The Rise of Itamar Ben-Gvir
The Kahanist who embodies the fears and drives roiling beneath the shiny surface of the Start-up Nation is now only an election away from real political power. Will it change him?
Israel’s popular Eretz Nehederet television show depicts the far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir with eyes that explode out of his forehead, straining into the demented full hemispheres of a cartoon character or a serial killer. That the leader of the potentially third-largest party in Israel’s Knesset is a dangerous lunatic is already obvious to most viewers of the show, the country’s Saturday Night Live-like outlet for giving comedic form to establishment orthodoxies. The true contribution of the widely viewed Sept. 21 sketch is its suggestion that Ben-Gvir is not just insane, but campy.









