Far-right Ben-Gvir emerges as key player in Israel

As Israel faces its fifth poll in less than four years, uncertainty and rising tension are boosting support for the notorious politician. A settler in Kiryat Araba, one of the most radical settlements in the occupied West Bank, Ben-Gvir has been convicted of incitement to racism, destroying property, possessing a “terror” organisation’s propaganda material and supporting a “terror” organisation – Meir Kahane’s outlawed Kach group, which he joined when he was 16. But in the March 2021 elections, Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party managed to enter the Israeli parliament by merging with Bezalel Smotrich’s National Union party, becoming the Religious Zionism slate at the behest of then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who wanted to ensure that no right-wing votes would be lost in his attempt to form the next government. On Saturday, a legislator from Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid party likened a possible government with Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir to the rise of Adolf Hitler, saying: “I am not comparing this to anything, but Hitler also rose to power in a democratic manner”. Former minister Limor Livnat from the right-wing Likud party wrote in Friday’s Yedioth newspaper that a “real Likudnik won’t vote Likud”, citing Netanyahu’s decision to bring Ben-Gvir in, “straight from the fringes of the radical and lunatic right-wing to the heart of political life and to turn him into a hero”.