Israel is the only meaningful democracy in the Middle East. This is as true today as it was last week. But the shameful scenes of far-right violence in response to the arrest of a group of soldiers is a gift to those who wish to undo it.
On Monday, dozens of hardline activists tried to disrupt the arrest of nine reservists detained as part of an investigation into ‘suspected substantial abuse of a Palestinian detainee’. They were accompanied by far-right politicians, who barged into an army base and occupied it for several hours.
A firebrand like Ben-Gvir is clearly the last thing Israel needs at a time like this
When the suspects were transported to the military police headquarters at Beit Lid, thugs – some masked soldiers with weapons, wearing the logo of Force 100, the unit to which the suspects are believed to belong – broke in once again, forcing officers to put up a barricade. Chaos ensued, only abating after the IDF chief of staff, Herzi Halevy, arrived at 11 p.m.
The top brass was forced to pause its planning for dealing with the threat from Hezbollah, which killed a dozen children on Sunday, to address the disturbances. Troops from the West Bank had to be redeployed to secure the facility at Beit Lid. Both Netanyahu and the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, condemned the unrest; according to the IDF, this diversion of crucial resources at a highly volatile time harmed national security.
The charges levelled at the nine reservists, one of whom is a Major in Force 100, involve the sickening abuse of Palestinian prisoners, including sodomy and beatings. The allegations turn the stomach. They must be investigated and dealt with forcefully.
From one point of view, this shameful episode is a symptom of a country in trauma, brutalised by the savagery of 7 October and the subsequent effects of the war. But the country is also grappling with the subversive influence of the far right, which remains small in number but has grown in influence since Benjamin Netanyahu invited its leaders into his governing coalition in order to secure the premiership.
The backdrop is a wider debate about the treatment of Palestinian detainees. The national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the most contemptible figure in the Israeli political firmament, has demanded harsher conditions. With the country still gripped by the suffering meted out by Hamas, and thousands of families grieving, his position can hold a dark allure for some.
Israel is hardly the only country in the free world to have a rising far-right. In fact, Britain is almost unique in not having one, at least in any politically significant sense. In the United States, Donald Trump is taken as a figurehead by a dark coalition of QAnon conspiracy theorists, white supremacists and unreconstructed Nazis. Across Europe, from the National Rally in France to Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, from the Sweden Democrats and the Finn party to United Serbia and Hungary’s Fidesz, different shades of nativists are on the march. And they don’t have existential wars to contend with.
A firebrand like Ben-Gvir is clearly the last thing Israel needs at a time like this. His elevation to the government is further evidence of the political dysfunctionality that rides with proportional representation. The political whirlwind of the supreme court reforms last year, which turned the country upside down before 7 October, was another symptom. With each passing month, Israel threatens to tear itself apart anew.
The real miracle is that the Jewish state became a democracy at all. People don’t often flee from free countries; the immigrants who built the country were, by and large, refugees from autocratic regimes in the Middle East and across Europe. Many of the Israeli pioneers had never cast a vote in a fair election, and in the early days, the guiding spirit of the country was communist. Hardly a recipe for a flourishing liberal society.
Against the odds, such a society developed. But it has always had streams of ideologues wishing to ape the political norms of the Middle East rather than conjure the ethos of western liberalism. With the emboldening of such toxic fringes granted by the elevation of the hard-right firebrands Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich to the governing coalition, a Pandora’s box has been opened a little.
Across Israeli society, small but vocal numbers of chauvinists are flexing their muscles. On the West Bank, bullying of Palestinians continues. Near Jerusalem, young thugs have been seen stopping lorries in the street to check if they were carrying aid to Gaza. Along the way, they have been whipped up, including by Ben-Gvir, who expressly criticised the arrests, and who himself has faced allegations of street violence. Now the mob is trying to exert its influence on the rule of law in the military.
It is certainly true that Israel, like any other country, has its own villains as well as its own heroes. Under the kind of existential pressure that is now bearing down on a society in trauma, it is inevitable that the cracks will show. We can only point to the Jewish people’s remarkable propensity for resilience and adaptation and hold firm to our hope for the future.