unfortunate mistake. But it was entirely by design.

The thing I keep coming back to about the claim Israel has trained dogs to rape prisoners: If true, shouldn’t every news organization (and researcher, animal behaviourist, etc.) be pursuing this groundbreaking discovery: that dogs can be trained to perform interspecies sexual assault? That what was once thought to be a biological instinct can actually be coerced? It would be an astounding discovery

Internal Security Ben Gvir raises the Israeli flag on the Temple Mount on Jerusalem Day.