You don’t have to marry a politician or invite him over for lunch. You need him to get your policies enacted.
After 25 years of working with politicians in Israel, that may be the most important lesson I have learned. For beautiful speeches and intellectual inspiration, there are professors, rabbis, writers, and even YouTube influencers. Politics has a different purpose: to turn ideas into policy. A politician’s job is to get things done.
That is easy to forget, because politics today has sadly become a personality contest. We live in an age of media everywhere, where people follow government ministers like celebrities rather than judging them as legislators.
Every clip is shared, every sentence dissected, every tone graded. That environment is a trap. It seduces elected leaders into chasing sound bites and platitudes instead of doing their real job, and it tempts voters to judge them on performance rather than results.
Few Israeli politicians illustrate this better than National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Many people, including many English-speaking Israelis, tell me they are uncomfortable with Ben-Gvir’s style. That concern belies a lack of understanding of who he is, why he does what he does, and why it should matter to the rest of us.
The answer is that the way he speaks is a strategy, not an accident. It is not designed to placate foreign media or to explain away Israeli strength to nations that have lost their own nerve. It is aimed at two audiences: the Israelis he was elected to protect, and the enemies who want to annihilate us. Both need to know, without any ambiguity, that he means business.
For the first group, that is reassurance. For the second, it is deterrence.
As for those in between, the commentators, diplomats, and fair-weather friends who would prefer something sweeter and more diplomatic, the way to get there is not a softer tone; it is true victory: an Israel that can finally feel safe. Once we have that, we can worry about what outsiders think of our manners.
Meanwhile, the question that matters is the one the celebrity culture ignores: What did he set out to change, and did he change it?
Start with Israel’s security prisons, where the collapse of deterrence was most visible. For years, the problem went far beyond an extra television or a comfortable meal. Terrorist prisoners ran their own bakeries and canteens and took showers that could last for hours. Worse, they had built real power inside parts of the prison system.
A prison photographer once told me about entering one of these facilities for work. He watched a terrorist prisoner walk into a room and tell an Israeli guard: “Give me your phone and get out.” The guard complied. When the photographer asked what he had just witnessed, the guard answered simply: “They run the prison, not us.”
That story captured the state of affairs.
Applying the right test for elections
The most horrifying example was the Gilboa Prison “pimping affair,” in which female soldiers serving as guards alleged that commanders placed them near security prisoners who sexually harassed and assaulted them.
Think about the message this sent to a would-be terrorist. Instead of deterrence, he could expect comfortable conditions, generous privileges and, in some cases, a better standard of living than outside. Prison had become something to look forward to rather than something to fear.
Ben-Gvir came into the National Security Ministry with an idea. Restore deterrence. And he turned it into policy. He closed the prisoner-run bakeries, limited shower time, cut privileges, and moved conscripted guards away from security prisoners. None of this was cosmetic. It returned control of the prisons to the State of Israel.
The same pattern, conviction, then action, runs through the rest of his record. October 7 taught Israelis in the harshest possible way that when terrorists arrive, minutes matter. Ben-Gvir believed qualified citizens should be able to defend themselves, so he expanded eligibility for firearm licenses and accelerated licensing.
In 2022, about 155,000 Israelis held firearm licenses. By 2026, over 400,000 did.
Police data presented to the Knesset showed declines in ordinary criminal offenses and vehicle theft-related offenses in 2025 compared with 2024. Serious crime remains a major challenge. But add tougher action against organized crime and a new law imposing the death penalty on terrorists in specified cases, and the direction is unmistakable.
Critics call this “ultranationalist.” There is nothing extreme about insisting that terrorists experience prison as prison, that qualified citizens can defend themselves, and that organized crime be confronted. In America, this would be recognized as law-and-order Republican policy.
In an era that rewards the viral clip, the real test of a leader is quieter: What changed because he held office? That is the test Israelis should apply on October 27.
The question is not whether the New York Times likes your rhetoric. It is whether he brings real change that makes the lives of the citizens who vote safer and better. That is why I am proud to be running with Ben-Gvir and Otzma Yehudit.
With God’s help, we can make Israel and the Jewish nation stronger together.
The writer is the international spokesman for the Jewish Community of Hebron, an elected councilman in the town of Efrat, and a YouTuber with over 300,000 followers. He is a graduate of Cardozo Law School in NYC and has advised government ministers on international affairs and spearheaded policies such as recognition of Route 60 as the ‘Biblical Highway.’