{"id":6795,"date":"2026-05-21T13:40:59","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T13:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2026\/05\/21\/this-is-the-face-of-israel\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T13:40:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T13:40:59","slug":"this-is-the-face-of-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2026\/05\/21\/this-is-the-face-of-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"This is the face of Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ben Gvir\u2019s video of bound flotilla activists showed Israel without the mask.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Co-director of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This week, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel\u2019s national security minister, posted a video on social media of himself taunting flotilla activists held by Israeli forces.<\/p>\n

In one clip, a handcuffed activist shouts \u201cFree Palestine\u201d as Ben-Gvir strolls past. She is immediately seized by the hair and shoved to the ground by security personnel. Ben-Gvir looks on, gleeful. In another, dozens of detainees are shown bound and kneeling with their foreheads to the floor, forced into stress positions as the Israeli regime\u2019s national anthem blares from a loudspeaker. Ben-Gvir waves a large Israeli flag and bellows at them: \u201cWelcome to Israel \u2013 we are in charge here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben-Gvir knows he can do this and face no serious consequences. Why would he think otherwise? His country has just got away with a genocide livestreamed to a global audience.<\/p>\n

There have been condemnations, though, notably, from governments whose citizens happen to be among the detained. Italy\u2019s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called the footage \u201cunacceptable\u201d and a violation of human dignity. Spain\u2019s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, declared that he would not tolerate the mistreatment of his country\u2019s citizens and announced that he would push at the European Union level for sanctions against Ben-Gvir specifically, having already banned him from entering Spain. Even the United States ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said Ben-Gvir had \u201cbetrayed the dignity of his nation\u201d.<\/p>\n

But, however genuine the outrage, sanctioning Ben-Gvir targets just one cog in a far larger genocidal machine. It is the same tactic European states have deployed when confronted with illegal settlement-building in the occupied West Bank: Sanctioning a handful of violent settlers while leaving untouched the state structure that plans, funds and protects the settlement enterprise. The gesture creates the appearance of consequences without threatening the system that produces them.<\/p>\n

This is not accountability. It is the international community drawing a line just far enough from its own complicity to feel clean. Ben-Gvir did not build the prisons, order the systematic torture within them, or impose the blockade that the flotilla was trying to break. He is one minister in a government that has carried out a genocide with the material and diplomatic support of many of the very Western states now lining up to denounce him. Removing him from the equation changes nothing. The prisons remain. The blockade remains. And the genocide continues.<\/p>\n

The video has also struck a nerve inside Israel. Netanyahu publicly rebuked Ben-Gvir, saying his conduct was \u201cnot in line with Israel\u2019s values and norms\u201d. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar addressed him directly on X: \u201cYou knowingly caused harm to our state in this disgraceful display \u2013 and not for the first time.\u201d Saar added that Ben-Gvir had \u201cundone tremendous, professional, and successful efforts made by so many people\u201d. For Saar and Netanyahu, the problem is not what Ben-Gvir is doing; it is that he is showing it so brazenly. The concern is optics \u2013 that a video made visible, to a European audience and with European citizens in it, what has long been standard practice towards Palestinians.<\/p>\n

And what the video shows is not aberrant. More than 9,600 Palestinians are currently held in the Israeli regime\u2019s detention facilities. Of these, more than 3,500 are held under administrative detention, imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial. Among the detainees are hundreds of children. Prisoners are subjected to systematic starvation, beatings, denial of medical care, and sexual violence ranging from forced stripping to rape. At least 84 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli custody since October 2023 as a result of torture, starvation and medical neglect. Nearly every Palestinian household has a loved one who has been imprisoned at some point \u2013 an experience that reverberates across generations and leaves deep scars on families and communities long after release.<\/p>\n

Saar ended his post to Ben-Gvir by insisting that this is \u201cnot the face of Israel\u201d. He is wrong. This is the face of Israel. It is violent. It is ugly. And it is cruel.<\/p>\n

The views expressed in this article are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera\u2019s editorial stance.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben Gvir\u2019s video of bound flotilla activists showed Israel without the mask. Co-director of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. This week, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel\u2019s national security minister, posted a video on social media of himself taunting flotilla activists held by Israeli forces. In one clip, a handcuffed activist shouts \u201cFree Palestine\u201d as Ben-Gvir strolls past. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}