So-called Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has found himself in charge of the Israeli occupation’s police, its prisons and its internal security. This is despite being an illegal settler and convicted criminal.
Ben-Gvir: fulfilling his promise to ‘Israeli’ citizens
He has recently been showing off a new execution facility, which is currently under construction. He says there will be a hanging rope and “viewing chamber” so victims’ families can come and watch Palestinians being put to death. Ben-Gvir, who claims the plans are based on the US model of an execution chamber, says:
We are fulfilling what we promised.
In March, the Knesset passed a death penalty law which was initiated by Ben-Gvir. It mandates hanging for Palestinians convicted in military courts of lethal attacks against ‘Israelis’.This legislation means the Israeli occupation Prison Service is now responsible for execution — by hanging — within 90 days of sentencing.
Capital punishment legislation is part of a deliberate state project, promoted by Ben-Gvir. The aim is to strip Palestinian prisoners of what few rights they may still have, and any basic daily needs. And it provides legal cover for a reality already enforced on the ground.
The idea, since he became minister, has been to turn ‘Israeli’ detention facilities into sites of systematic deprivation, torture and abuse. He has succeeded. According to B’Tselem, Ben-Gvir has turned Israeli occupation prisons into a:
network of torture camps for Palestinians.
Prisoner advocacy groups claim the current conditions are the worst experienced by Palestinian detainees. Palestinian detainees are totally dehumanised, through institutionalised neglect and physical violence. But Ben-Gvir continues to treat them inhumanely, and makes this known to the ‘Israeli’ public.
The worst conditions possible for Palestinian detainees
Pushing for the death penalty and tougher prison conditions was the main promise of his 2022 campaign. Ben-Gvir attacked prison conditions as too soft. And he refused to join Netanyahu’s coalition without a deal to make life harsher for Palestinian detainees, and the introduction of executions. As national security minister, he used these crackdowns to show his supporters he was getting results. This was important, as polling in ‘Israel’ has shown for years, that the majority of Jewish-Israelis support the death sentence for Palestinians who kill ‘Israelis.’
The occupation’s national security minister has also given orders to prioritise the demolition of homes in Palestinian villages and towns in ‘Israel’. He has even said:
the best deterrent is evicting a [Palestinian] family from its home.
He has recently participated in a police campaign to demolish Palestinian buildings in the al-Jawarish area of Ramla, a predominantly Palestinian area in so-called ‘Israel.’ Citing lack of permits-which are almost impossible to obtain — he posted a video of himself, on X, in which a house in the neighbourhood was being flattened. He commented that the 10,000th “illegal” Palestinian structure was about to be demolished, and said the bulldozers were making
Wonderful sounds
and
sounds of sovereignty.
Ben-Gvir
minister:
Celebrating the demolition of the 10,000th Palestinian
home
They are counting
They are celebratingIsrael
UK
sanctions against
Ban
Ban— Howard Beckett (@HowardRBeckett) August 20, 2026
80 percent more demolitions of Bedouin homes
The occupation has marginalised Bedouin communities in ‘Israel’ and Area C of the West Bank for decades. The campaign of forced displacement and discrimination is now accelerating. Ben-Gvir has ordered the demolition of 80 percent more homes in Bedouin communities, in the last three years, especially in the Negev, in southern ‘Israel’, and parts of the West Bank.
In June, Ben Gvir boasted that he had:
demolished 5,700 homes in the past year alone,
vowing he would:
continue demolishing more and more homes in Bedouin communities.
He has framed the policy of stricter enforcement against “illegal construction” as central to restoring “governance and sovereignty” to the area.
Hundreds of Bedouin Palestinians demonstrated in the Negev desert against the demolition of homes in “unrecognised villages”. Community leaders called for recognition of Bedouin communities and criticised National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir for promoting the policy. pic.twitter.com/HFCduwtaGN
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) June 25, 2026
Hundreds of thousands more Israeli-Jews now have a firearms permit
Ben-Gvir also promised to expand eligibility for gun ownership to:
ensure that as many citizens as possible can protect themselves and the State of Israel.
Soon after 7 October 2023, his new regulations saw licences fast-tracked and 280,000 Jewish-Israeli citizens, including illegal settlers in more than 200 localities, now have a personal firearms licence. This is a dramatic increase from before the start of the genocide in Gaza.
Volunteer civilian guard units have operated in West Bank settlements for decades. But after taking office, Ben-Gvir created hundreds of new squads, and directly distributed tens of thousands of automatic rifles to them. He also established new volunteer police units composed of settlers. These armed settlers have the full backing of the occupation, and operate with absolutely no accountability whatsoever.
They are out of control and used by the occupation to intimidate, terrorise, and even kill Palestinians, on a regular basis. The aim, as always, is to forcibly displace them from their homes and land. But as settler violence has reached a record high, the occupation’s police in the West Bank, under Ben-Gvir, have become extremely lenient. ‘Israeli’ news outlet N12 News reports a decrease of almost 75 percent in the opening of settler violence cases against Palestinians, since October 2023.
In a recent podcast, Ben-Gvir not only called for Jewish settlements in Gaza, but advocated for the killing of 30 to 40 Palestinians every night, saying Palestinians
do not need to live.
#Israel’s far-right minister Itamar Ben Gvir has called for the killing of 30–50 Palestinians in #Gaza every night, while making further dehumanising remarks about Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/7NNOafH7j4
— Doha News (@dohanews) August 16, 2026
“Utter contempt” for international law
According to the UN human rights office (OHCHR), Ben-Gvir’s words have incited
violence amounting to atrocity crimes
against Palestinians. They are:
yet another example of the utter contempt for international humanitarian law, international human rights law and the basic tenets of humanity displayed by senior Israeli Government officials.
But his comments did not receive condemnation from the ‘Israeli’ media, or government. This is not surprising, given the result of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem poll, in 2025. Almost two thirds of the Israeli public agreed with the statement:
there are no innocents in Gaza.
Ben-Gvir’s rise to national security minister shows how far-right ideas have moved to the heart of power in ‘Israel’ . When he was a teenager, he followed the violent Jewish-supremacist rabbi Meir Kahane. Kahane called for the expulsion or enslavement of all Palestinians, in ‘Israel’ and Palestine. As a result, Ben-Gvir was considered too dangerous to join the Israeli occupation forces (IOF).
Ben-Gvir — the face of the apartheid ‘Israeli’ state
He first became well-known in 1995, when he stole the badge from then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s car. He held it up on TV, saying:
We got to his car, and we’ll get to him too.
Rabin, who signed the Oslo Accords, was assassinated several weeks later.
Ben-Gvir is a criminal. He lives in Kiryat Arba, an illegal Israeli settlement on the outskirts of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank. And he has at least eight criminal convictions, including supporting a terrorist group, called Kach, and inciting racism against Palestinians. He kept a photo in his living room, until 2020, honoring the American-Israeli murderer Baruch Goldstein. In 1994, Goldstein, an illegal settler, shot dead 29 Palestinians while they prayed in Hebron’s al-Ibrahimi Mosque.
Once thought of in ‘Israeli’ society as a dangerous outcast, he is now a minister with deep public support. In the 2022 election, his alliance won over half a million votes to become the third largest bloc in parliament, being especially popular among young voters and soldiers. Recent polls show that over 70 percent of right-wing coalition voters still want him to keep his job.
Western media often frames Ben-Gvir as a rogue extremist, but he is not. He is the unmasked face of ‘Israel’s apartheid society. He says out loud what the state has practiced on the ground for decades, but others do not want to admit to. There is no mass outrage in ‘Israel’, over what he says and does because his thoughts and actions match what much of the public wants too.
And when Pew Research finds only four percent of ‘Israeli’ Jews think the occupation’s military has gone too far in Gaza, while polls show a majority backing for executing Palestinians, it shows us Ben-Gvir is delivering on mainstream Israeli demands.
Featured image via the Canary
By Charlie Jaay
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