In the same way that we reach his car, we will end up catching up with him”, boasted a young man with a yarmulke showing the sign of a Cadillac stolen from the official car of the Israeli Prime Minister. Weeks later, Labor leader Isaac Rabin was shot by a Jewish radical during a peace march in Tel Aviv (1995). Itamar Ben Gvir, who then encouraged a political assassination that blew up negotiations with the Palestinians, could become a key player in consolidating a right-wing government led by Benjamin Netanyahu.
As number two of the Religious Zionism coalition, Ben Gvir tries to exploit the general boredom before the elections on November 1, the fifth in three years. His provocative, charismatic and omnipresent character is marking the agenda and the speech of an electoral campaign emptied of content. The Israelis will rule on the return of King Bibi or the continuity of the "change bloc" led by the centrist Yair Lapid.
In WhatsApp groups of faculties or companies, many recognize that they will vote for Ben Gvir. In the 2019 elections, the faction of the Jewish Power, representative of the most radical settlers in the West Bank, barely achieved 84,000 votes. In March 2020, less than 20,000. Now his coalition emerges in the polls as the third force: 13 seats out of 120.
In recent riots in Sheikh Jarrah, an explosive neighborhood in East Jerusalem, Ben Gvir arrived on the scene, drew his pistol and encouraged those present: "If they throw stones at you, shoot!" The next morning, she was casually cooking recipes on television. Eager for audiences, the main channels provided him with an unbeatable platform to catapult his popularity. Aware of his potential, he ordered his acolytes to sugarcoat the message. Walking through a market in an electoral act, young people started chanting "Death to the Arabs"! Angry, he turned to correct them: "Death to the Arabs no, death to the terrorists."
Ben Gvir is heir to Kahanism, the supremacist ideology founded by the American-born rabbi Meir Kahane. When his party, the Kach, entered the Knesset in 1984 and took the floor, all the formations left the chamber. He demanded the mass relocation of all Arabs or the implementation of halakhah (Jewish law) to regulate civil life. "This dangerous phenomenon will perish, because no public figure will support it," then Prime Minister Isaac Shamir of Likud predicted. His forecast was wrong: Netanyahu believes that Kahane's disciple is valid to hold important ministries if he regains power. A year ago, he considered him "invalid." Ben Gvir has already suggested his preference for the Justice portfolio. His opponents consider that he would serve to give Bibi immunity from prosecution in the face of her open cases for corruption, fraud and breach of trust. He could also regularize dozens of wild settlements in the occupied territories, illegal even under Israeli law.
To gain followers, he took down from his living room the portrait of Baruch Goldstein, a doctor who broke into the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron with an automatic weapon and murdered 29 Muslim parishioners (1994). He no longer calls for the mass expulsion of Arabs, but only of "terrorists" or "traitors", a category that also includes uncomfortable leftists. Gay parades seem an “abomination” to him. He demands more leeway from soldiers to pull the trigger in tense situations. He stands as the great defender of the army, despite the fact that at the age of 17 he was disqualified from military service due to his fundamentalist ideas.
Religious Zionism's number two has crossed the Green Line to import postulates from his radical settlement of Kiryat Arba that were unprecedented in Tel Aviv. At an event at a high school, dozens of young people cheered him like a rock star. He returned the affection by taking selfies with a victorious pose.
