Ben Gvir Ashdod video draws global condemnation, Netanyahu publicly rebukes minister
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir published a video mocking activists from the Gaza flotilla, triggering international condemnation and the first public rebuke from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of his coalition partner.
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir posted a video on his social media accounts on Wednesday 20 May, mocking bound activists from the Gaza flotilla, which Israeli forces had intercepted in international waters.
The footage shows dozens of restrained activists kneeling in the port of Ashdod. Ben Gvir waves an Israeli flag and shouts in Hebrew:
Welcome to Israel, we are in charge here.
In the background the Israeli anthem plays over loudspeakers as the camera pans across the bound activists. After a seven-day diplomatic crisis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday 27 May for the first time publicly rebuked his coalition partner, saying the minister’s conduct “is not in line with Israel’s values and norms”.
For Serbia, which had no nationals among the flotilla activists at Ashdod but maintains continuous diplomatic ties with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the crisis opens room for new pressure inside the EU on the common foreign policy. Belgrade remained at 64 percent alignment with the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy through 2026, and this case shows how hard Brussels finds it to produce a joint signal towards Tel Aviv even when there is consensus that a minister’s behaviour is unacceptable.
Italy and Spain, whose citizens were among the activists, were the first to summon the Israeli ambassadors. Italy’s Foreign Ministry, through Minister Antonio Tajani, summoned Ambassador Ester Gariel on Friday morning, while Spanish Foreign Minister Maria Carena Pichar summoned Ambassador Dan Poyaner on Tuesday. Canada, Portugal, France, Ireland and Turkey followed with public diplomatic demarches.
Three concrete consequences for Israeli diplomacy
The first, as officials in Tel Aviv describe it, is “the breaking of the Hasbara machine”, Israel’s strategic public communication system. The system carried a 150 million dollar budget in 2026 but lost much of its argumentative capacity on the European stage after the Ben Gvir video.
The second is that Brussels, through High Representative Kaja Kallas, on Tuesday announced it was considering suspending elements of the EU Association Agreement with Israel. Until now this had been a rhetorical threat only.
The third is the public rebuke from Netanyahu, who for the first time publicly distanced himself from a coalition partner he had brought back into the government in February 2025 after an eight-month rift.
Tel Aviv media, particularly Haaretz, Times of Israel and N12, report that the public rebuke was in part a response to pressure from the White House. National security adviser Hered Hegset on Tuesday expressed “dissatisfaction” with the tone of the Ben Gvir video in a conversation with his Israeli counterpart Yisrael Katz. Yet Washington did not summon Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, a signal that the public criticism was carefully calibrated and did not alter the strategic relationship.
Special envoy heads to Tel Aviv
Special envoy for Gaza Steve Witkoff, who had been negotiating with Iranian partners a week earlier, arrives in Tel Aviv on Friday 30 May for an unscheduled meeting with Netanyahu. The subject, according to a State Department briefing on Thursday, is “restoring implementation of the October 2025 ceasefire and preventing further incidents that endanger regional processes”.
Washington, which has already invested significant diplomatic capital in the nuclear talks with Iran, does not want a parallel crisis with its European partners over Israel at a moment when those partners are due to finance the Ukrainian air defence package.
Belgrade is monitoring the situation through its embassy in Tel Aviv but officially remains at the position formulated in May 2024. The Foreign Ministry has not issued a specific demarche on the Ben Gvir video, holding to the carefully calibrated neutrality that has marked Serbian foreign policy on Middle East crises over the past two years.
Does this video change your view of what the Israeli government is signalling to its European partners in 2026, or is this an isolated incident involving one minister?
