Nat'l Security Minister Ben-Gvir says Israel should kill 30 to 40 Gazans every night because some of them are 'not even people'

Itamar Ben-Gvir isn't just a random person on the street spouting off. He's in the Netanyahu government's war cabinet serving as Israel's National Security Minister. That's kind of like U.S. Homeland Security. But his broad portfolio covers police, border police, the prison system, firefighting and rescue services, and civilian firearms licensing. It's a powerful post.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—who also has a secondary role that gives him control over West Bank civilians—and Ben-Gvir are furthest to the right in the cabinet. But as Reuters notes, Smotrich is less pugnacious than Givr, who is unswervingly incendiary. He occupies a category of his own because his roots are directly Kahanist. His Otzma Yehudit party descends politically from the movement of Meir Kahane, whose Kach Party Israel banned and which the United States designated as a terrorist organization.

Among other things, Kahane argued for a Jewish theocratic state where non-Jews could live, but only as "resident strangers." All Arabs living in Israel he considered enemies, and all Arab representatives in the Knesset should be ejected. The widely read left-liberal daily newspaper Haaretz called the party fascist. Ben-Gvir was convicted in Israel in 2007 of incitement to racism and supporting the terrorist Kach Party. He served 250 days of community service. He has eight criminal convictions in all.

If there were any ambiguity in a handful of his many vicious, xenophobic past statements, there was none in what he said this weekend:

“I think targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night. Not just those who pose an immediate threat — there are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.”

Not exactly a surprise given Ben-Gvir’s most notorious statement regarding Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Rabin deeply angered right-wing Israelis by supporting the Oslo Accords that were meant to result in a Palestinian state. During the furious right-wing campaign against the Oslo peace process, Ben-Gvir and other activists tore the Cadillac emblem off Rabin’s car. Ben-Gvir then displayed it on Israeli television and said: “We got to his car, and we’ll get to him too.” A few weeks later, on Nov. 4, 1995, Rabin was assassinated. Israeli press accounts have continued to cite the incident as a defining episode in Ben-Gvir’s early political career.

By the time he was murdered, Rabin already had been the target of demonstrations in which he was denounced by Likud and Benjamin Netanyahu as a traitor, depicted in Nazi imagery and subjected to threats because of the peace agreements with the Palestinians. Ben-Gvir has subsequently tried to distance himself from any responsibility for Rabin’s murder, rhetorical or otherwise. To be clear, there is no evidence that he participated in or knew of the assassination plot. But the Cadillac episode is documented, and the quote is not a retrospective accusation invented by opponents—it was recorded on television at the time.

Ben-Gvir became a lawyer and defended Israeli extremists. Before entering government, he kept a portrait in his home of Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli extremist who murdered 29 Muslim worshippers at prayer in Hebron in 1994. He finally agreed to remove the photograph in 2020 when it had become an obstacle to forming a right-wing electoral alliance.

Clearly removing that photograph did not change his murderous attitude. It's hard to see a difference between that and Hamas leaders who say they want to wipe out Jews whether they are Israelis or not.

Like Fathi Hammad, Hamas Political Bureau member who said in July 2019 in a speech directed partly at Palestinians living abroad: “You have Jews everywhere and we must attack every Jew on the globe by way of slaughter and killing.” Or Ghazi Hamad, Hamas Political Bureau member, who on October 24, 2023, referencing the October 7 atrocity: “There will be a second, a third, a fourth.”

Birds of a feather with Ben-Gvir. A big difference being that the U.S. is not sending billions of dollars to further the genocidal goals of Hamas.