Election campaigns do not bring out the better angels of our nature. Just look at National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
On Tuesday, Ben-Gvir uploaded a video of a gallows being constructed in a maximum-security prison for Palestinian terrorists.
“I promised to worsen the conditions of terrorists in prisons – we kept it,” Ben-Gvir said in the macabre clip. “I promised to pass the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law – we did. And now the death row and hanging facility are also starting to take shape.”
Ben-Gvir said the facility would include viewing booths – just like those in the US – for the families of terror victims.
Reasonable people can debate whether Israel should have the death penalty for terrorists. Legislation pushed by Ben-Gvir to that effect passed the Knesset earlier this year. But reasonable people do not glorify executions, take public joy in them, or circulate videos of gallows under construction.
Ben-Gvir's celebration of the death penalty
Ben-Gvir has repeatedly crossed the line between advocating capital punishment and celebrating it.
He wore a gallows pin to promote the death penalty legislation, cracked open champagne bottles when it passed, and received a birthday cake from his wife with a gallows depicted in the frosting. The video was the latest appeal to a political base he apparently believes finds this type of imagery appealing.
Nor was this an isolated incident.
Just days earlier, Ben-Gvir appeared on former hostage Rom Braslavski’s podcast. When Braslavski said he wanted to execute captured terrorists with his own hands, Ben-Gvir replied that seeing him do so was “one of my greatest dreams.”
That exchange, coming just days before the gallows video, showed what this was about. This is not a sober argument for capital punishment as a deterrent or an instrument of justice. It is the public celebration of death, a reveling in revenge.
Beyond the grotesque and un-Jewish spectacle of taking public delight in executions, what is the problem?
The problem is that it is not only Ben-Gvir’s base watching these videos. So is the rest of the world. And many decent people – not antisemites or rabid anti-Zionists – must be asking: What has gotten into Israel? How can a liberal democracy engage in this Iran-style glorification of hangings?
Netanyahu's silence on Ben-Gvir
The question of how Israel can allow this, however, is slightly misplaced. The more pertinent question is how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can allow it.
Netanyahu cannot control everything Ben-Gvir says or does. But he can condemn it, distance his government from it, and make clear that this is not the face Israel wishes to present to the world. Instead, for nearly four years, he has allowed Ben-Gvir to remain a public relations train wreck, careening from one damaging spectacle to another without being called to account.
Remember the last flotilla, which Israel successfully stopped, only to face widespread condemnation after Ben-Gvir taunted the bound detainees? Israel gained nothing – and lost a great deal – from that stunt. The same is true of the gallows video.
Yet Netanyahu stays quiet, letting Ben-Gvir rant and rave and then blaming Israel’s plummeting popularity on Qatari, Russian, and Chinese bots.
The bots don’t help. But neither does Ben-Gvir.
Instead, he sullies Israel’s reputation as an enlightened country in an especially harsh neighborhood – determined to retain its humanity even while endlessly fighting enemies who have lost theirs.
Huckabee warns against giving critics ammunition
The danger of handing Israel’s enemies ammunition extends beyond Ben-Gvir. Jewish extremists harming and harassing Palestinians in Judea and Samaria also chip away at Israel’s image.
That point was made clear this week by United States Ambassador Mike Huckabee, one of Israel’s strongest friends and a man whose support for the country is beyond question.
In an interview with Kan 11 on Tuesday, Huckabee again described the actions of Jewish criminals in Judea and Samaria as terrorism.
“Somewhere in the hearts and lives of these thugs who are carrying these things out, they think they’re helping Israel, and they think they’re helping the Jewish people,” he said. “They are hurting Israel. They’re hurting its reputation, and they are hurting the Jewish people.”
Asked what Israel could do to shore up its standing among the American public, Huckabee – while acknowledging that those who are antisemitic and hate Israel will not be persuaded – recommended three steps.
The first, he said, is to have people come and see Israel for themselves. The second is to develop a “fight-back” messaging and communications strategy.
“And the third thing – and I think maybe this is, you know, a very important one – is that Israelis have to be careful not to give ammunition to their critics,” he said. “Why would you help your enemies hate you more?”
That question applies directly to Ben-Gvir.
His antics give ammunition to those seeking to harm, delegitimize, blacken, and demonize Israel. He is not responsible for the hatred of Israel, but he repeatedly hands Israel’s enemies material they can use to spread it.
True, the country is in the midst of an election campaign. But that does not excuse Ben-Gvir’s excesses, nor does it excuse Netanyahu’s refusal to speak out against them.
The election will come and go. But the images of Ben-Gvir marketing the gallows to voters will remain. So will the impression of Israel they leave behind.
And that is a danger.