Otzma Yehudit party chairman and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, together with members of his party, attends a supporters’ conference ahead of the upcoming general elections in Petah Tikva, central Israel, August 16, 2026. (Erik Marmor/Flash90)
It’s Friday, August 21, and an almost unbelievable poll was published last month by Shmuel Rosner and HaMadad. The party the public rates highest on “handling crime and personal security” is, well, Otzma Yehudit. Four years have passed since its leader, Itamar Ben Gvir, galloped to a record election result on a promise to tackle the crisis. Since then, the murder rate has spiked, crime families divide territory among themselves, the United States issues a travel advisory over organized crime here, grenades get thrown at businesses as a matter of routine, protection money is as fixed an expense as property tax and VAT—and the man best suited to handle the national crisis is the minister on whose watch all of it happened. Not sure why, but it brought to mind the joke about the Arab who considered voting for Kahane, Ben Gvir’s spiritual father, “because he was the only one who promised to deal with the Arabs.”
Here’s a demonstration of the field where Ben Gvir leaves every rival in the dust: marketing. Yes, he’s had achievements—yes, he dramatically worsened conditions for terrorists in prison and handed out weapons to the public so they could defend themselves, and credit to him for that. But only in a world where what people say about you matters more than what you actually did can someone come off as Mr. Governance after a term like this. Ben Gvir shouldn’t be underestimated: he’s the only member of the coalition the polls predict a surge for rather than a collapse. If I may venture a guess, the polls are still underselling his strength.
Precisely for that reason, and without risking being suspected of leftism, I’ll go ahead and say that another government with Itamar Ben Gvir in a meaningful role would be a serious disaster for the country. Four years of unrelenting artillery bombardment, aimed at short-term political gain at home, have caused long-term strategic damage abroad. Our great friends in right-wing parties around the world struggle to understand why Israel handed a man like this the keys to its government at a time like this. There isn’t a Jewish community I’ve visited in the United States, however Orthodox and right-leaning, where I haven’t heard how hard it is to defend an Israeli government Ben Gvir belongs to, and quotes that made it all the way from his X account to the other side of the ocean. He’s a celebrity on a global scale, and not in a good way. His presence at the centers of decision-making is a daily terror attack on Israel’s standing in the world. There’s no Netanyahu interview, even on the most right-wing channels, where he isn’t asked about Ben Gvir and mutters something about the Israeli system of government where “only I decide.” And, of course, the follow-up question, always the same: How did you end up in a place where he’s a senior minister?
Here’s the answer: We got this far because of the boycott on Netanyahu. In 2019, as the indictment against Netanyahu took shape, the election turned from a political contest into a religious war: “We shall die and we shall not unite.” The center-left’s willingness to lean on the Arab parties led Netanyahu from disqualifying the Kahanist party to coordinating moves with it. First, folding it in with other right-wing parties; then, willingness to lean on it in the coalition; finally, sitting together in the Cabinet. Everyone who’s nostalgic—rightly—for the days when Likud wouldn’t join up with Kahane in 1984 is invited to feel nostalgic, while at it, for Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, who that same year refused to lean on anti-Zionist Arab parties as well.
This pendulum swing sharpened when the “government of change” rose in 2021 with the backing of Ra’am. That, and only that, is what launched Bezalel Smotrich and Ben Gvir to 14 seats. Now the pendulum is swinging back the other way, and according to most polls it will end with a center-left minority government at the mercy of the Arab parties, with Gaby Lasky and Moshe Radman, and with Yair Golan not a deputy minister but deputy prime minister. Just before that happens, it’s worth remembering that a pendulum building momentum doesn’t just suddenly stop in the middle. It will bring Ben Gvir back with 17 seats next time. Here’s news from the future: Drop the “National” from his current title and you’ll understand where he’s headed.
Some people do just fine on the pendulum: a run of fringe players who, thanks to polarization’s patronage, land positions and influence they’d never achieve in a saner climate. But the State of Israel is gravely harmed by this. You can fight terror supporters sailing to Gaza, or instead you can run an inflammatory prayer tour among detainees that even makes friends like the Czech Republic and Austria recoil and demand explanations. You can fight Jewish hate crimes out of an understanding of the injustice and folly involved, or you can flirt with support for them, and with a message trickling down to police that there are criminals of our own—the kind you don’t touch.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir attends a committee meeting on legislation mandating the death penalty for terrorists at the Knesset on December 8, 2025. He wears a pin shaped like a noose in his lapel. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
You can legislate an effective death penalty for terrorists, like the one from MKs Melinovsky and Rotman, or you can legislate empty words like Ben Gvir, while wearing a gilded hangman’s noose on your lapel. To hell with substance, to hell with the fact that any reasonable person waking up in Europe or the U.S. and seeing that image concludes they’re dealing with a bloodthirsty fascist. Who else gets a birthday cake with a sugar-icing hangman’s noose? Who else decorates his living room with a picture of the despised mass murderer Baruch Goldstein, so the kids see it every morning on their way to the kitchen for cereal? And no, it’s not because Goldstein was a doctor. If that were the reason, why not an oil painting of gynecologist and Arafat’s adviser, Ahmad Tibi?
As noted, extremism is a double-edged sword. My late grandfather used to drill into his kids, whenever they got into schoolyard fights, “Don’t start it, and don’t keep it going.” So, without deciding who started it, it’s clear everyone kept it going. Alongside Otzma Yehudit’s rhetorical rampage, there’s a rhetorical rampage from the Democrats, too. “Baby killers as a hobby” flew around the world just as fast as any of Ben Gvir’s provocations, because here, apparently, was the smoking-gun proof that Israel murders—in the form of an explicit admission from a former deputy chief of staff. When a fringe party accrues power in government, a fringe party accrues power in the opposition, too. Every side feels the need to escalate to pick up a few more votes, and the result is an unholy bargain: a senior coalition member and a senior opposition member together foul the country’s name in the world. In economics, this is called an “externality”: everyone suffers heavy damage so that you can pocket a small gain.
A broader government, with less power for extreme elements, would sharply reduce the damage from statements like these, and reduce even further their legitimacy to be heard at all. There’s no reason Netanyahu and his allies, and Gadi Eisenkot and his, should hold back from speaking clearly just out of fear their own camp will suffer for it. Yitzhak Shamir and Peres despised each other, but they would never have lent legitimacy to this madness, or to that one.
No column, of course, will dent Ben Gvir’s seat-count trajectory—if anything, the opposite. But his power doesn’t come from his number of seats; it comes from the fact that he’s been melted into the right-wing bloc, seemingly with no way to pry them apart. From an abomination to a necessity, from a necessity to a partner, from a partner to a fellow traveler. Netanyahu is wary of him, Aryeh Deri is careful to give him his due, and Likud already has his outposts in the form of Tali Gottlieb and May Golan.
Everyone draws their own lessons from October 7. My conclusion is that the reviver of modern Hebrew, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, didn’t choose that particular term by accident—“a tight government,” which in Hebrew is also, from the same root, a “trouble” government—to describe both a coalition with few members and a coalition that is itself a problem. There are countries protected by two oceans that can afford themselves such luxuries. Israel is not one of them. You would do well to cut Ben Gvir down to his natural size.
I joined Hugh Hewitt to break down where the Israeli elections stand: the likely outcomes, who could end up as prime minister, what Israelis are actually voting on, and more. Check it out.
English Editor: Ari Tatarka
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Interesting that Amit Segal neglects to mention how “no tricks no shticks” Netanyahu gradually lost all his erstwhile centre/right wing allies, thereby finally forcing him to depend not only on the far right provocateur Ben Gvir but also on the “we will die and not enlist” antizionist charedi parties. In fact, the day Netanyahu resigns from the government is the day Likud can rejoin its natural political allies to form a strong and stable 75+ seat government not reliant on extremists and antiZionists on both sides.
The concept of “sequence of events” is a real thing. We would do well to remember it.
The case against Ben-Gvir is made and closed - gently. Ben-Gvir and his voters are like a malignant cancer on Israeli society that has not been aggressively treated but allowed to metastasize instead . It brings to mind the rise of Hamas that similarly was allowed to grow in Gaza to the detriment of the whole country .
As a Minister of Police (and Border Police) Ben-Gvir is one of the responsible for the disaster of October 7 by failing to lead and prepare Border Police for the attack. As Mr. Segal described, Ben-Gvir also presides over unprecedented growth in crime and general, often violent lawlessness in the country . The damage Ben-Gvir activities cause in this area, while less visible than October 7 disaster are arguably more severe and longer lasting . Let's hope that Ben-Gvir will find himself out of political power after Israeli election, and will be tried,, along with some of his supporters for some of his actions that are not only stupid but clearly criminal (unfortunately, stupidity is not a criminal offence) .