Rise to power of convicted racist stokes fear in Israel

Appointment of Ben-gvir as new security minister provokes unease among country’s Arab population

A CONVICTED racist and Jewish terrorism supporter was appointed as Israel’s security minister yesterday, in a move that has led some Arab Israelis to warn of the risk of violence.

Itamar Ben-gvir will oversee Israeli police forces as part of the deal with incoming prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who swept to victory in elections earlier this month.

Mr Ben-gvir, whom critics have branded an anti-arab fascist, has drawn much of his electoral support from Israelis angry over a series of recent Palestinian attacks, such as Wednesday’s bombing of a bus stop in Jerusalem which killed a Jewish teenager.

But despite his faction winning the third highest number of seats in the November polls, he remains a hugely controversial figure.

Convicted in 2007 of inciting racism and supporting terrorism, the Otzma Yehudit [Jewish Power] leader has called for “disloyal” Arabs to be expelled from Israel. He once kept on display in his living room a picture of Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish terrorist who gunned down 29 Muslim worshippers at a mosque in Hebron in 1994.

Advocacy groups representing Arabisraelis, who make up about 20 per cent of the population, say there has been a rise in reports of anti-arab abuse since the elections. Urgent meetings are underway among Arab politicians in Israel, discussing how they should react to the results.

Mr Ben-gvir’s rise to power has also disturbed Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, human rights groups and some officials in the administration of US president Joe Biden.

Arab community leaders suspect that Mr Ben-gvir’s ally Bezalel Smotrich, set to become finance minister, will decide to cut funding for Arab communities.

Jafar Farah, director of the Mossawa Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel, said: “If it is Smotrich and Ben Gvir, they will want civil war. They will allow Ben-gvir and his supporters to use a certain amount of violence on us.”

Mr Farah said he feared Mr Ben-gvir and his supporters would “target” cities with mixed Jewish-arab populations, such as Haifa, leading to what he described as “apartheid streets”.

Mr Ben-gvir, who says he has matured since his 2007 conviction, denies this and says he only wants to confront Palestinian terrorists. Israel strongly denies the charge of apartheid, a term human rights groups have applied to its treatment of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

It also emphasises that Arab-israeli citizens benefit from the same legal rights as Jewish Israelis.

At a café in Haifa, where Arabs account for 14 per cent of the population, one Arab-israeli voter said they were concerned the rise of the extremeright would create further tensions.

Fadi, a 36-year-old security systems engineer, said: “I feel the country is going in the wrong direction.

Nisreen Shehad, a 37-year-old IT director, said: “Even before Ben-gvir, the relationship with police was strained at best, hostile in most cases and now it’s just going to get even worse.”