Itamar Ben Gvir, the most talked about Israeli politician of the moment, knows what his country needs. Citizens who are ‘unloyal’, people from the left for example, or Palestinians who do not want to adapt, should go abroad. And you better shoot Palestinians who throw stones.
For years, this kind of language was not tolerated in Israel. Sure, there were always extremists, but in the political arena, people like Ben Gvir were looked down upon. His Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Force) party is considered the ideological successor to the far-right Kach party, which was labeled a terrorist movement in the 1990s after a supporter shot 29 Palestinians in a mosque in Hebron. A few years ago, a photo of the perpetrator hung on the wall at Ben Gvir’s home.
His party is now on a big win: according to the latest polls, Jewish Power, which has formed a list together with two other far-right parties, can count on 14 to 15 seats in the elections on Tuesday. That would make them the third in the country, after former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, and Yesh Atid of current Prime Minister Yair Lapid.
Groundhog Day
The elections themselves feel like a kind of ‘groundhog day’: the country is going to the polls for the fifth time in four years. And again it’s about the question of whether the political phoenix Netanyahu will rise one more time from the ashes, and can sit on the plush again. Also the same: According to the polls, the electorate is almost evenly split between the pro- and anti-Netanyahu camps, but neither gets a majority and thus no government can be formed again. Some analysts predict that elections will have to be called for the sixth time.
This situation was the reason Ben Gvir was pulled out of hiding a year and a half ago. Netanyahu desperately sought a few extra seats and embraced Jewish Power. That was not much, Netanyahu soothed the shocked midfield, because Ben Gvir would certainly not play a major role in his government. But this time it is different: Netanyahu is going to desperately need the 14 seats of Jewish Power and will certainly grant him a ministerial position. Ben Gvir has already made it clear that in that case he is not thinking of a marginal post, but rather something like Home Affairs, Justice or maybe even Defence.
Right turn
The shift to the right in Israel has been going on for a long time. The Workers’ Party, which has dominated the landscape for years, has struggled to even reach the electoral threshold, while ultra-Orthodox, settlers and nationalists have been gaining influence for years. This is partly due to demographic reasons (for example, the ultra-Orthodox community used to be a small minority, but thanks to large families they now make up 12 percent of the population), but for most people their feeling of insecurity weighs most heavily in the voting booth. The escalating confrontations with Palestinians are grist to the mill of the far-right parties, who argue that the left is far too weak.
Ben Gvir will certainly push for tougher action against Palestinians. “They’re throwing rocks at us, shoot them!” he told police when he visited Jerusalem’s controversial Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood two weeks ago. Then he pulled out his own gun. And that’s exactly what some Israelis want to hear. “We are not radicals, but the Arabs are,” one supporter told an election rally in Tel Aviv. The Washington Post. “They want to kill us. We need Ben Gvir to balance things out.’