Zeynep ConkarIt began, as so much does in Israeli politics, with a video. This week, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted footage of himself at Ashdod Port, forcing down the head of a bound Gaza flotilla activist after she said "Free, free Palestine," shouting in Hebrew "Shut up!" into her face.
The clip prompted a round of public hand-wringing from Israeli officials. Israel's ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, aligned himself with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar, declaring that Ben-Gvir's "reckless grandstanding is not representative of government policy."
But it has always been ‘grandstanding’ by the Zionists when it comes to Palestinians. By Netanyahu. And by all others in his hyper-nationalistic government.
Netanyahu had told the High Court of Justice that he outright opposed any petition to remove Ben-Gvir, calling such efforts "an unconstitutional attempt to remove a minister".
The two men are inseparable, and the international legal system is now treating them accordingly.
This week, the prosecutor's office at the International Criminal Court in The Hague has reportedly submitted secret warrant requests against Ben-Gvir as well as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
For Smotrich, the charges reportedly include "forcible transfer of population," the "transfer of Israeli population to an occupied territory," as well as "persecution" and "apartheid."
For Ben-Gvir, a separate hearing reportedly examined the possibility of a warrant request, with proceedings understood to be at an earlier stage. If the warrants are confirmed, it would be the first ever issued by an international court for the crime of apartheid.
TRT World reached out to the ICC press office for comment. The response was notable for what it did not say.
The ICC's Office of the Prosecutor did not deny that proceedings were underway, but it cited court regulations requiring arrest warrant applications to remain classified unless judges authorise their disclosure.
“Under the amended Regulations of the Court, applications for arrest warrants or summons to appear, pursuant to article 58 of the Rome Statute, are to be classified as secret or under seal, unless otherwise authorised by ICC judges,” the Office of the Prosecutor tells TRT World.
In other words, the court neither confirmed nor denied the reports. But the careful, legalistic reply left open the possibility that the process is already in motion, and that Smotrich and Ben-Gvir may soon find themselves in the same position as the man they have loyally served.
In November 2024, the court’s Pre-Trial Chamber I unanimously issued warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least October 8, 2023, charges that included starvation as a method of warfare, murder, and persecution.
The response from both men was characteristically defiant. Smotrich called the proceedings "a declaration of war" and announced he would sign an order to evacuate Khan al-Ahmar Bedouin village, answering an international accountability process with yet another act of dispossession.
Ben-Gvir, meanwhile, was busy posting his Ashdod footage online.
Who are these men?
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir did not arrive at this moment by accident. They are ideological illegal settlers who have functioned as Netanyahu's shock troops, given ministerial power precisely because their extremism serves the coalition's ends.
Both men live in occupied West Bank settlements considered illegal under international law, and both have championed annexation of the territory and the genocide in Gaza.
Since June 2024, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway jointly imposed sanctions on the pair, freezing their assets and barring them from entering those countries, citing their advocacy of the extermination and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Smotrich's power flows through his control of Israel's Civil Administration in the occupied West Bank, the body that approves illegal settlement expansion, demolition orders, and the strangling of Palestinian communities.
His Zionist rhetoric has matched his policy. In March 2023, speaking at a private event in Paris, Smotrich declared, "There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation. There is no Palestinian history. There is no Palestinian language."
The remarks came weeks after he had called for the Palestinian town of Huwara to be "wiped out" following a settler rampage there, comments even the US State Department condemned as "irresponsible, repugnant and disgusting" and amounting to incitement to violence.
When the ICC's net began closing in around him this week, Smotrich responded with another expulsion order, a pattern that has come to define him entirely.
Ben-Gvir's extremism runs deeper still, rooted in a biography that would have disqualified him from public life in any other democracy.
During the First Intifada, he joined the extremist Kach movement and openly admired Baruch Goldstein, the terrorist behind the 1994 Hebron mosque massacre that killed 29 Palestinian worshippers, keeping Goldstein's portrait on the wall of his home until 2020.
His extremist views were so pronounced that he was exempted from Israel's compulsory military service.
He has since accumulated at least eight criminal convictions, including for supporting a terrorist organisation and racism against Palestinians.
During the Gaza genocide, he was among the most vocal opponents of allowing humanitarian aid into the besieged territory.
More recently, he celebrated openly in the Knesset after lawmakers passed a death penalty bill for Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis, a legislation he had personally championed.
This is the record now before the ICC; a consistent, documented ideology of dispossession, backed by state power and shielded by Netanyahu at every turn.
A campaign of pressure
The ICC has faced a sustained campaign of intimidation from those seeking to derail it.
The Trump administration has sanctioned nine ICC judges and prosecutors and threatened to designate the court in its entirety if it does not drop charges against Israeli leaders.
Sanctions have rendered court personnel unable to hold credit cards or access banking services in a deliberate effort to make their daily lives untenable.
Amazon, major banks, and tech companies have all severed ties with court officials.
The court has pressed on regardless. If approved, the recent warrant requests in this climate of maximum political pressure are a signal.
