Itamar Ben-Gvir: The face of Israel’s hard right — or the face of Israel?

Despite internal criticism, analysts argue Ben-Gvir holds a mirror to much of Israeli society.

In recent weeks, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has shown the world a version of “modern Israel” it had preferred not to see.

From telling the press that he would “not allow” a United States ceasefire deal with Iran that was bad for Israel to his televised harassment of bound activists of the Global Sumud Flotilla, Ben-Gvir’s actions have drawn outrage on a global stage.

It had been convenient to cast the far-right leader of the Jewish Power party as a political outlier within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. This allowed domestic critics of the far-right factions in Israel to continue supporting the government, and companies and countries outside to continue trade despite growing condemnations of the Israeli government.

After public rebukes of Ben-Gvir’s taunting of the predominantly European activists by the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada – and even Israel’s foremost allies in the US – Netanyahu understood the deep damage this was doing to Israel’s public relations image, and described the spectacle as “not in line with Israel’s values and norms”.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar went further, releasing a statement accusing his fellow cabinet minister of knowingly causing harm to the state of Israel and claiming that Ben-Gvir was “not the face of Israel”.

It is a sentiment echoed by many Israeli media outlets, eager to separate the minister from the Israeli state and government, yet it appears evident that the opposite is true, and Ben-Gvir is the face of an increasingly dominant section of Israeli society.

“He’s stupid, which tells us he’s not acting on his own,” Knesset member Aida Touma-Sliman of the left-wing Hadash party told Al Jazeera. “Everything he’s doing he’s doing with the help of other politicians and civil servants who share his beliefs. He wouldn’t be able to do what he does if they weren’t helping him.”

The right-wing extremist, provocateur and convicted inciter of violence has ultimately exerted unchallenged control over police and prison forces since assuming the newly created role of National Security Minister in 2022.

“If just one policeman said no, you can’t politicise the police force, that would be it,” said Touma-Sliman. “If the head of the prison service said no, you can’t starve, torture and sexually abuse prisoners, they wouldn’t, and that would be it.”

Ben-Gvir was hardly an unknown quantity when he entered government in 2022. His first brush with national prominence