Israel’s Security Minister Wants to Cause Havoc. He Hasn’t—Yet.

Prior to Israel’s Nov. 1 election, there was one thing many of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s critics, supporters, and even the man himself agreed on: He’d bring about change.

To his critics, this author included, this change would be disastrous. Ask Ben-Gvir and his supporters, however, and you would hear proclamations that he’d provide Israelis a much-needed sense of security.

And yet, five months into his role as national security minister, the far-right politician who previously worshipped Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein has neither validated his opponents’ worst fears nor satisfied his voters’ needs. In fact, he has achieved astonishingly little.

This Extremist Could Destroy Israel as We Know It

Riding into power on the back of terrifying spikes in terrorism and crime that many Israelis felt went unaddressed by past governments, Ben-Gvir’s promises to improve Israelis’ security have fallen flat. The first-time minister has so far proven woefully incapable of fulfilling ordinary tasks under his purview and the grandiose promises he continues to make.

Instead, he has pushed for changes that, while perhaps emotionally gratifying, do little, if anything, to make Israelis safer. In January, he visited the high-security Nafha Prison to ensure Palestinians jailed for security offenses hadn’t benefited from recent renovations. In February, in a move expected to cost 1.5 million shekels ($404,000), he ordered the Katziot and Nafha prisons to remove ovens that jailed terrorists use to bake pita. Two weeks later, he instructed the Israel Prisons Service to shorten the allotted shower time for terror convicts.

“Since Ben-Gvir came in, everything has been neglected and they’ve shifted to talking in slogans,” a senior law enforcement official recently told Haaretz. The Times of Israel’s Haviv Rettig Gur observed the same preference for talk over action, highlighting Ben-Gvir’s February appearance on national television “to declare the launch of a massive law enforcement operation in East Jerusalem—without consulting or even notifying the broader government.” The firebrand minister, Rettig Gur recalled, “then seemed surprised that his slapdash declaration wasn’t carried out.”

But while he has so far failed to clamp down on Palestinian terrorism—an issue about which he cares deeply—his apparent indifference to violence in Israel’s Arab sector is particularly striking. In March, reports emerged that Ben-Gvir nixed a 3 million shekel ($808,000) initiative by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to fight crime in Israeli Arab communities. The Joint—a 109-year-old relief organization operating in 70 countries—is “a leftist organization,” he said. Weeks later, a senior police source claimed that combatting the homicide wave is “not the top priority for Ben-Gvir.”

I Was Canceled for Criticizing Israel

His empty rhetoric continued. Speaking in May about the police response to the endless murders rocking Israel’s Arab communities, Ben-Gvir told officers at the Bedouin city Rahat’s police station to “turn it up a notch.”

For some, his ineffectiveness was predictable. “Ben-Gvir’s entire adult life has been dedicated to racist rabble-rousing,” Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer told me, “so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that as a minister in one of the most difficult of government departments he has achieved nothing more than hollow PR stunts.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also contributed to Ben-Gvir’s failings. Despite relying on Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party to form government, prompting concerns that he would be held hostage to its extremist demands, Netanyahu has so far successfully prevented Ben-Gvir’s dangerous fantasies from materializing. “He managed to get Netanyahu to upgrade his title to ‘National Security Minister,’” Pfeffer said, “but the same Netanyahu refuses to allow him to join national security briefings because of his notorious tendency to leak everything.”

At times, Bibi’s sidelining of his national security minister has been plainly humiliating. In May, already furious at Ben-Gvir’s exclusion from security discussions, Otzma Yehudit announced it was boycotting Knesset votes over what it deemed the government’s “feeble” response to Gazan rocket fire at Israeli cities.

I Fought For Israel, Now I’m Fighting to End the Permanent Occupation of the Palestinian Territories

Netanyahu’s Likud Party did not hold back. “The prime minister is the one who decides who is a relevant participant in the discussions,” it said in a statement. “If this is unacceptable to Minister Ben-Gvir he does not have to remain in the government.” Only days later, Israel launched an operation against the Gazan terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Then reports emerged that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant chose not to inform Ben-Gvir about the planned strikes—out of fear he would leak information.

Unfortunately, Ben-Gvir’s incompetence carries tangible and tragic consequences. As of this writing, Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis have claimed 20 victims in 2023, and the violence shows no signs of abating. Among Israel’s Arab population, the murder rate has more than doubled since the same point last year: 90 Arab citizens have been murdered this year alone. As for protection rackets, thought to cost Israel’s agricultural industry up to 1.5 billion shekels ($404 million) annually, Otzma Yehudit put forward a bill to address the issue, despite the attorney general warning its proposals will be ineffective.

While this ineptitude enables such violence to continue, his ascension to such a position of power—until recently unimaginable for an extremist of his ilk—simultaneously empowers radicals on Israel’s far right. Finally feeling represented in a key governmental post, those long confined to Israel’s political fringes can increasingly flex their muscles, knowing the national security minister is in their corner.

And he proved just that after Jewish extremists terrorized the Palestinian town Huwara in February, setting fire to cars and homes in scenes previously unseen in the Jewish state. Ben-Gvir, who built his career as a lawyer defending suspected Jewish terrorists, blasted Israeli authorities’ decision to hold two of the suspects in administrative detention. When another three suspects were placed in administrative detention, he met their parents, reportedly telling them he was working toward their release.

Israel’s Spying on Palestinians Is So Pervasive It Would Shame Some Dictatorships

Still relatively new to his role, Ben-Gvir’s inability to implement effective policy isn’t guaranteed to continue. Haaretz reported in May that he formed a committee to help launch the “National Guard” Netanyahu promised him. Whether that guard will wreak the havoc its most staunch critics fear, improve Israelis’ safety, become another symbol of impotence, or never see the light of day remains to be seen.

But with the recent passing of the budget drastically weakening Ben-Gvir’s leverage over Netanyahu, the debutant minister may soon find himself rendered even more irrelevant in parliament.

Whether Israel is better off with an extremist national security minister who brings no concrete solutions to the country’s security issues, or one who successfully implements his radical ideas is anyone’s guess. Either way, Ben-Gvir is unlikely to disappear from the political scene anytime soon. As long as he’s around, the people he promised to protect are worse off for it.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now.

Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now.