Far-right Israeli Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has been posting videos on social media of himself mocking and mocking Palestinian prisoners of war. He boasted that he had intimidated the most high-profile Palestinian prisoners. He showed off activists from the Gaza Platoon tied to the floor. And he is proud of the new law he pushed to expand the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorism.
But as the election approached, his message became more radical. His latest AI-generated campaign video shows a line of numbered Palestinian prisoners in brown uniforms moving along a conveyor belt into a fenced compound with a guard tower. The prisoners appear well-nourished at first, but after passing through the industrial processing line, they appear emaciated and distressed. The post reads, “I promised, I promised.” The video was deleted from Ben Gvir’s account on X after racking up more than 4 million views.
The minister has long called for conditions for Palestinian security prisoners to be reduced to the “minimum required by law”.
Ben Gvir is perhaps the best known of Israel’s far-right politicians, a provocateur who has taken control of the country’s power. As minister of national security, he is in charge of police and prisons, as his politics have become a defining feature of Israel’s image abroad.
With two months until the election, Israel’s far-right landscape is increasingly crowded, with small parties competing for a finite number of votes. In order to stand out, politicians are not shy about communicating their messages and visions for the country.
The far right is a dominant feature of Israeli politics and a key component of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government. A party needs to win 3.25% of the vote to cross the electoral threshold and enter the next parliament. Those who fall short are excluded and their votes are effectively discarded.
This electoral arithmetic has intensified competition for right-wing voters and encouraged politicians to take even harder positions.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has repeatedly praised the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and openly boasted that it would destroy the possibility of a Palestinian state. The crux of his campaign is, “Yes, let’s Judaize!” – The plan aims to change the demographic reality of the Negev and Galilee, areas of Israel with large Arab populations, by applying a settlement strategy from the West Bank. This means bringing in an additional 1 million Jewish residents and establishing around 40 new communities along with dozens of individual farms.
Meanwhile, Ofer Winter recently launched a new political party, Your People Israel. The retired brigadier general is popular among Israel’s right-wing and religious Zionist movements. “There will never be a Palestinian state here. The solution for Gaza is simple: move,” he said at his party’s launch event in late August.
His party’s number two is pro-Israel activist and provocateur Yosef Haddad, an Arab Christian. “It’s time for Arab societies to have representatives who work for themselves, not for Gaza, Jenin or Ramallah. I despise them,” said Haddad, who is seeking to become the next government’s public diplomacy minister and the first Arab member of the security cabinet.
Avi Maoz, leader of the far-right party Noum, slammed Jerusalem’s gay pride parade, secularism and feminism. He is not expected to exceed electoral standards alone. So is Moshe Feiglin’s “Identity” party. Feiglin, a veteran far-right liberal political activist and occasional member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party, advocates for the destruction of Gaza and the “voluntary” relocation of Palestinians to third countries. “All the children of Gaza are our enemies,” he told Israel’s Channel 14 last year. “We need to occupy Gaza and settle it, so no child in Gaza is left behind.”
For Netanyahu, the presence of far-right parties poses a real risk of losing tens of thousands of votes. If any of these parties fall short of electoral standards, Prime Minister Netanyahu warned that the right risks an electoral defeat.
The prime minister has released several videos and social media messages in recent weeks, publicly imploring the Ben Gvir, Smotrich and Winter parties to unite as a bloc rather than stand as smaller parties. But for now, right-wing parties are focusing their campaigns on increasingly radical messages.
