“Now that President Trump is urging us to act differently, inaction is a historic mistake”

Photos: Flash90

IF you’d told former national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir when he resigned from the government at the start of Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas that, a month later, he’d be outflanked from the right by none other than the president of the United States, you’d probably have been flagged as ineligible to own a firearm for mental health reasons.

But that’s exactly what happened two weeks ago, with Donald Trump advising Netanyahu to demand the release of all the hostages by noon that Shabbos or Hamas would feel the full force of Israel’s wrath. Instead, Netanyahu opted to stick to the original plan to keep the hostage releases on track — a decision that opened Bibi to a firestorm of criticism from the right.

Trump’s comments surprised even Ben-Gvir, but what didn’t surprise him was Netanyahu’s reaction, which he took as proof that he was right to resign from the government. Nor was Ben-Gvir surprised by Hamas’s grotesque cynicism in releasing the bodies of the murdered Bibas children without their mother, nor by the explosive charges found on several buses in Bat Yam.

“What did we expect?” he asked me. “If we don’t change our perspective immediately and start fighting these modern-day Nazis instead of making deals with them, who knows where things will come to? Because my default assumption is that in the Middle East, surrender to terror only digs you into a deeper hole.”

Speaking of Nazis, though, all of us can see the state in which the hostages are returning. President Trump compared them to Muselmänner from the Holocaust. If we’d listened to you, and we hadn’t agreed quickly to a deal, the hostages couldn’t have survived.

On the contrary, if we’d listened to me, they would all be home by now! If we hadn’t made a deal with Hitler and brought everything to a halt, I can tell you, as someone who was a member of the security cabinet at the time, Hamas wouldn’t have survived, and that’s no secret. There were moments when they were out of oxygen.

Whose fault is that, given that the previous administration conditioned military and political support on the delivery of humanitarian aid?

You know what? I’m with you. That was the excuse. I was told that Gantz, Eisenkot, and Gallant were stalling the process, but the main argument was “Biden, Biden, Biden.” The problem is that the excuses have run out. Biden’s no longer in the White House, and Gantz, Eisenkot, and Gallant are no longer in the government. The current US president greenlighted us for ideas that got me called messianic and delusional. How can Israel let this opportunity pass by?

The political officials respond: We have an open check from President Trump. Let’s bring back the hostages and then cash the check.

How foolish it is to think that the proposal will wait for us until we decide to accept it at some moment in the future. We’re not up against suckers. You can call Hamas many things, Nazis, terrorists, scum — but stupid they aren’t. They won’t give back all the hostages and wait around for you to topple their regime, it doesn’t work that way.

We tried that for over a year in Gaza, and the hostages didn’t return.

That is absolutely incorrect. We didn’t try to run out their fuel supplies. We didn’t try to stop their “humanitarian aid.” Shamefully, I was the only one in the cabinet who opposed the transfer of humanitarian aid throughout the war. At the time, they told me that President Biden had demanded it. Well, now that President Trump is urging us to act differently, inaction is a historic mistake.

Do you think the government wants to bring down Hamas less than you do? They have a responsibility and they understand that if go full bore against Hamas, the hostages won’t come back alive. Is their safety not a goal for you?

Why are you taking it there? I think the two goals can and should coexist. But when you surrender to terror and make weak deals, you invite Hamas to hold on to the hostages. When you strive for total victory, and strike the enemy without any concessions or aid, you have a chance to bring Hamas to its knees and bring everyone back. I saw the terrorists in the prisons, and I saw what they’re made of. Believe me, they’re not that brave.

Let’s talk about your potential return to the government. The attorney general says even if you return, you can’t serve as national security minister.

The problem isn’t what the attorney general says, it’s the fact that she’s still there. That’s one of this government’s main stumbling blocks.

And by the way, about that, where does this passivity come from? I have no explanation for it. Do you remember what they said a month ago? They said that Itamar Ben-Gvir was politicizing the dismissal of the attorney general, and that it was a conflict of interest because his associates are under investigation. So here you go, I’ve been out of the government for weeks. Has anything been done?

Maybe soon. This week we heard Yariv Levin saying, first we’ll deal with the judicial appointments issue, and then we’ll begin the process of dismissing the attorney general.

So Levin says... On this issue, my criticism applies to the entire government. She should have been fired two years ago. Every minute she remains in office is on the government and no one else.

By the way, I told my government colleagues at the time that she would thwart us at every turn, that if we didn’t fire her, she would fire us. And that’s what she’s doing — she’s going after Sara Netanyahu, the new civil service commissioner, and everyone she can. That’s the essence of her job.

Your record isn’t perfect either. After all, we see how violence in the Arab sector is breaking records, and that’s your failure.

Not everything is perfect. But even there, I must say that two days ago I saw a video of police officers breaking up a wedding in the Arab sector after shots were fired. You didn’t see images like that before my tenure.

You’re right, the police are still very far from perfect when it comes to crime in the Arab sector, but you can’t ignore what I did achieve. Crime has decreased in the Jewish sector, and there’s been a massive growth in kitot konenut [local security teams] in settlements and border yishuvim.

When I entered office, there were 43 kitot konenut in the entire country, and today there are 1,700. When I entered office, on average 8,000 firearm licenses were issued a year, and Minister Barlev called that too high. This past year, 200,000 licenses were issued. Before my tenure, the average response time for a terrorist attack was five and a half minutes; the average today is 43 seconds. And then of course, there’s the prison reform that I talked about. As for the crime in the Arab sector, I do have a plan. I just hope the attorney general is fired so we can implement it.

Without naming names, a former minister from your party told me that you recently received a direct message from President Trump’s circle. What can you tell us, as someone who until yesterday was a persona non grata in the Democratic administration?

I won’t say a word about it. What I can say is that I was the first government minister to publicly support Trump a year ago — when no one wanted to be identified with him — and I said Trump is much better than Biden. And to your question, my only answer is this: Things have changed at every level.

Let’s talk about the public demand for a state commission of inquiry. While you share in the collective responsibility as a minister, no one can accuse you of being part of the conceptzia [the security establishment’s flawed assessment that Hamas was deterred before October 7]. So I’m asking you, isn’t it time for a commission? Maybe on this, you’ll vote with the opposition in the Knesset.

Not only was I not part of the conceptzia, but the police, which I was in charge of, was the only security body that functioned well on October 7. No one denies that the police, which they called Ben-Gvir’s police force, did its job faithfully.

Still, I oppose a state commission of inquiry for one reason: In my opinion, the failures that led to October 7 run deep and involve the judicial system as well, so a judge can’t lead the committee.

Are you looking for scapegoats again? Were High Court justices responsible for the army? Are they the ones who led the concept of building up and financing Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority?

Yes. They’re connected to the conceptzia. And how. They need to be investigated too.

I’ll remind you of various High Court rulings regarding the security fence, the neighbor procedure and the knock-on-the-roof procedure [protocols the IDF uses to reduce risk to civilians when they apprehend or attack terrorists], and so on. The High Court has an unequivocal role in this, so we need to find an objective party who didn’t hold office, and who can investigate everyone, from top to bottom, from the officers and ministers to the judges.

One question on the draft law. If you’re still outside the coalition when the legislation is brought to a vote in the plenum, will you automatically oppose any draft law that the coalition advances?

I don’t change my opinions, I go with my principles and my truth. I don’t know at this stage what law they’ll present, but my principles are clear, and in my case, there’s no difference between what I say to the chareidi public and the general public.

On the one hand, the value of service, especially in times of war, is a noble one, without which we couldn’t live here, and I speak as a father whose son currently serves in the Sayeret. On the other hand, the chareidim are our brothers. We must stop inciting against them and treat them as our brothers, and of course we must cherish the great value of Torah study that the chareidi public celebrates, and which is also precious in my eyes. If they bring a law that integrates these values and strikes an appropriate balance, the political situation won’t affect our vote.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1051)