Netanyahu issues rare rebuke to far-right Israeli minister over video taunting handcuffed Gaza flotilla activists
Israel’s national security minister drew a rare rebuke from Benjamin Netanyahu and sparked a huge global backlash after releasing videos taunting detained flotilla activists who tried to breach Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
Itamar Ben-Gvir released footage on Wednesday showing him walking among some of the approximately 430 detainees and telling them they should be jailed for a long time.
“Welcome to Israel, we are the landlords,” says Ben-Gvir, waving a large Israeli flag. One handcuffed activist shouts “Free Palestine” as Ben-Gvir walks by and is immediately pushed to the ground by security personnel.
Netanyahu said that although Israel has every right to stop “provocative flotillas of Hamas terrorist supporters”, the way Ben-Gvir dealt with the activists was “not in line with Israel’s values and norms”.
In another video, Ben-Gvir says the activists “came here all full of pride like big heroes. Look at them now,” while appealing to Netanyahu to permit him to imprison them.
“I say to Prime Minister Netanyahu, give them to me for a long, long time, give them to us for the terrorist prisons,” Ben-Gvir said.
Netanyahu said he’s given instructions that the activists be deported “as soon as possible”.
Ben-Gvir also drew the ire of Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar, who publicly chastised his fellow minister on X, saying “you knowingly caused harm to our State in this disgraceful display”.
“No, you are not the face of Israel,” Saar wrote.
Ben-Gvir shot back at Saar in the Israeli parliament, accusing him of “bowing to the terrorists” and that any Israeli apology to the activists would send a message of “weakness”, “submission” and “surrender”.
An Israel-based legal advocacy group, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, or Adalah, accused Israeli authorities of “employing a criminal policy of abuse and humiliation against activists”.
Adalah’s statement said this followed similar patterns of ill-treatment by Israeli authorities against activists in previous flotilla missions “for which Israel faced zero accountability”.
Adalah lawyer Suhad Bishara said a group of 11 lawyers who visited the detainees is aware of at least two activists who were hospitalised after being shot with rubber bullets “for no reason, without any justification”. Bishara said the activists will be brought before a judge on Thursday, who will decide when their deportation will begin.
Flotilla spokesperson Rania Batrice said Ben-Gvir posts such videos because the world hasn’t held Israel to account.
