I thought long and hard before sharing this video. But it must be seen, because it shows, without euphemism or disguise, who the far-right terrorists in Israel are and how they wield humiliation as a weapon of occupation. This is not security. It is political theatre, choreographed cruelty, and a message broadcast to the world.
Extremist Itamar Ben Gvir did not simply walk into a prison cell; he walked into a stage set. The far-right Israeli national security minister, flanked by a guard and an aide, confronted Marwan Barghouti (the most high-profile Palestinian prisoner in Israeli custody) not for security reasons, but for the camera. The clip, published to his own social media account, is not an act of justice but a performance of dominance, a microcosm of the political order Ben Gvir embodies.
This is not an isolated act of cruelty. It is part of a structural logic: occupation requires constant renewal of its own mythology. The oppressor must be seen to humiliate, to interrupt, to deny even the smallest space for the other’s voice. Ben Gvir’s refusal to let Barghouti speak is not incidental; it is the point. The prison cell becomes a miniature Palestine, the minister a walking embodiment of the state’s prerogative to silence.
The script is as old as colonial rule. First, criminalise resistance. Second, strip it of political content. Third, present the captive as the eternal enemy (“whoever kills children, whoever kills women” ) while effacing the daily violence that underpins the occupier’s control. By reducing Barghouti to a caricature in a corner, Ben Gvir seeks to overwrite the fact that he is also a political leader with significant support across Palestinian society.
A dialectical view reveals the contradiction: Israel calls itself a democracy while using spectacle to dehumanise the colonised. It speaks the language of security while deploying the theatre of intimidation. The prison visit is not about protecting Israeli civilians; it is about producing a narrative in which Palestinians can never be political subjects, only objects of control.
The video is also a message to two audiences. To the extremist far-right base, it says: the minister is unafraid to confront “the enemy” directly. To the Palestinians, it says: even your most prominent leaders can be cornered and mocked. This is settler-colonial power in its most distilled form. A performance meant to both rally the settler public and demoralise the colonised.
Ben Gvir’s conduct should be condemned not simply as the act of a single extremist minister, but as an expression of state policy. The occupation thrives on these staged humiliations because they reinforce the racial hierarchy on which it depends. It is a politics of degradation, and the degradation is the point.
Any state that claims moral authority should condemn this act. To remain silent is to endorse the spectacle, to nod along as the theatre of occupation plays on, cell by cell, until the audience forgets it is watching a crime.
