A gallows instead of a Star of David: this is how Israel is losing its moral advantage

Itamar Ben Gvir is a paper tiger. His roar is heard from afar, but his jaws are those of a kitten. At the same time, he is proof that in the Israeli reality of 2026, even a nobody of his type can cause enormous damage to Israel's standing.

The latest gimmick from the minister's office — after an imaginary crocodile devoured his colleague Idit Silman in the Likud primaries (right after she "launched" with him the first water canal around the prison walls) — is an announcement regarding the start of work to build an execution facility.

A moment of spoiler, because this series will not have another season: the only thing that is going to be executed in Ben Gvir's facility is what remains of Israel's international standing, once an empire of knowledge, a "start-up nation," and today shunned in almost every point on the globe. Why? Because as usual with Ben Gvir, the boastful words, like those he released to the press yesterday, are accompanied by zero ability to execute (and at least in this case, we will add: "and thank goodness for that").

We will return to Ben Gvir shortly, between a crocodile and a noose, but first a childhood memory from the late seventies: when we visited the gallows room in Acre prison, where the underground prisoners, heroes of Israel's independence, were hanged, the teacher explained to us that in such a place one can understand the phrase "a chosen people."

How so? "With us in Israel," he continued, "there are no gallows, not in the squares and not in the dark."

The reference was clear: not only to Dov Gruner, Mordechai Alkahi, Yehiel Dresner, Eliezer Kashani, Shlomo Ben-Yosef, and the other martyrs of our time, but also to Eli Cohen, our man in Damascus. Meaning: we are better than the enemy, because the secret of our strength is not only in effective and modern weapons, but also — and mainly — stems from a moral advantage. Yes, once they taught the children of Israel this way.

I ask the martyrs for forgiveness for mentioning their memory in the same breath as the exploits of Itamar Ben Gvir, who with every passing day that he is called a "minister" in Israel only deepens the moral stain that has stuck to us. As someone who claims to be an authentic representative of the new Israeli right, he disgraces their memory even more with every stupid gimmick he releases to the media.

His office, which issued the announcement last night, did not report only on the gallows itself, but also on the construction of a gallery from which they will be able to watch the executions.

At first, indeed, only the families of the murdered, later — who knows, maybe tickets will also be sold to the general public, with their price determined by the proximity to the rope, maybe there will also be a subscription that will allow viewing all the executions of that season.

On one thing, you will be surprised, I have no argument even with the Israelis who support, to my shame, the Jewish racist whose power is only in words: murderers deserve the torments of hell, worse even than hanging.

Those who went out to burn babies on their parents in the Western Negev settlements on October 7 (as well as, of course, in murderous attacks that occurred before and after this defining date) deserve a retribution than which there is nothing more terrible.

Only here the agreement ends: one side tries to prevent the next murder, among other things by striving to win the war. The other side speaks highly of war, but in his personal resume there is not even one day of service in the IDF.

It is possible to return to the purely declarative legislation (even if they build ten gallows across Israel) and mention that it is also racist — he would not have executed Baruch Goldstein, an admired figure in the minister's house (had he survived the massacre he committed), meaning — it is a hanging room for Arabs only, but Ben Gvir does not deserve even this substantive treatment.

One could dismiss the whole matter as another pathetic gimmick from the school of the one who degraded personal security throughout Israel, during whose tenure there was a dramatic worsening in property crimes, protection rackets, and traffic accidents, if not for the enormous damage caused to the State of Israel.

While the state's official envoys explain the killing in Gaza as a war of no choice against a murderous terrorist organization whose people hide among civilians, Ben Gvir walks around, the exaltation of killing in his throat, handing out golden pins in the shape of nooses, digging a symbolic section of a water canal in which crocodiles will swarm (only in his imagination, of course), and laying the cornerstone for an execution facility — the only thing that will breathe its last in it will be Jewish morality.

It is impossible to summarize the saga without a few words about the one who enabled the abomination, the Prime Minister who promised on every stage to uphold the legacy of Begin that no stain of dark racism would stick to the ideological right. Yes, this refers to Benjamin Netanyahu, who solemnly declared that Ben Gvir would never be a minister in his government.

He is a full partner in this moral and two-stage crime: first, the Jewish symbol in the form of a Star of David, in the center of the flag of the State of Israel, was stained by the bullying fist of "Kach" — and today it is being replaced by a noose.