Ben-Gvir Derangement Syndrome

Everyone is familiar with “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Many Israelis also speak of “Bibi Derangement Syndrome.” Whether one agrees with those labels or not, they describe a political phenomenon in which an individual becomes so polarizing that every action, statement or policy is interpreted through the assumption that he is uniquely evil.

But when it comes to Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s minister of national security since 2022, virtually no one recognizes the same dynamic is at work. Instead, he is routinely portrayed as beyond the pale—a politician so morally radioactive that mainstream American Jewish organizations and Western governments refuse to meet him, groups boycott him, and even many Jews treat him as untouchable.

Ben-Gvir has been shunned diplomatically and portrayed in much of the international press as if he were the principal obstacle to peace in the Middle East.

Yet when pressed to explain what distinguishes him from worldwide controversial leaders, past and present, who are nevertheless historically venerated, or welcomed in establishment American Jewish circles and European capitals, the indictment often becomes surprisingly inconsistent.

His youthful admiration for ultra-nationalist politician Rabbi Meir Kahane is cited repeatedly as proof of his permanent disqualification from respectable political life. Ben-Gvir himself has acknowledged that aspects of his earlier views have evolved, and he removed the portrait of Kahane that once hung in his home years ago.

Indeed, Western politics is filled with figures whose youthful associations or mentors are quietly forgotten. John Quincy Adams, for example, once described Jews as “wretched creatures” and claimed that “they would steal your eyes out of your head if they possibly could.”

U.S. President Donald Trump openly admired Roy Cohn, the ruthless attorney closely associated with Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist crusades. No less than the venerated Democratic politician and lawyer Bobby Kennedy worked for McCarthy alongside Cohn.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called the Japanese “Nips” and “Japs.” Did that send him to the dustbin of history? 

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan calls Jews “Satanic” and Judaism a “gutter religion,” joking that he is not an antisemite but an “anti-termite.” Did that stop former President Bill Clinton from sitting next to him in the front row at musician Aretha Franklin’s funeral in 2018? Political commentator and podcaster Tucker Carlson accused Jews of deicide at a memorial for Charlie Kirk in September 2025, the slain conservative leader of Turning Point USA. Was he banned from France?

Ben-Gvir’s chiding of Gaza flotilla invaders, who were lawfully interdicted and detained by the Israeli Navy, led to him being banned by the French government, which, by the way, has remained silent regarding the Houston and Minneapolis ICE civilian killings.

Trump has made countless inflammatory remarks during his political career. He has insulted opponents, ridiculed disabled journalists and employed rhetoric that many Americans find offensive. Nevertheless, virtually every world leader recognizes that diplomacy requires engagement.

By contrast, Ben-Gvir declares that a Palestinian state would pose an existential danger to Israel after decades of relentless terrorism and the atrocities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and he is often treated as though expressing that position places him outside civilized discourse.

Whether one agrees with him or not, opposing Palestinian statehood is a political position, not a crime.

Syria’s current leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa—formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani— butchered his way through organizations linked to jihadist movements before leading Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Despite that history, governments have shown increasing willingness to engage with him diplomatically as geopolitical realities have changed; witness French President Emmanuel Macron schlepping to Damascus to kiss his ring.

Contrast that willingness to overlook a violent militant past with the continuing ostracism of Ben-Gvir. The glaring double standard is impossible to ignore.

But didn’t Ben-Gvir say that Arabs should be thrown out of Israel? No, he said that convicted Arab terrorists should be, just as illegal thugs are deported from America. Has everybody forgotten the internment of Japanese Americans on the U.S. West Coast during World War II? Did that place FDR beyond the pale historically?

It cannot be that Ben-Gvir just has a controversial past. Many elected leaders do. Nor can it simply be that he employs edgy rhetoric; modern-day politics is replete with leaders using provocative language.

The real distinction is that Ben-Gvir is a Jewish nationalist who unapologetically places Israeli security above international approval.

Like Trump’s “America First,” Ben-Gvir advocates “Israel First.” He argues that the primary duty of any Israeli government is to protect its population, even if doing so invites international criticism. Nationalism is hardly unique to Israel; a democratic nation can expect its leaders to prioritize the interests of their own citizens.

Ben-Gvir spent years warning that Israel fundamentally misunderstood the intentions and capabilities of Hamas and other terrorist organizations. While much of Israel’s political and security establishment accepted what became known as the “conceptzia”—the assumption that Hamas had been effectively deterred—he consistently argued that Israel faced an existential threat requiring decisive action. The catastrophe of Oct. 7 dramatically undermined confidence in many of those long-held assumptions and proved him right.

One may conclude that some of Ben-Gvir’s proposed remedies are too severe. One may oppose his policies, his rhetoric or even his political philosophy. That is entirely legitimate. But what is utterly unacceptable is treating him as uniquely beyond the boundaries of acceptable political discourse while extending diplomatic legitimacy to leaders with histories involving murderous violence on a vastly greater scale.

Critics insist that this one man represents a singular danger to democracy. His supporters see something different: a politician willing to articulate uncomfortable truths about radical Islamist terrorism, Israeli security and the persistent refusal of any Palestinian faction to accept the permanence of the Jewish state.

The melodramatic, pearl-clutching Ben-Gvir Derangement Syndrome is as perfect an example of the epistemological Jew-hating bubble sweeping the West, so aptly described by David Samuels in a July 8 Tablet article. It is hypocrisy at hand, where Israeli politicians are expected to satisfy standards of moral perfection that virtually no other nation’s leaders are required to meet.

Paradoxically, Zionism has succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. Just imagine if Theodor Herzl could see what we Zionists have wrought! But these days, Israel has become the scorned Jewish state among Western and Muslim nations, and Ben-Gvir has become the bête noire they love to hate.

Whether one calls it hypocrisy or selective outrage, the result is the same: Ben-Gvir is judged by rules that remarkably few others are expected to obey. It is blatant antisemitism masquerading as moral clarity.

It is the same delusional refusal to see the Palestinians’ Jew-hating irredentism as being an immovable object, demanding a robust Israeli military response for the foreseeable future—until the Arab and Muslim world forsakes jihadist obscurantist life for a life based on democracy and human rights.