Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
It had been convenient to cast the far-right leader of the Jewish Power party as a political outlier within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s ruling coalition. This allowed domestic critics of the far-right factions in Israel to continue supporting the government, and companies and countries outside to continue trade despite growing condemnations of the Israeli government.<\/p>\n
After public rebukes of Ben-Gvir\u2019s taunting of the predominantly European activists by the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada \u2013 and even Israel\u2019s foremost allies in the US \u2013 Netanyahu understood the deep damage this was doing to Israel\u2019s public relations image<\/a>, and described the spectacle as \u201cnot in line with Israel\u2019s values and norms\u201d.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa\u2019ar went further, releasing a statement accusing his fellow cabinet minister of knowingly causing harm to the state of Israel and claiming that Ben-Gvir was \u201cnot the face of Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n It is a sentiment echoed by many Israeli media outlets, eager to separate the minister from the Israeli state and government, yet it appears evident that the opposite is true, and Ben-Gvir is the face of an increasingly dominant section of Israeli society.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s stupid, which tells us he\u2019s not acting on his own,\u201d Knesset member Aida Touma-Sliman of the left-wing Hadash party told Al Jazeera. \u201cEverything he\u2019s doing he\u2019s doing with the help of other politicians and civil servants who share his beliefs. He wouldn\u2019t be able to do what he does if they weren\u2019t helping him.\u201d<\/p>\n The right-wing extremist, provocateur and convicted inciter of violence<\/a> has ultimately exerted unchallenged control over police and prison forces since assuming the newly created role<\/a> of National Security Minister in 2022.<\/p>\n \u201cIf just one policeman said no, you can\u2019t politicise the police force, that would be it,\u201d said Touma-Sliman. \u201cIf the head of the prison service said no, you can\u2019t starve, torture and sexually abuse prisoners<\/a>, they wouldn\u2019t, and that would be it.\u201d<\/p>\n Forged in division<\/p>\n Ben-Gvir was hardly an unknown quantity when he entered government in 2022. His first brush with national prominence came in 1995, after Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed to the Oslo Accords, a series of agreements with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which the world hoped was a path towards a two-state solution.<\/p>\n At the time, grinning to the camera, a 19-year-old Ben-Gvir was filmed brandishing the Cadillac hood ornament from Rabin\u2019s car, declaring to the cameras: \u201cWe got to his car, we\u2019ll get to him, too.\u201d<\/p>\n Rabin was assassinated just weeks later by right-wing extremist and ultranationalist Yigal Amir.<\/p>\n Born in a small suburb west of Jerusalem in 1976, Ben-Gvir claimed to the news site Mako in 2021 that he became religious at 12 and radicalised<\/a> at 14 due to what he claimed was the violence of the First Intifada.<\/p>\n His teacher recalled that Ben-Gvir, like many other high school students at the time, was openly supportive<\/a> of the extremist Kach party, founded by the American-Israeli rabbi Meir Kahane.<\/p>\n Kach was banned in 1988, after judges found that the party breached constitutional reforms implemented that year.<\/p>\n In 1994, it was designated a terrorist organisation after a party member, Baruch Goldstein, explicitly referencing Kach politics<\/a>, slaughtered dozens of Palestinian worshippers in Hebron.<\/p>\n Goldstein became something of a motif<\/a> for Ben-Gvir, who reportedly took his future wife to the killer\u2019s grave on their first date. Later, he dressed as the murderer for the Jewish holiday of Purim and displayed Goldstein\u2019s portrait in his home until removing it on the advice of campaign strategists in 2021.<\/p>\n Indicted for his activities on 53 occasions, Ben-Gvir later boasted to Haaretz that following his success in having a majority dismissed, the judges in his trials recommended he study law.<\/p>\n However, in 2007, two indictments resulted in convictions for incitement to racism<\/a> and supporting a terrorist organisation, after Ben-Gvir was arrested brandishing signs reading, \u201cExpel the Arab enemy,\u201d and \u201cRabbi Kahane was right: The Arab MKs are a fifth column,\u201d referring to Arab members of the Israeli Knesset.<\/p>\n Ben-Gvir qualified as a lawyer in defiance of the Israeli Bar Association in 2012<\/a>, which had tried to bar him due to his past convictions and became known for defending far-right settlers and hardliners.<\/p>\n In 2015, those far-right connections again threatened to derail his political ambitions when he was photographed at the wedding of Amiram Ben-Uliel, a settler convicted of killing a one-year-old baby and his parents when he firebombed their home in the occupied West Bank village of Duma.<\/p>\n At the wedding, guests were filmed dancing with knives, assault rifles and a Molotov cocktail, while one repeatedly stabbed an image of the infant victim.<\/p>\n Ben-Gvir defended the gathering, claiming<\/a>, to the disbelief of many, that \u201cno one realised these were photos of a member of the Dawabsheh family\u201d.<\/p>\n Member of the Knesset, Ofer Cassif, who had questioned Ben-Gvir\u2019s eligibility to stand for election, gave Al Jazeera a personal account of the politician that starkly contrasts with the affable persona presented by some sections of Israeli media.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never seen Ben-Gvir laugh or joke. He\u2019s a bully, but the kind of schoolyard bully who shuts up as soon as the teacher raises their voice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cBen-Gvir is a violent man. I mean, he has convictions for supporting terrorism and had a picture of Baruch Goldstein on his wall.\u201d<\/p>\n Politicised hate<\/p>\n In 2022, Netanyahu helped cement<\/a> an alliance between Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right leader of the Religious Zionist Party, as the public turned against a broad coalition led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.<\/p>\n After earlier joint runs in 2021 and 2019, they returned to the Knesset as the third-largest faction, maintaining Netanyahu\u2019s coalition and, according to analysts, acting as public faces for the more extremist aspects of its right-wing ideology.<\/p>\n In the years since, Ben-Gvir has been accused by analysts and activists of moulding the Israeli police force in his own far-right image<\/a>.<\/p>\n He has boasted on social media of worsening the already harrowing conditions of Palestinian detainees, many held without charge, while defending the rape and forced starvation<\/a> of others.<\/p>\n At the same time as threatening to collapse the ruling coalition<\/a> at the first sign that the genocide in Gaza might be scaled back, Ben-Gvir has also led numerous incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam, in defiance of government policies.<\/p>\n Following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, Ben-Gvir has overseen a rapid increase in gun licences to Israeli settlers<\/a> across the occupied West Bank. As predicted, there has been a spike in deadly violence against Palestinians since then.<\/p>\n![\"Ben-Gvir](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2025-05-26T093716Z_1436449527_RC2KPEA8XM07_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-ALAQSA-BEN-GVIR-1748252674..jpeg\")
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visits the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound during Jerusalem Day, in Jerusalem\u2019s Old City, on May 26, 2025 [Ammar Awad\/Reuters]<\/p>\n