{"id":22142,"date":"2026-05-23T20:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T20:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/22142\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T20:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T20:34:10","slug":"itamar-ben-gvir-banned-from-entering-france-french-fm-says-after-flotilla-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/22142\/","title":{"rendered":"Itamar Ben-Gvir banned from entering France, French FM says after flotilla incident"},"content":{"rendered":"

France banned National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir<\/a> from entering the country, French Foreign Minister Jean-No\u00ebl Barrot announced on Saturday, following the controversy sparked by Ben-Gvir\u2019s treatment of the Global Sumud Flotilla participants<\/a> detained last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs of this day, Itamar Ben-Gvir<\/a> is banned from accessing French territory,\u201d said Barrot<\/a>, who clarified that the French government disapproves of the flotilla approach to the Gaza situation as it \u201cproduces no useful effect and burdens diplomatic and consular services, whose professionalism and dedication I salute.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Barrot also explained that France \u201ccannot tolerate French nationals being threatened, intimidated, or brutalized in this way, especially by a public official.<\/p>\n

\u201cI note that these actions have been condemned by a large number of Israeli government and political figures,\u201d he added and pointed out that \u201cthey follow a long list of shocking statements and actions, incitements to hatred and violence against Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barrot also asked the rest of the European Union members to follow France\u2019s lead in banning Ben-Gvir from entering the continent, a move Italy already made last week.<\/p>\n

Italy condemns Ben-Gvir, demands imposition of EU sanctions<\/p>\n

Italy was the first European nation to condemn Ben-Gvir after the video of him harassing flotilla participants was published, with Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani saying Italy \u201cdemands an apology for the treatment\u201d of the activists and the \u201ctotal disrespect\u201d for the Italian government\u2019s requests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe images of Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir are unacceptable. It is inadmissible that these protesters, including many Italian citizens, are subjected to treatment that harms their personal dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni added that her government was \u201cimmediately taking, at the highest institutional levels, all necessary steps to secure the immediate release of the Italian citizens involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, Tajani said on Thursday that he \u201cformally requested from the High Representative Kaja Kallas to include in the next discussion of the EU Foreign Ministers the adoption of sanctions against the Israeli National Security Minister Ben-Gvir.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ant\u00f3nio Costa, president of the European Union, said i he is \u201cappalled\u201d by Ben-Gvir\u2019s \u201ccompletely unacceptable\u201d actions and called for the immediate release of the detained flotilla activists.<\/p>\n

Ben-Gvir shared on Wednesday a video of him harassing detained flotilla activists in Ashdod after Israeli forces intercepted their ships on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

In the video, he can be seen forcing the head down of a flotilla activist after she yelled, \u201cFree, free Palestine,\u201d to which he responds in Hebrew, \u201cShut up!\u201d and continues walking.<\/p>\n

In a separate clip, he is depicted as waving an Israeli flag while shouting out in Hebrew: \u201cWelcome to Israel! We own this place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corinne Baum and Reuters contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France banned National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir from entering the country, French Foreign Minister Jean-No\u00ebl Barrot announced on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[73,430,1859,16406,5,16322,67,16191,343],"class_list":["post-22142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-far-right","tag-flotilla","tag-france","tag-global-sumud-flotilla","tag-italy","tag-itamar-ben-gvir","tag-jean-noel-barrot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}