Ben Gvir's Gift to Israel's Enemies
How Ben Gvir destroyed Israel's ability to answer for what actually happened.
On May 20, Itamar Ben Gvir posted a video to his social media account. Dozens of flotilla activists knelt bound on the ground at Ashdod port. Ben Gvir walked among them waving an Israeli flag, blasting Israel’s national anthem, shouting “Welcome to Israel. We are in charge here.” He told the guards around him not to be bothered by the screams. A woman could be heard crying in the background. He posted the video himself.
Benjamin Netanyahu condemned it. Israel’s foreign minister condemned it. Italy, Germany, the UK, and Greece condemned it. The condemnations came fast and they were genuine. None of it mattered. The video hit 100 million views across platforms.
Two days later, flotilla activists released an unverified press release alleging rape and sexual torture in Israeli custody.
People were ready to believe it, and for good reason. If this is how Ben Gvir treats international activists with cameras rolling, the inference about Palestinian prisoners without cameras isn’t paranoia — it’s a logical conclusion from what he chose to show the world.
Nissan Shtrauchler of Netanyahu-aligned Israel Hayom put it plainly: “Citizens of Europe and the world have been exposed to the performance by the minister responsible for law enforcement in Jerusalem, and are now ready to believe any accusation.”
Ben Gvir didn’t need the allegations to be true. He made them rational.
This is the information war Ben Gvir is winning for Israel’s enemies.
The documented record on Israeli detention conditions is serious and Israeli-sourced. The Public Defender’s Office determined that Palestinian security detainees suffered severe and systematic violence from prison guards, food deprivation, and medical neglect. The government tried to suppress the report. The Sde Teiman charges were dropped. Netanyahu called it the end of a blood libel. A journalist lost 130 pounds — more than half his body weight — in administrative detention without charge. Israeli lawyers have filed hundreds of complaints without a single resulting prosecution.
That record existed before May 20. It was damning before the video. But it required evidence, documentation, sourcing. It required people to read the Public Defender’s report rather than watch a 60-second clip.
Ben Gvir collapsed that distinction. Not because the flotilla allegations are true — they haven’t been verified. But because he made the logical inference from documented behavior to unverified allegation so short that no evidentiary standard can survive the gap.
This is what impunity produces: a credibility collapse in which Israel can no longer defend itself against any accusation, true or false, because its own National Security Minister has demonstrated in public, on camera, by his own choice, exactly what he thinks of people in his custody.
The flotilla video was not the first. In August 2025, Ben Gvir posted footage of himself taunting Marwan Barghouti in his prison cell, threatening him on camera while Barghouti appeared gaunt and frail. In February 2026, he posted another video from Ofer Prison, overseeing guards roughly manhandling Palestinian detainees and telling the camera he was pushing for legislation to execute them. In March 2026, he filmed himself at a gallows museum saying he was “dying” to execute Palestinian prisoners.
By the time the flotilla video dropped, Ben Gvir had spent months establishing exactly what kind of minister he is. Just two days before it, his death penalty law — which applies exclusively to West Bank Palestinians tried in military courts — went into effect. The international activists simply confirmed what Palestinian prisoners had been saying for years, and gave it cameras, passports, and deportation flights home.
The man amplifying the rape allegations against Israel from São Paulo — flotilla steering committee member Thiago Ávila — had himself been the subject of a sexual misconduct investigation by his own movement’s ethics committee just weeks earlier. The committee found no evidence of wrongdoing and Ávila denied everything. The allegations against him remain unverified. So do the ones he amplified against Israel.
Ben Gvir knew exactly what he was doing. The video wasn’t a mistake or a lapse in judgment. It was a calculated performance for a domestic audience — the settler base, the Kahanist right, voters he is peeling off Netanyahu’s coalition one provocation at a time. International opinion is not a cost for Ben Gvir. It is part of the product. Every European condemnation, every summoned ambassador, every outraged foreign minister is content that plays well in West Bank settlements like Beit El and Kiryat Arba. He is running a domestic campaign, and global condemnation is the content. The damage is irrelevant to him. Which is precisely what makes it so dangerous for everyone else.
The condemnations from Netanyahu and Israel's allies mean nothing, because Ben Gvir is still the minister and the video is still there.
Netanyahu has known who Ben Gvir is since 1995, when Ben Gvir stood outside Rabin’s car holding a torn-off hood ornament and said, “just like we got to this hood ornament, we can get to Rabin.” He appointed him anyway. The Shin Bet chief warned in 2024 that settler extremism was growing because of a sense of secret backing from police. Ben Gvir demanded he be fired. He was replaced. The condemnations are real, but the accountability isn’t. Ben Gvir is still the minister.
Netanyahu made a choice. He knew Ben Gvir’s record in 1995. He knew it in 2022 when he brought him into the government. He knew it every time the videos came — Barghouti, Ofer Prison, the gallows museum. The appointment wasn’t a mistake. It was a transaction. Ben Gvir’s seats for Netanyahu’s survival. The videos are the most visible price Israel pays for that transaction. They are not the only one.
The flotilla allegations may be confirmed or they may not, but that’s not the point. The point is that Ben Gvir has made the question unanswerable in Israel’s favor — not because of media bias, not because of antisemitism, not because of Euro-Med or Kristof or any external actor. Because of a 60-second video he chose to post.
There is a version of this story where the documented abuse of Palestinian prisoners — real, serious, Israeli-sourced — forces a genuine reckoning with what Ben Gvir has built. Where the Public Defender’s report, Sde Teiman, the dropped charges, the 130 pounds — where those facts drive accountability rather than getting buried under unverifiable claims and viral videos.
Ben Gvir is not interested in that version. He is betting that his base will reward him for it and that Israel will face no material consequences regardless. He may be right about both.
What he has guaranteed is that every future allegation — verified or not, sourced or not, true or not — will travel with the credibility he provided. He handed that to Israel’s enemies himself.
Bingo. You could not possibly be more on the mark, Eli.
Reputational self destruction on display by Israel.
He doesn't care. It will do anything for a few thousand votes.