Ya’akov Almor, 2024 (photo: Y. Almor)
The car accident that Israeli minister Itamar Ben Gvir caused last week does not surprise columnist Ya’akov Almor. ‘In the last 23 years he has amassed a lengthy list of traffic violations: 78, of which nineteen were for not wearing a seat belt.’ But the accident also represents who Ben Gvir is, according to Almor.
While most religious Jews in Israel took it easy during Passover, Homeland Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir rushed to his armored car on Thursday. With one of his daughters on board, he drove from his hometown of Kiryat Arba – one of the oldest settlements on the West Bank, near Hebron – to Ramle, a mixed Jewish-Arab city.
Shortly before, a terrorist stabbing took place in the center of Ramle, seriously injuring a young woman. An armed passerby then shot the terrorist dead. Ben Gvir, who takes every opportunity to appear in the Israeli media, was there again this time. Surrounded by cameras and microphones, he praised the armed citizen who shot the attacker with his legal pistol. He emphasized the importance of legal gun ownership among citizens. “This saves lives, we see that again and again,” said the minister.
Ben Gvir quickly left in his official car to drive through a red light a few hundred meters away. His driver drove into an unsuspecting driver who entered the intersection with a green light. Ben Gvri’s car crashed and overturned. Emergency services quickly arrived on the scene and everyone involved was taken to a nearby hospital with minor injuries. There was criticism in the media because the driver who was hit – who turned out to be the most seriously injured – was only treated after Ben Gvir and associates had been involved.
It turned out that the minister was not wearing his seat belt during the accident, which left Ben Gvir with a few broken ribs. The hit-and-run driver was shown on television, strapped into a hospital bed, uttering a single sentence: “I drove through green, he through red.”
However, this was not the first time. In August, Ben Gvir drove his official car through a red light in Jerusalem and crashed into the car of a family of five. Fortunately, everyone escaped unscathed. Research shows that the 47-year-old politician has amassed a lengthy list of traffic violations in the last 23 years: 78, nineteen of which were for not wearing a seat belt. The minister also recently filmed himself several times in his official car, unbelted. His security guards have often raised the alarm with their superiors about Ben Gvir’s rash behavior in the public and on the road, and the complaints about how he constantly abuses his ministerial status are therefore common.
We have known for a long time that Ben Gvir is not a fresh boy. Anyone who reads his Dutch Wikipedia page will understand this immediately. The English version is a lot clearer about this. Unfortunately, his influence is far-reaching, and his racist ideas and statements are mainly picked up by young people.
Meanwhile, within Israel, Ben Gvir and Minister Bezalel Smotrich – who is from the same party – are the two biggest obstacles to reaching a ‘deal’ on the release of some of the kidnapped and the temporary suspension of war in Gaza. During the last few weeks, at the almost daily large demonstrations for the release of the hostages, there have also been increasingly louder calls for Minister without Portfolio Benny Ganz and his other colleagues to resign from the war cabinet. Under pressure from Ben Gvir and Smotrich, the government has so far refused to reach an agreement with Hamas that would lead to the release of hostages.
However, with this accident, Ben Gvir comes into the spotlight in a way that he does not like. The criticism of the man, his behavior and his policies is already enormous and will only grow now. One can hope that at some point Netanyahu will have no choice but to show him the door with the sentence: “Ben Gvir was an accident waiting to happen.”
