After public rebukes of Ben-Gvir’s taunting of the predominantly European activists by the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada – and even Israel’s foremost allies in the US – Netanyahu understood the deep damage this was doing to Israel’s public relations image, and described the spectacle as “not in line with Israel’s values and norms”.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar went further, releasing a statement accusing his fellow cabinet minister of knowingly causing harm to the state of Israel and claiming that Ben-Gvir was “not the face of Israel”.

It is a sentiment echoed by many Israeli media outlets, eager to separate the minister from the Israeli state and government, yet it appears evident that the opposite is true, and Ben-Gvir is the face of an increasingly dominant section of Israeli society.

Performative backlash by Europe and elsewhere against Ben-Givir is worse than useless as it implicitly suggests Ben-Givir is not carrying out the explicit aims of a dominant political coalition of Israelis when he most certainly is.