Jewish extremists harm Israel, official warns. Are Israelis listening?

Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet, issued a stark warning to members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in late August.

Jewish terror, perpetrated on Palestinians by violent settlers in the West Bank, and provocative visits by Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, are doing “indescribable damage” to the nation, Mr. Bar said in a letter published by Channel 12 News on Aug. 22.

Violent Jewish settlers, he wrote, are getting soft treatment and a “secret sense of backing” from the Israeli police, which is overseen by Mr. Ben-Gvir. All this will lead to added bloodshed and “unrecognizably” change the face of the nation, the letter warned.

Mr. Bar reportedly sent his letter to government ministers and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, though not to the hard-line Mr. Ben-Gvir. In it he warns that the unchecked rise of the extreme right is leading to the delegitimization of Israel, even among its allies; is spreading thin the deployment of the Israeli military; and is creating a “slippery slope to the feeling of a lack of governance” in Israel.

Yet the extraordinary warnings have received relatively scant attention, as Israeli citizens continue to grapple with an overwhelming stream of heartbreaking news related to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and the war in Gaza.

Just days prior to publication of Mr. Bar’s letter, Israelis were informed that the Israel Defense Forces had retrieved the bodies of six hostages who had been killed in captivity. Then on Sept. 1, the bodies of another six hostages were recovered shortly after being executed by Hamas. That same day, three Israeli police officers were killed in the West Bank. And all this amid the war in Gaza and Hezbollah rockets from Lebanon raining down on Israel’s north.

“Extremists thrive in chaos”

“People have seen so many negative things coming at them that they are only able to digest so much,” says Tal Schneider, a political and diplomatic correspondent for The Times of Israel.

This is making them “quite sealed off from reality,” she explains, adding that since Oct. 7, Israelis have also developed “a deep distrust” of the government, the army, the Shin Bet, the press, and the courts.

“Israeli society is breaking down,” she says, with “many consequences.” One is tuning out growing Jewish extremism.

“The public does not understand the severe implications of the rampage of the settlers and the state’s inability to enforce the law. Ronen Bar’s warnings are not taken by the people as seriously as they should because they don’t trust him,” she says.

The chaos that has gripped Israeli society for nearly two years, first over the government’s proposed judicial overhaul that triggered massive protests, and then because of the war, has brought extremists out into the open.

“Extremists thrive in chaos,” says Erez Kreiner, an associate at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University and a former senior security official.

In April, far-right Jewish settlers killed four Palestinians and wounded dozens in the West Bank in response to the killing of a 14-year-old Jewish shepherd. On Aug. 15, some 100 masked settlers attacked the West Bank village of Jit, setting cars and buildings on fire and killing a Palestinian. After an investigation, the Israeli military admitted that its initial response to the “rioters” was inadequate.

“We repress the real picture”

Ami Ayalon, a former head of the Shin Bet, and a former parliamentarian for Israel’s Labor Party, took over the internal security agency following the killing in 1995 of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by a Jewish extremist opposed to the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians.

“Before Rabin’s murder, the shouts on the streets were much louder than today,” Mr. Ayalon says of the Jewish extremists. “But at that time, they were not in power.”

Today, he adds, “They are in power. The Jewish terror is financed largely by state funds; they have a political arm, headed by Ben-Gvir, who sits in the government and arguably dictates the policy of the government.”

“Jewish terror is not generating a reaction within Israel,” he says. And Israel’s response to this growing threat is “limp, weak, and nonexistent.”

“Some of us say Jewish terrorists are weeds, a small minority, and they do not represent us. When we look at ourselves in the mirror, we don’t see ourselves as people who shoot innocent Palestinians,” he says. “But we are in denial. We repress the real picture because it is a very ugly one, unbearable to see.”

In from the fringe

Until Israel’s latest election, Mr. Ben-Gvir and his party were viewed as fringe players in national politics. But then Mr. Netanyahu, on trial for multiple allegations of corruption and eager to find coalition partners, added him to his government and gave him the national security portfolio.

Mr. Ben-Gvir, a media-savvy lawyer-turned-politician who has in the past defended settlers charged with violence against Palestinians, has himself been convicted of offenses that include racism and support for a terrorist organization.

But Mr. Netanyahu and his right-wing government have so far refrained from restraining Mr. Ben-Gvir, who remains highly popular on the Israeli right.

The grassroots Movement for Quality Government in Israel, which aims to preserve Israel’s democracy, has been watching Mr. Ben-Gvir closely since he became minister, says Rotem Bavli Dvir, the movement’s head of litigation.

On Aug. 28, she says, her organization appealed to the state prosecutor, the head of the police, and the attorney general to open a criminal investigation against Mr. Ben-Gvir on suspicion of incitement and sedition. The move followed his most recent visit to the Temple Mount, which is also holy to Muslims as Haram Sharif and is the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The movement has also petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court on two other matters: Mr. Ben-Gvir’s amendment to the police law, approved by the Knesset, that allows him to direct the policy of the police, restraining its independence; and his office’s distribution of firearms without the proper authorizations since Oct. 7. 

Mr. Ben-Gvir has also clashed with Attorney General Baharav-Miara, recently on the promotion of police officer Meir Suissa, who was indicted for throwing a stun grenade at anti-government protesters last year. The Jerusalem District Court late last week froze Mr. Suissa’s promotion, saying it violated police procedures.

The courts are called upon to rule on many of these matters, says Ms. Bavli Dvir, because in recent years the legislative checks and balances that should be in place on the government are ineffective.

An emotional need for control

Meanwhile, Mr. Ben-Gvir’s detractors say he continues to behave like a bull in a china shop without paying a price.

Professor Uriel Abulof, a political scientist at Tel Aviv University, says that someday, to get the nation back on track, Israel’s civil society will have to come together and “think bravely” about the way forward.

But in the meantime, he explains, what Mr. Ben-Gvir is tapping into is emotional.

It “is something that goes to the heart of the human condition ... control,” says Professor Abulof. “Israelis have been feeling for years now that they don’t have a say; they don’t have control over whatever is happening to them, personally, to their families, to the world around them. Everything seems to be shaken, uncertain, sometimes falling apart.”

What Mr. Ben-Gvir is effectively promising, he says, through the handing out of firearms, for example, is a “shortcut to a sense of security and control.”

To keep his coalition together, Mr. Netanyahu “has to please Ben-Gvir in all the various ways that Ben-Gvir increasingly demands, and he does,” says Professor Abulof. “As long as Netanyahu can keep his coalition, he will do whatever it takes.”