Ben Gvir drew fire from fellow right-wingers for his flotilla video. Was that the point?

When Itamar Ben Gvir posted a video of himself taunting rows of bound and kneeling activists from the Gaza-bound flotilla last week, castigation came from foreign governments, human rights NGOs and the Knesset opposition. But it also flowed from his own right-wing allies in government, who distanced themselves from the crude bully in their ranks, and criticized the damage he caused, unforced, to Israel’s already battered international image.

Which may have been exactly the point.

Ever since he was a far-right teenage activist, Ben Gvir has had a showman’s instincts, and that hasn’t changed during the time he’s been a far-right senior government minister, even though he’s in charge of some of Israel’s most sensitive security agencies.

Now that elections are approaching, that penchant for political theater has provided Ben Gvir a clear way to demonstrate to voters that he’s different, not from his enemies on the left, but from his friends on the right who have long served with him — that he’s willing to stick it to Israel’s enemies, no matter what the consequences are for the country’s reputation.

And it comes amid a larger collapse of the concept Israelis refer to as “mamlachtiyut” — a hard-to-translate word that comes from mamlacha, kingdom — and conveys the idea that the country’s politics should be decent, statesmanlike and focused on the national interest.

“There is a crisis of trust in Israeli institutions and a widespread sense that few if any in the Israeli leadership make ‘mamlachti’ decisions,” Dahlia Scheindlin, a pollster, political analyst and columnist with the dovish Haaretz newspaper, told The Times of Israel. People, she said, “view the leadership as inherently responsive to specific parties, sectoral interests, not as acting for the good of the whole people.”

Ben Gvir’s tenure at the helm of the National Security Ministry since the Netanyahu coalition took office in December 2022 has been defined by his stunts, from waving an Israeli flag on the Temple Mount to his combative visits to Bedouin towns to the noose-shaped pin he wore to the Knesset when he pushed for a law mandating the death penalty for Palestinian terrorists who committed lethal attacks. After the law was passed, the noose made an encore — on Ben Gvir’s birthday cake.

“Everything Ben Gvir does is an election campaign move, and it doesn’t matter if we are three years before Election Day, two years, a year or half a year before Election Day,” Shmuel Rosner, a political analyst and editor of the Madad, an Israeli data and polling firm, told The Times of Israel. “He never truly made the transformation from a provocateur, someone who engages in symbolic acts of defiance, etc., into a managerial-type minister.”

His base, Rosner and Scheindlin both said, eats that stuff up. Ben Gvir has consistently polled around eight or nine seats, while his fellow far-right leader, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, is floundering near the bottom of polls.

“There is a section of Israeli society today for which such gestures are a sign of boldness, of a youthful rebellious nature, defying the goyim, defying the world, defying convention,” said Rosner. “He wants to get to Election Day when he says, ‘You want a mellow-type right-wingism, vote Likud. You want a real right-wing personality, vote for me.'”

Ben Gvir isn’t the only politician who has seemed to be making policy decisions to improve his own political standing. Israelis often talk about the government enacting “election economics” as a vote approaches, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents have long accused him of prioritizing his own political survival over the good of Israel.

“The majority of Israelis consistently viewed Netanyahu’s Gaza war-related decisions, particularly avoiding a ceasefire, as driven by his political interests,” Scheindlin said. “That indicates a major breach, even a deep rupture of the social contract in Israel at that time, and it affected everyone.”

The anti-Netanyahu opposition has tried to hammer the premier for disregarding the welfare of everyday Israelis, and leapt on Ben Gvir’s video as an example of the damage the coalition has caused Israel.

Will he alienate Netanyahu bloc voters?

The question is whether the video will be an effective cudgel for Netanyahu’s foes in an era when the Israeli electorate is so polarized. The pro- and anti-Netanyahu camps are fighting over a sliver of votes, and some people in that group may sympathize with the desire to punish flotilla activists they see as enemies, even if they bristle at how Ben Gvir did so.

“The video affects few,” Scheindlin said, “and most Israelis don’t care or maybe thought it was distasteful or made Israel look bad, but had either no feelings or derisive ones for the flotilla activists.”

But Rosner said the anti-Netanyahu bloc could win over swing voters by emphasizing the idea that Ben Gvir represents an extremist strain that is “embarrassing” Israel and hurting the country.

“It’s a very small fraction of people who are still undecided that will determine the election,” Rosner said. Among them, he explained, are “people who definitely want right-wing hawkish positions, but they don’t want the show of extremism and polarization, and a surrender to special interests of the Haredim.”

“He wants to get to Election Day when he says, ‘You want a mellow-type right-wingism, vote Likud. You want a real right-wing personality, vote for me.'”

The real impact of the video, Scheindlin said, likely won’t be felt in Israel but outside of it. Footage of Israel’s national security minister harassing foreign activists has already had international repercussions that could stay with Israel down the line, no matter who wins the next election.

“I think he’s just being who he always is: a thug and a bully, and apparently he sees Israeli foreign relations as a big joke, that can be exploited to keep his base happy,” she said. She added later, “I wouldn’t overestimate this incident inside Israel — like many things, it seems more important for Israel’s erstwhile, crumbling foreign allies.”