Anti-torture NGO: Video of Ben Gvir berating Palestinian inmates is illegal campaign material

The Committee Against Torture urges the Central Elections Committee to order National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to remove a video he posted yesterday in which he berates Palestinian women detained at the Damon security prison in northern Israel.

In a letter to Deputy Supreme Court President Noam Sohlberg, who chairs the election panel, the NGO says the video constitutes an illegal use of public property for an election campaign, and also causes “grave harm” to the dignity and privacy of the prisoners, who are held in “conditions of abuse and torture.”

The video, in which Ben Gvir mocked the inmates’ complaints about poor living conditions, is “political exploitation of a helpless population for direct electoral gain,” the Committee Against Torture says.

It adds that the video “exploits the minister’s authority over the Prison Service,” given that photography is forbidden in the jail and lawmakers and inmates’ families are effectively barred from visiting.

According to the NGO, Ben Gvir’s use of public assets for his election campaign “continues a repeated and well-documented pattern that the CEC has already issued decisions about.”

In March, the CEC determined videos that featured Ben Gvir touring a prison and a police boat constituted illicit use of the security forces for an election campaign, the NGO notes.

Sohlberg made a similar ruling in June about Ben Gvir’s highly controversial video of himself tormenting activists detained from a Gaza-bound flotilla in May. That video sparked international outrage and condemnations from across the Israeli political spectrum.

In a separate March decision cited by the NGO, Sohlberg also fined Ben Gvir NIS 28,000 ($9,360) for illegal use of a state facility after the minister, promoting an effort to institute the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of deadly terrorist acts, filmed a video of himself at Jerusalem’s Museum of Underground Prisoners.

The NGO says that because of Ben Gvir’s repeated violations, Sohlberg should impose the maximum fine on the people who produced the video, and make clear that “high-profile visits in prisons at the height of the election campaign are forbidden” under election law.