Itamar Ben-Gvir

Itamar Ben-Gvir (אִיתָמָר בֶּן גְּבִיר; born 6 May 1976) is an Israeli lawyer and far-right extremist politician who has served as the Minister of National Security since 2022.

He is a member of the Knesset and leader of Otzma Yehudit.

In the 1990s, he was active in protests against the Oslo Accords.

Ben-Gvir, a settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has faced charges of hate speech against Arabs and was known to have a portrait in his living room of Israeli-American mass murderer and Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounded 125 others in Hebron, in the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre.

He removed the portrait after he entered politics.

He was also previously convicted of supporting a terrorist group known as Kach, which espoused Kahanism, an extremist religious Zionist ideology.

Under his leadership, the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), a party which espouses Kahanism and anti-Arabism, won six seats in the 2022 Israeli legislative election, and is represented in what has been called the most right-wing and hardline government in Israel's history.

He has called for the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel who are not loyal to Israel.

Ben Gvir is "widely known for his openly racist, anti-Arab views and activities".

Ben Gvir had been long accused of being a provocateur, having previously led several visits to the Temple Mount as activist and member of Knesset, contentious marches through Jerusalem's Old City Muslim Quarter, and set up an office in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood which witnessed several evictions of Palestinians.

On 3 January 2023, he visited the Temple Mount where the al-Aqsa Mosque is located, spurring an international wave of criticism that labelled his visit purposely provocative.

As a lawyer, he is known for defending Jews accused of terrorism on trial in Israel.

Itamar Ben-Gvir was born in Mevaseret Zion.

His father was born in Jerusalem to Iraqi Jewish immigrants.

He worked at a gasoline company and dabbled in writing.

His mother was a Kurdish Jewish immigrant who had been active in the Irgun as a teenager and was a homemaker.

His family was secular, but as a teenager, he adopted religious and radical right-wing views during the First Intifada.

He first joined a right-wing youth movement affiliated with Moledet, a party which advocated transferring Arabs out of Israel, and then joined the youth movement of the even more radical Kach and Kahane Chai party, which was eventually designated as a terrorist organization and outlawed by the Israeli government.

He became youth coordinator of Kach, and claimed that he was detained at age 14.

When he came of age for conscription into the Israel Defense Forces at 18, he was exempted from service by the IDF due to his extreme-right political background.

Ben-Gvir continued to be associated with the Kahanist movement; Otzma Yehudit is said to be Kach's ideological successor.

However, when forming the Otzma Yehudit party, he claimed that it would not be a Kach, Kahane Chai or splinter group.

He carried out a series of far-right activities that have resulted in dozens of indictments.

In 1995, Ben-Gvir came to public attention for the first time, when he appeared on television brandishing a Cadillac hood ornament that had been stolen from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's car, and declared: "We got to his car, and we'll get to him too."

Several weeks later, Rabin was assassinated by right-wing extremist Yigal Amir.

Ben-Gvir sometimes represented himself during his many indictments, and at the suggestion of several judges, he decided to study law.

Ben-Gvir studied law at the Ono Academic College.

At the end of his studies, the Israel Bar Association blocked him from taking the bar exam on grounds of his criminal record.

Ben-Gvir claimed the decision was politically motivated.

After a series of appeals, this decision was overturned, but it was ruled that Ben-Gvir would first have to settle three criminal cases in which he was charged at the time.

After being acquitted in all three cases on charges including holding an illegal gathering and disturbing a civil servant, Ben-Gvir was allowed to take the exam.

He passed the written and oral examinations, and was granted a license to practice law.

As a lawyer, Ben-Gvir has represented a series of far-right Jewish activists suspected of terrorism and hate crimes.

Notable clients include Benzi Gopstein and two teenagers charged in the Duma arson attack.

Haaretz described Ben-Gvir as the "go-to man" for Jewish extremists facing legal trouble, and reported that his client list "reads like a 'Who's Who' of suspects in Jewish terror cases and hate crimes in Israel".

Ben-Gvir is also the lawyer for Lehava, a far-right Israeli anti-assimilation organization which is active in opposing Jewish intermarriage with non-Jews, and has sued the waqf.

Ben-Gvir says that his work as a lawyer for far-right Jewish activists is motivated by a desire to help them, and not for money.

In 2007, however, he was convicted for incitement to racism.

In a November 2015 interview, he claimed to have been indicted 53 times.

In most cases, the charges were thrown out of court.