Israel spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year telling the world a story. Itamar Ben-Gvir blew it up in a single video.
On May 20, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister posted footage to X showing humanitarian activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla kneeling on the floor at the Port of Ashdod. They were blindfolded. Their hands were bound. Ben-Gvir stood over them and gloated.
The video did exactly what Israel’s multimillion-dollar public relations apparatus is designed to prevent. It showed the world the truth.
What Actually Happened
Israeli naval forces intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters off the coast of Cyprus. The vessels were carrying humanitarian aid bound for Gaza, attempting to break Israel’s siege. Israeli forces abducted 430 participants and brought them to the Port of Ashdod against their will.
At least 87 of those activists are now on hunger strike. They are striking in solidarity with the more than 9,500 Palestinian prisoners currently held in Israeli jails.
Then Ben-Gvir showed up with a camera. (Warning: Some people may find the treatment of these activists difficult to watch.)
The footage of bound, blindfolded activists being dragged across the floor triggered immediate international condemnation. Italy, France, the Netherlands, Canada, and Spain all summoned Israeli ambassadors. They used the word “unacceptable.” They invoked human dignity.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the rapid deportation of the activists. Damage control mode.
The Hasbara Problem
For decades, Israel has run a coordinated propaganda operation called Hasbara. The Hebrew word translates to “explanation.” In practice, it means tailoring different narratives for different audiences to justify Israeli policy and military action against Palestinians.
Fathi Nimer, a Palestine policy fellow at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, told Al Jazeera that Hasbara exists to “beautify the image of the occupation.”
The foundational premise, Nimer said, is that Israel is always right and the world simply doesn’t understand.
The budget tells you everything. Israel’s Hasbara spending was roughly $15 million in 2023. In 2026, it was increased to $730 million. You don’t spend that kind of money when your story is selling itself.
You spend it when the truth keeps leaking out.
Ben-Gvir’s video was the leak. And it bypassed every carefully crafted talking point, every think tank report, every embedded journalist, every social media campaign Israel had paid for.
“The Israeli leadership is treating this as a public relations crisis, not a moral one,” Nimer said. “For Netanyahu, the sin was not the torture or humiliation of the activists; the sin was broadcasting it to the world.”
That distinction matters. Netanyahu is not upset that bound civilians were paraded on the floor. He is upset that you saw it.
The American Double Standard
The US response made the contradictions impossible to ignore.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee criticized Ben-Gvir, saying the minister had “betrayed the dignity of his nation.” The condemnation focused entirely on the broadcast.
Not the abduction in international waters. Not the binding and blindfolding. Not the treatment of civilians who were trying to deliver food.
The dignity of the broadcast. That was the concern.
One day earlier, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on four organizers of the Global Sumud Flotilla.
Let me repeat that: The United States punished groups attempting to deliver food and humanitarian aid to people being starved to death. Those damn “terrorists.” Are we in the Upside Down right now?
The Trump administration labeled the humanitarian mission a “pro-terror flotilla.” The sanctions targeted activists from the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad and Samidoun, the Palestinian prisoners’ solidarity network.
So this is the official US position: people who try to deliver food to starving Palestinians are pro-terror and get sanctioned.
An Israeli minister who taunts bound civilians on camera gets a sternly worded statement about national dignity.
Meanwhile, the same administration has lifted sanctions on violent Israeli settlers and continues to shield far-right Israeli officials from any meaningful accountability.
The International Criminal Court prosecutors investigating Israeli leaders? Sanctioned. Palestinian civil society groups documenting abuses? Sanctioned. Ben-Gvir? Statement.
What the Activists Saw, Palestinians Live
Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, called the treatment of the flotilla activists a “microcosm” of what Palestinian prisoners endure every day.
“This scene expresses the fascism of the entire Israeli government, not just Ben-Gvir,” Barghouti said. “If the government genuinely opposed these practices, they would have fired him immediately.”
They did not fire him.
Human rights groups estimate nearly 100 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since October 2023. The documented conditions include starvation, severe beatings, and medical neglect.
The activists got blindfolds and a viral video. Palestinian prisoners get something far worse, and almost no one with a camera.
That asymmetry is the entire point of the flotilla movement, which began in 2009 in response to Israel’s land, sea, and air blockade of Gaza. The point was never just delivering aid. The point was forcing the world to see what Israel does to anyone who tries.
Mtanes Shehadeh, an academic and expert on Israeli affairs, said: “It provided the globe with live, irrefutable evidence that structural violence and a disregard for human rights are foundational to the current Israeli establishment.”
The Limits of the Hammer
Nimer reached for an old psychology quote to describe Israel’s response to dissent. Abraham Maslow once observed that if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
“This is the only way the Israeli military knows how to act,” Nimer said. “Through brute force and piracy.”
Hasbara existed to make that brutality palatable for global consumption. To convince European audiences and American suburbanites that the bombing of Gaza, the siege, the settlements, the prison conditions, the international waters abductions, were all reasonable responses to existential threat.
That machine just hit a wall. The wall was Itamar Ben-Gvir’s phone.
Luisa Morgantini, former vice president of the European Parliament, said the standard diplomatic response of summoning ambassadors is not enough. She called on European nations to suspend their association agreements with Israel, halt arms sales, and actively back the ICC’s arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.
“It is a shame how our governments have behaved,” Morgantini said. “They are complicit.”
She is right. Summoning an ambassador is theater. It costs nothing.
The Israeli government understands perfectly well that the consequences for abducting 430 humanitarian activists in international waters will amount to a few uncomfortable meetings and some firm statements.
Then everyone goes back to business.
Until the next video.
The flotilla campaigns have always been about accumulating small victories. Each one chips away at the propaganda.
Each one forces the question that Hasbara was built to suppress: if Israel’s actions are defensible, why does Israel work so hard to keep you from seeing them?
Ben-Gvir gave the answer. He showed you. And no amount of money can un-show it.
