I tried for two days not to comment on National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and his Otzma Yehudit party’s golden noose pin. I’ve finally cracked.
Everyone knows why a bride walks under her wedding canopy, and yet no one says so out loud. Everyone knows that to carry out an execution you need gallows, and yet a reasonable person would not wear a hangman’s noose on his lapel. This is why the Israel Defense Forces—unlike certain German armies of years gone by—does not put skull emblems on its uniforms, even though the IDF is responsible for quite a few Hamas corpses.
The Minister of Environmental Protection wouldn’t wear a golden toilet bowl even if she was responsible for public restrooms, just as the emergency response organization ZAKA’s emblem is not body bags.
When Nazi Adolf Eichmann was executed in 1962, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion wanted the death penalty imposed—and yet, old-fashioned as he was, he didn’t walk around with Ben Gvir’s pin. A weak leftist, clearly.
Beyond the bad taste, beyond the enormous harm to Israel’s image when a member of the coalition wears such an emblem, it reflects a misunderstanding. Someone here has gravely confused the means with the end. The death penalty is a means; protecting Jewish lives is the end. Or maybe, actually, for Ben Gvir, the end is increasing his Facebook likes?
This is an excerpt from my Shabbat column in Israel Hayom.
