Ben-Gvir, Israel’s Conveyor Belt Candidate

Late last month, Itamar Ben-Gvir posted an AI-generated clip on X showing rows of numbered men in brown prison uniforms riding a conveyor belt into a fenced compound surrounded by watchtowers. They enter well-fed and emerge thinner and visibly distressed. The caption reads, “We promised. We delivered.”

CNN reported that the video passed four million views before it disappeared. The removal followed widespread condemnation of its dehumanising imagery, although Ben-Gvir’s office has not explained the decision.

Posted weeks before Israel’s election on 27 October, the video turns the mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners into a campaign promise. It will be Israel’s first national vote since 7 October 2023, giving voters their first opportunity to judge the government’s conduct through the wars that followed. With final candidate lists due on 8 September, Ben-Gvir and his rivals on the right are competing for the alliances and votes that could determine their political survival. Watch an archived repost on X.

VIDEO: An AI-generated campaign video posted by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir depicts numbered Palestinian prisoners moving along an industrial conveyor belt into a fortified detention complex and emerging visibly emaciated. Ben-Gvir later deleted the post.

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has deleted his video depicting kidnapped Palestinians being sent into an industrialized slaughterhouse. pic.twitter.com/4xUCnyqqae

— gato fumante (@KweenInYellow) August 31, 2026

A Kan poll published on 30 August projected 21 seats for Netanyahu’s Likud, down three since the beginning of the month. Netanyahu has since pressed the parties to his right to run together to prevent their votes from being wasted. Ben-Gvir has refused, accusing Netanyahu of planning to double-cross the smaller parties.

Ben-Gvir’s authority over Israel’s police and prison system gives his campaign message a material edge. On 30 August, he published footage from the women’s section of Damon Prison. Speaking through an interpreter, detainees told him they had gone three days without washing and were being denied medical care and clean clothing.

“The good conditions in the prisons are over,” Ben-Gvir replied. “I am directly responsible for everything. I am pleased with these conditions.”

VIDEO: An English-language report incorporating footage of Ben-Gvir’s visit to the women’s wing of Damon Prison. (Source: Hindustan Times)

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Since then, Ben-Gvir has not withdrawn his remarks. In the Hebrew post accompanying the footage, he dismissed the prisoners’ complaints and said Israeli hostages in Gaza had received “no conditions at all.” He promised to maintain what he called “the minimum of the minimum.”

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club described the filming and publication of the women as a direct attack on their dignity. Two weeks earlier, the organisation had documented inadequate hygiene, clothing shortages and denial of medical care among women held at Damon Prison. In a March report to the UN Human Rights Council, Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese wrote that torture had become state doctrine in Israel and described its prison system as “a laboratory” sustained by decades of impunity. Israel rejects her mandate and findings.

On 16 August, comments surfaced from a podcast recorded with former hostage Rom Braslavski. Ben-Gvir said Israel should carry out targeted killings of “30 to 40” people in Gaza each night. There were people there, he added, who “do not deserve to live.” Germany, France and the United Nations condemned the remarks.

Two days later he toured a gallows under construction. He described planned observation booths for victims’ families and cited the United States as a precedent for capital punishment. “We are making history,” he said.

Ben-Gvir had already tested the boundary between government authority and election campaigning. In June, he circulated a 38-second video filmed at an Ashdod Port detention facility. It showed him waving an Israeli flag among bound activists intercepted aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla. Central Elections Committee chairman and Supreme Court Deputy President Noam Sohlberg ruled that the video was unlawful election propaganda produced with public resources.

Sohlberg ordered its removal and imposed NIS 23,000 in costs. Ben-Gvir was required to pay NIS 8,000, while his ministry and the Israel Prison Service were ordered to pay the remaining NIS 15,000 jointly. The decision followed a petition by the Movement for Quality Government. Ben-Gvir removed the video within hours and made no public statement. In August, his party was also ordered to obscure the faces of police officers appearing in another campaign video.

The scrutiny has followed him abroad, although its consequences remain limited. France barred Ben-Gvir from entering the country in May over the flotilla footage. Ireland imposed a travel ban the following month, and Italy opened an investigation. Ben-Gvir later cancelled a private trip to the United States after the US embassy required him to appear in person for fingerprinting. He also withdrew from a UN police chiefs’ summit in New York in July as rights groups sought criminal proceedings against him.

In addition, three Democratic senators asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to declare Ben-Gvir ineligible for a US visa. However, the administration did not act against him; instead, in August, it sanctioned the president of the International Criminal Court and a prosecutor examining alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

The Kan News poll projected seven seats for Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit, down from nine in the previous survey. Retired brigadier general Ofer Winter is competing for the same voters through his new party, Amcha Yisrael. At its launch, Winter ruled out a Palestinian state and called emigration the only solution for Gaza.

Bezalel Smotrich is competing for the same electorate. His “Yes. Let’s Judaize!” plan proposes moving another million Jewish residents into the Negev and Galilee and establishing about 40 new communities. His Religious Zionism party remains close to the 3.25 percent electoral threshold.

Parties that fall below the threshold are excluded from the Knesset, leaving every faction on the right fighting for visibility and every available vote. Ben-Gvir has chosen to wage that fight by turning the deliberate humiliation and deprivation of Palestinian prisoners into campaign material, presenting their suffering not as an incidental consequence of his policies, but as evidence to voters that those policies are working.

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Source: https://21stcenturywire.com/2026/09/02/ben-gvir-israels-conveyor-belt-candidate/