Western and Israeli officials are currently wagging their fingers in faux outrage at Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir for publicly boasting about the mistreatment of flotilla activists attempting to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza. Ben-Gvir’s Twitter account shared a video of the minister taunting activists who were abducted by Israeli forces in international waters earlier this week, captioning it “This is how we accept the supporters of terrorism” in Hebrew and “Welcome to Israel” in English. The video shows flotilla activists from Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand being shoved, held in stress positions on the ground, and mocked by Ben-Gvir while restrained. This all of course pales in comparison to the abuses endured by Palestinian captives on a daily basis, but it’s the subject of international outcry today because the victims are from the west.
Western officials from the United States, the UK, Canada, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand have issued huffy, indignant statements denouncing Ben-Gvir and demanding the return of the activists, while Israeli officials put on a display attempting to distance themselves from the actions of their own national security minister. “The way that Minister Ben Gvir dealt with the flotilla activists is not in line with Israel’s values and norms,” tweeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in response to the controversy. “You knowingly caused harm to our State in this disgraceful display — and not for the first time,” Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar admonished Ben-Gvir on Twitter, adding, “No, you are not the face of Israel.” “Itamar Ben Gvir’s reckless grandstanding is not representative of government policy,” tweeted Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, adding, “Ben Gvir’s antics take a sledgehammer to our diplomatic efforts while Israel’s enemies gleefully jump on every unfortunate nonsense to discredit and demonize.” All this posturing about how Ben-Gvir’s actions do not represent Israel or its values would probably have carried more weight if they were not taking place in the immediate aftermath of an international scandal over a New York Times report on Israel’s fondness for using sexual torture on its captives — including the use of trained rape dogs. Analysts have noted that Israel’s national security minister appears to be sharing these materials in order to drum up support from his far-right base in an election year, which tells you everything you need to know about the political environment in that country today. Also noteworthy is the fact that Ben-Gvir has posted videos of this sort before — the only difference being that his victims in those videos were Palestinian. We are only seeing outcry from the western world today because the west perceives western lives as infinitely more valuable than the lives of Arabs. So it is a bit rich for the western political/media class to be making a fuss over this video in particular after enthusiastically supporting Israel’s nonstop violence and abuse this entire time, and it is rather silly for Israeli officials to be claiming their national security minister’s actions do not represent the values of their country. Ben-Gvir is the perfect embodiment of the racist murderousness of both Israel and the western empire. He represents everything this twisted civilization has become. They’re not mad at Ben-Gvir for being evil. They’re just mad at him for being honest. |