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Lawrence Rifkin

The insult that made a man out of Itamar

97-lb weaklings once turned to Charles Atlas. Our minister of national security needs only his personal police force

It’s happening. The crackdown we’ve all been expecting. Not the batons, the uppercuts and the headlocks we’ve seen during mayhem the Ayalon Freeway, but the more gentle and stealthy tactics now being used by cops on demonstrators who are quietly – and lawfully – making their views known.

And all because of a little sand.

I know I’m showing my age, but once upon a time, the inside back-cover of pulp magazines and comic books featured a recurring ad promoting the body-building regimen of muscleman Charles Atlas. Above the comic strip format were the words: “The insult that made a man out of Mac.”

In Frame 1, a scrawny Mac sits on a beach blanket with his girlfriend, Grace. Running by, a well-built guy kicks up a wall of sand. Mac: “Hey! Quit kicking that sand in our faces!” Grace: “That man is the worst nuisance on the beach.”

In Frame 2, the guy grabs Mac by his slender upper arm: “Listen here. I’d smash your face only you’re so skinny you might dry up and blow away.”

In Frame 3, Mac tells Grace: “The big bully! I’ll get even some day.” Grace: “Oh, don’t let it bother you, little boy!”

Frame 4 cuts to what looks like an office, where an angry Mac kicks over a chair: “Darn it! I’m sick and tired of being a scarecrow. Charles Atlas says he can give me a real body. Alright, I’ll gamble a stamp and get his free book!”

Frame 5 shows a dramatic transformation, with Mac flexing his bulging arms and torso before a mirror: “Boy, it didn’t take Atlas long to do this for me. What MUSCLES! That bully won’t shove me around again!”

In Frame 6, Mac returns to the beach: “There’s that big stiff again, showing off in front of Grace and the crowd. Well, it’s MY turn this time!”

In Frame 7, he delivers a powerful jab to the bully’s jaw, proclaiming: “Now it’s your turn to dry up and blow away!” And Grace? Well, of course: “Oh Mac, you are a REAL man after all!”

A couple of Fridays ago, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, an extremely controversial and far-right Israeli politician who professes to be a very religious kind of guy, apparently felt the urge to take his family for a stroll along a mixed-gender beach in hedonistic Tel Aviv. Fully clothed in his usual white shirt and dark slacks, his cereal-bowl white kippa at its standard jaunty angle, the stroll placed him and the Ben Gvir clan among people in various states of undress.

You might say it was not entirely his type of public and it’s not clear what he was doing there, although he’s known to be quite fond of his reputation as a provocateur.

And with his presence, provoke he did, this thuggish man-child who puffs like Mussolini anytime he sees a camera lens. Who wants Torah law to supersede civil law in Israel. Who wants all Arabs gone, even if it costs Israel its place among the nations. Who believes that the lives of hostages are worth sacrificing if this will return settlers to the Gaza Strip. And who positively pisses off those who do not share his views – which means probably the vast majority of the souls in the various states of undress on that Tel Aviv beach.

One of whom threw a fistful of sand in his direction.

So, rather than scrape up the NIS 3.60 in postage he’d need to send away for Charles Atlas’s program, Mac Ben Gvir, according to footage of the event, points and sends his police escort to arrest the alleged perpetrator. The 27-year-old woman was hauled off in her wet bathing suit for an uncomfortable weekend in the local lockup and was charged and indicted – in record time – for allegedly assaulting a civil servant and interfering with police.

Oh, Mac certainly talks like a tough guy. He’s even known to wave around a handgun from time to time. (His wife has been photographed posing with a sidearm of her own, even while taking tea with the prime minister’s wife.) But he hasn’t really cracked down on crime, a rising spate of road fatalities and – what he has called his pet project – the lawless Bedouin of the Negev. You know, doing his job.

His sole accomplishment so far – besides being a very big political thorn in the side of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – has been to transform the country’s police force into his personal militia.

Coming into office, he made life miserable for the commissioner, Kobi Shabtai, a controversial character in his own right but a tough-as-nails cops not easily rolled over. Almost routinely, Ben Gvir would countermand Shabtai’s orders and even publicly humiliate him to the point where, when told his tenure would not be extended for an additional year, the top cop, seeming to heave a sigh of relief, simply went home.

To replace Shabtai, Ben Gvir bought in a senior officer considered by most to be green behind the ears and not yet ready for prime time, apparently because the minister considers him to be sufficiently malleable. Just as controversially, he ordered the promotion of a mid-level officer who had been caught on video heaving a stun grenade directly into a crowd of anti-government protesters in Tel Aviv, injuring several, though this clearly was against regulations.

In fact, there is a growing feeling around here that cops – who as a group, let’s be honest, probably would not be disciples of Mahatma Gandhi – are lately feeling much freer in cracking down on anti-government protests with… well, let’s just say a bit more vigor.

This most probably goes in spades regarding the cops who guard Ben Gvir himself, meaning that anytime someone throws a little sand in his direction, he won’t need to transform his considerable flab into Atlas-esque muscle so as to impress Grace, or Annie Oakly, or whatever his wife’s name is. He’ll simply sic his goons on whomever looks guilty, puff himself up like Il Duce, smile that childish smile and waddle away in a haze of victory.

Exactly a week after Ben Gvir’s beach stroll, his militia now seems to be in full throated police-state mode. Cops harass people doing nothing more than heading quietly to protests or just for wearing T-shirts associated with the anti-government movement.

Before the current Sabbath, they hauled in three women caught on security cameras at a posh synagogue in Herzliya. The women had been placing in the pews leaflets depicting young women hostages – and the Bibas toddlers – around an old photo of Yuli Edelstein. This was, you see, the synagogue where Edelstein, the former Knesset speaker and current chair of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, prays.

The old photo of Edelstein had been taken during his days as a peaceful Jewish agitator against the darkness of the former Soviet Union, where he spent three tough years in the gulag for his activities. The idea, apparently, was to soften his heart and perhaps convince him to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do a lot more to bring the hostages home.

There was no sand and no violence whatsoever. Not even raised voices. But this was too much for Ben Gvir’s cops, so after a congregant lodged a complaint, the three women were found, arrested and placed in hand and leg cuffs for the duration of their eight-hour interrogation at the local station house.

PERHAPS WHAT’S most noteworthy about all this is that the original Charles Atlas method of bodybuilding involved not dumbbells, but something known as “dynamic tension,” which employs muscle against muscle, for example by clasping one’s palms together and pushing them against one another with great and steady force.

Kind of what Ben Gvir and, more importantly, Netanyahu are currently doing to Israeli society.

What must be noted is that if it is to build muscle, the dynamic tension method also requires the proper nutrients. Unfortunately, nutrients such as good governance and personal freedoms are increasingly being left off the menu for rank-and-file Israelis, meaning we eventually will become slack and withered, too weak to fight for our due.

Are you frustrated, Itamar? So do like Mac did in the Charles Atlas ads! Improve that physique! Imagine standing before a mirror and saying, “Boy, it didn’t take Atlas long to do this for me!” I assure you, sir, that Grace, or Annie Oakly, or whatever your wife’s name is, will be duly impressed.

Please, Mr. Ben Gvir, let the cops do their job rather than siccing them on people who don’t agree with you. And, of course, bring the hostages home! It doesn’t need to take a lot of muscle.

About the Author
Lawrence Rifkin is a retired Israeli journalist.
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