Ben Gvir is not just a racist. He’s a fool

I had not intended to write about Itamar Ben Gvir. Not because he is unimportant, he is anything but. He is head of security in Israel and the Occupied Territories, so his ideas will have enormous influence. Rather, it was because so much has been written about him that there seemed little point in writing anything further.

In fact however, he has an impressive capacity to surprise. He was reported, last week, as saying that Israel should kill a further 30 to 40 people every night in Gaza even if they did not pose an immediate threat.

He went on to state that some of the people in Gaza did not deserve to live, and that they were not even people. Since some of the Gazans who he says should be killed do not present a threat one must ask if there are any people in Gaza who he thinks do deserve to live and if so, what distinguishes them from the others.

A liberally minded rabbi described him once as problematic but when questioned admitted that Ben Gvir’s views were not problematic, but abhorrent. That description runs the risk of stating the obvious. Yet I do not hear very much condemnation of him from the Israeli government or even from within the community.

Ben Gvir, however, is not merely an unreconstructed racist, he is also a fool. Israel is now accused before the International Court of Justice of committing genocide in Gaza. Her defence is that there is no intent on her part to do so.

But if the words of the minister in charge of security are taken at face value then that defence is compromised. As Talleyrand is reputed to have said about Napoleon’s killing of the Duke d’ Enghien: “C’est plus qu’un crime, c’est une faute”: it was not just a crime it was a mistake.

But there is an even darker side to Ben Gvir. He has proposed a law that imposes a death penalty for terrorists who kill people, but this will apply only to Palestinian killers, not to Jews, so much for equality before the law. But there is another gruesome detail. He now wishes to construct booths so that onlookers can watch these people being hanged.

In this country hangings used to be public events. Crowds would gather in Tyburn to watch the spectacle. Bear baiting also used to be popular. The sight of living beings suffering, clearly appeals to a darker corner of human nature. We have, however, moved beyond that now but it would appear that the relevant minister in this Israeli government has not.

Some Western countries have said that they will not meet with Ben Gvir. Netanyahu has denounced them for this. Let’s hope he changes his mind. If not the British community needs to tell him to do so. It appears that Ben Gvir is an observant Jew. He wears a kippah and no doubt is punctilious about what he eats that it should be strictly kosher. It might be thought that this mitigates his moral failings.

It does not, It makes them worse.

By committing these crimes while professing to be an observant Jew he brings shame on our religion and in traditional terms is a chillul hashem. Members of the community and their rabbis should not be content with saying privately that Ben Gvir is not a nice chap but should denounce him publicly for what he is.