And now for your fleeting moment of outrage

For a few days, let's pretend that what Ben-Gvir did was somehow unique

I was somewhere between bitter and bemused at the shock-shock-I-say that met the video of fascist Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir abusing captured flotilla activists on camera. For some reason this incident elicited widespread condemnation, including from the rabbinate (!) and Netanyahu himself ( 🙄). It must be said that this kind of thing goes on all day every day in Israeli prisons, where the occupying forces have unlimited power and seemingly no capacity for compassion.

An incident has to be particularly egregious and uniquely public to even garner attention, and still there seems to be no rhyme or reason why one incident will elicit outrage from across the political system while another is met with a shrug of the shoulders or, more likely, the unleashing of the full hasbaric artillery of performative outrage, as Nicholas Kristof discovered when he published something that is really quite widely known (see B’Tselem’s accurately named report, Living Hell).

The only reason anybody cares about this at all is because it was Ben-Gvir, and that probably has as much to do with internal Israeli coalition politics as it does with what he did here, which might I remind you, happens LITERALLY ALL THE TIME throughout the military prison system. Even having an incident being on camera isn’t dispositive: video of Israeli soldiers raping a Palestinian man with a knife led to the reprobates being feted as national heroes. Israel is a very sick society.

It’s all performative because of course Ben-Gvir will not face any consequences. Netanyahu needs him for the coalition, and he has a big following. But the idea that this incident, or even Ben-Gvir himself, is some kind of anomaly leaves me bitterly bemused. In fact, Ben-Gvir is the unrestrained id of Israeli -- the walking talking personification what the country has become.