By now you’ve probably heard about Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s call for the IDF to kill “30 to 40 people” each night in Gaza.
Technically, he was referring to Palestinian terrorists, but the line between civilian and combatant is very much blurred in Ben Gvir’s mind. As he went on to say, Israel should take out “not just those who pose an immediate threat.”
“No,” Ben Gvir continued matter-of-factly, “there are people there who are not worthy of life.”
The minister’s comments are horrific, but the substance of what he said is not the most notable thing about the whole affair. Sadly, this is par for the course from one of the most influential officials in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
What stood out about this particular invective was the venue: Ben Gvir made his monstrous appeal on the October 8 podcast, a show hosted by freed hostage Rom Braslavski. As the national security minister details his bloody vision for Gaza, Braslavski nods along—”ken, ken.”
Braslavski even made a personal request: the former Islamic Jihad captive wanted to personally execute the men who’d tormented him for over two years. Ben Gvir, who recently pushed through legislation imposing a death penalty for Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank (but not for Jewish ones), was delighted to say he’d do everything possible to make Braslavski’s fantasy a reality.
I don’t begrudge Braslavski his anger; what he endured in Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s dungeons cannot be done justice in a short piece like this one. He was captured after saving other people at the Nova music festival. Throughout his time in captivity, he was beaten and sexually assaulted. Two months before his release, medical experts warned that he had lost nearly a third of his body weight and faced the risk of multi-system failure.
The desire for revenge Rom Braslavski articulated out in the open on his podcast has certainly been spoken countless times behind closed doors, between friends and relatives of hostages at kitchen tables across Israel and the diaspora. This phenomenon plays out on both sides of the conflict.
To borrow Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed’s glib explanation of an attack on a US synagogue, “hurt people hurt people” (the assailant in that case lost family members to an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, including two brothers reportedly working for Hezbollah and a young niece and nephew).
El-Sayed should not have rationalized the attempted murder of American Jewish children, but there’s some validity to the Senate hopeful’s armchair psychology. People in pain may sometimes find relief in causing others pain. A good leader channels that anguish away from violence; they sympathize with a wounded public while helping them heal. By contrast, demagogues like Itamar Ben Gvir feed on anger. They weaponize and amplify it. Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups do the same with their people.
The men and women kidnapped by Hamas and Islamic Jihad on October 7 were normal people representing all parts of Israeli society. The experience of captivity in Gaza thrust them into the national spotlight. Those who survived their ordeal continue to be the center of attention, but they were not public figures before 2023. Ben Gvir’s interviewer, Rom Braslavski, was just a security guard at a music festival. The idea of podcasting with senior cabinet ministers probably never crossed his mind.
As with most normal people, Braslavski’s politics are a mixed bag. In his interview with Ben Gvir, he was looking for vengeance. Yet Braslavski has also called for treating Arabs with basic human decency, inviting a deluge of vitriolic comments from Israeli social media users.
“I wish that all of these keyboard heroes would experience being kidnapped for just one day [...] and then see if they’d still be able to open Facebook and write the nasty messages,” Braslavski posted in response.
Ben Gvir, for his part, voted against every hostage deal, including the one that freed Rom. In November, Braslavski wrote that he was suffering from ten panic attacks a day and the state had abandoned him. Neither the prime minister nor Ben Gvir had reached out once since his release. Only with elections around the corner have Ben Gvir’s calculations changed.
Rather than help Rom Braslavski navigate his grief, Itamar Ben Gvir preyed on it in public. Ben Gvir’s interview is tantamount to abuse of a traumatized man, conducted as political theater on a national stage. It is a routine that officials from Benjamin Netanyahu on down have repeated over and over again for the past three years, and this manipulative show will go on and on until Israeli voters finally call curtains.
This gets to the heart of it. Trauma may explain the desire for vengeance; it does not excuse a political leader who deliberately feeds it. Leadership should interrupt the cycle of hurt, not weaponize it.
Ben Gvir and his ilk are a cancer on Israeli society—not because they represent its wounds, but because they exploit those wounds and prevent them from healing. Loving Israel requires saying that plainly.