Draft:Itamar Ben-Gvir



Itamar Ben-Gvir is a lawyer for far-right Israeli activists, convicted criminal, and the current National Security Minister for the thirty-seventh Israeli government, led by the slightly less extreme Benjamin Netanyahu. While Netanyahu leads the much larger Likud party, Ben-Gvir leads a smaller faction in Israeli politics called Otzma Yehudit ("Jewish Strength" or "Jewish Power"), which Netanyahu required a coalition with to form a right-wing government (and to prevent his own potential conviction for corruption).

Ben-Gvir has previously been convicted in Israeli court for inciting racism and for supporting a Kahanist terrorist organization. As National Security Minister, his responsibilities include oversight of the national police, oversight of the border police stationed in the West Bank, and management of important religious sites. Some of his goals include deporting rival legislators, defunding Arab-Israeli communities, and granting immunity to Israeli soldiers who shoot at Palestinians. Apparently, about 1/3rd of Israeli soldiers found this to be a political platform worth voting for in 2022.

Background
Ben-Gvir was raised in an affluent suburb in Jerusalem. In terms of Israeli politics, his parents were moderate conservatives. His mother had previously fought with the Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary organization. His father, who was born in Iraqi Kurdistan, worked for a gas company and sold produce. Ben-Gvir began his turn into anti-Arab politics after the First Palestinian Intifada. After this, he joined the youth wing of, a minor far-right party that advocated population transfer of Arabs out of Israel. He later became a youth leader in, a party affiliated with the Jewish Defense League and founded by Meir Kahane; Kach was later banned in Israel.

In the 1990s, Ben-Gvir appeared on television with an emblem torn from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's car. He stated then, "We got to his car, and we'll get to him, too." A few weeks later, Rabin was assassinated. Ben-Gvir later became an attorney, apparently at least in part inspired by his own efforts to defend himself in court — some of the judges he met while challenging dozens of indictments encouraged him to study law. After becoming a lawyer, he used his skills to defend other far-right activists in court.

Ideology
As far back as his youth, Ben-Gvir was considered extreme enough by the Israeli authorities that they refused to recruit him to mandatory military service. His role model and "saint" (as he put it himself) is Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane, an ultranationalist rabbi who moved to Israel from New York City in 1971. As such, Ben-Gvir is considered an adherent of Kahanism. Outlining an anti-democratic stance, Meir Kahane argued that "the idea of a democratic Jewish state is nonsense" because non-Jews would become the Israeli majority in the future — unless a population transfer occurred. Kahane also referred to Arabs in particular as "dogs".

Another figure that Ben-Gvir apparently respects is fellow Kach member and mass murderer Baruch Goldstein, the perpetrator of the 1994 Hebron massacre in which 29 Palestinian Muslims were killed and 125 people injured. On his first date with his wife (also a Kahanist), he brought her to Goldstein's grave. He has also previously kept a portrait of Goldstein in his living room, and dressed up as Goldstein for Purim. When he was young, Ben-Gvir "handed out eggs to throw at marchers in gay-pride parades".