#1,081: Sometimes, Dreams Do Come True - Hopefully, This Isn't One of Them

In the United States, we have a monstrosity of a Defense Secretary named Pete Hegseth. He is both a racist and grossly misogynistic, as well as ill-equipped for his job and an international embarrassment to boot. Just yesterday (June 6, 2026), in a speech meant to commemorate the 82nd anniversary of Allied forces storming the beaches of Normandy to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe in 1944, he instead criticised European nations over migration for allowing what he described as an "invasion" on their shores. So much is this man - and what he represents - reviled by our former allies, that he was actually "disinvited” (non merci) by the residents of nearby Langrune-sur-Mer, who said his "warlike views" were unwelcome in their village and questioned his commitment to "democratic values". It turned out that after making a speech at the American military cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer (“Omaha Beach”), he conspicuously skipped the afternoon’s main international ceremony. For les gens de Colleville-sur-Mer, it was un rêve devenu réalité (“a dream come true”).

Secretary Hegseth’s counterpart in Israel is the Jewish State’s השר לביטחון לאומי (Minister of National Security), Itamar Bin Gvir - generally called by his hyphenated last name (Bin-Gvir). Like Pete Hegseth, Ben Gvir is a far-right extremist. Like Hegseth, he is an ardent nationalist. Where Hegseth is a member of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which advocates Christian Nationalism, which frequently frames military actions in religious terms, Bin Gvir is an Orthodox Jewish politician who leads Israel’s religious Zionist movement. He leads the far-right עוצמה יהודית (Otzma Yehudit), which means “Jewish Strength” or “Jewish Power.” Bin Gvir’s political godfather is the late ultra-nationalist Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was assassinated at age 58 in 1990.

Itamar Bin-Givir: Israel’s Minister of National Security

Kahane espoused a virulently racist ideology, founding both a violent Jewish extremist movement and a fascist political party in Israel. Kahane’s Jewish Defense League murdered dozens of people and injured hundreds of others in numerous violent attacks against Palestinians, Americans, and others in Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, and the United States itself. His Israeli political party, כך (kach, that’s Hebrew for “Thus!”), was, during his lifetime, fairly marginal. However, decades after his assassination in New York, he remains an inspiration for Jewish extremists, and his racist ideas are more mainstream. During the 2019 and 2021 Israeli election campaigns, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party entered into political agreements with Kahane’s followers in the Jewish Power party to help elect them to the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), prompting condemnation even from some of Israel’s staunchest supporters. In December 2022, Bin Gvir, who was mentored by Kahane, became Minister of National Security with expanded powers under Netanyahu. And ever since, he has exercised control of Israel’s police and its paramilitary border police in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

Getting back to certain similarities between Hegseth and Bin-Gvir, we turn our attention to the military. Pete Heseth was a member of the National Guard; he submitted his resignation after a fellow guardsman flagged him as an “insider threat” in 2021. This resulted in his removal from the National Guard security mission for President Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021. The problem arose because of concerns over his tattoos, specifically the Latin phrase Deus Vult (“G-d wills it”), which had been appropriated by white extremist groups. In the case of Bin-Gvir, he was exempted from mandatory service in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) due to his extreme right-wing views and affiliation with the outlawed kach party. He first came to infamy as a teenager when he stole the Cadillac emblem from the car of Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin. Hegseth also came to public awareness as a teenager, when, as publisher of the Princeton Tory, a deeply conservative student newspaper, he espoused intolerance of “gays, feminists, and atheists,” and praised conservatives’ “tangible solutions for societal ills.” “By advocating government support of the traditional family unit, a return of the acceptability of the ‘homemaker’ vocation, freedom from oppressive government oversight, moral responsibility, and the revival of religious faith, conservatives provide a working blueprint for a free and prosperous future,” he wrote.

About a month ago, Bin Gvir’s wife, Alala, threw him a 50th birthday party. The party was a controversial affair, both for its guest list and its centerpieces - birthday cakes for her ultranationalist husband with golden nooses and guns. On the guest list were fellow senior politicians, far-right activists, and members of the police General Command Staff. Among the far-figures were Yoav Eliasi, the prominent rapper and far-right political activist known הצל (as Ha-Tzel,“ The Shadow), who received an honorary police rank in 2024; Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi and Bentzi Gopstein, an acolyte of the late Rabbi Kahane who runs a group opposing intermarriage.

A photo posted on Instagram by Bin-Gvir showed that he had been presented with a large three-tier cake, topped with a golden noose — a reference to the controversial law mandating the death penalty for Palestinian terrorists, long been championed by Ben Gvir and his Otzma Yehudit party and passed by the Knesset in March. A smaller cake, presented to him by his wife, also carried the inscription Hebrew לפעמום, חלומות מתגשים (lifamim, chalomot mitgashim . . . “Sometimes, dreams to come true.” This was in obvious reference to the bill approving executions.

In its 78-year history, only 2 people have been legally executed by the state of Israel: Meir Tobianski in 1948 and Adolf Eichmann in 1962. While the death penalty is technically legal for crimes such as treason, genocide, and crimes against humanity, it has not been used since 1962. This new death penalty legislation violates Israel’s basic law. (n.b. Please note that less than a year after his execution, Toblanski was exonerated.

Getting back to the party, the bottom layer of the larger cake featured two guns pointing at a map of Israel, with Gaza and the West Bank included, representing his divisive firearm policies, which have been greatly loosened during his tenure. Ever since his teenage years, Bin-Gvir has had a showman’s instincts. With the passing of time, that instinct hasn’t dimmed. His stint as Minister of National Security has been defined by his stunts, from waving an Israeli flag from the Temple Mount to his combative visits to Bedouin towns, to the golden noose lapel pin that he, along with many of his right-wing colleagues, wears in the knesset. Recently, he posted a video of himself taunting rows of bound and kneeling activists from the Gaza-bound flotilla. Needless to say, it has raised tons of ire amongst the non-far-right, non-Orthodox Israeli community.

At the drop of a kippah (Yarmulke), people like Bin-Gvir will tell you that anyone who does not agree with everything he believes vis-à-vis what should be done to Palestinians is an anti-Semite . . . an enemy of the state. This is the Israeli version of the American regime letting it be known that anyone who disagrees with anything

לפעמום, חלומות מתגשים