Before Itamar Ben-Gvir was appointed a government minister, a picture of Baruch Goldstein that was displayed on the wall of his living room went viral. During Ramadan prayers in February 1994, Goldstein, an American-Israeli doctor, stormed the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and opened fire on Palestinian worshippers, killing 29 before the survivors beat him to death. A portrait of a convicted mass murderer in your home would be a career-ending detail for the majority of politicians in the majority of nations. It was just one of many facts that shaped Ben-Gvir’s political character during decades of far-right activism, and it had no bearing on his appointment as Israel’s Minister of National Security in December 2022.
Born in Mevaseret Zion, a suburb west of Jerusalem, in 1976, Ben-Gvir grew up politically in the orbit of Kahanism, the movement started by Rabbi Meir Kahane that called for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and was later labeled a terrorist group in both Israel and the US. His political background is replete with the kinds of episodes that build up over a provocative career. When he was a teenager in 1995, he threatened Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on television.
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Itamar Ben-Gvir |
| Date of Birth | May 6, 1976 |
| Birthplace | Mevaseret Zion, Israel |
| Occupation | Politician, Lawyer |
| Party | Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”) |
| Current Role | Minister of National Security (2022–Jan 2025; March 2025–present) |
| Party Ideology | Far-right, Kahanist, anti-Arab |
| Knesset Seats (2022) | 6 |
| Convictions | At least 8 (including incitement to racism) |
| Spouse | Ayala Nimrodi |
| Children | 6 |
| Residence | Israeli-occupied West Bank (settler) |
| Reference Website |
A few weeks later, a Jewish extremist killed Rabin. Over the years, he was the target of numerous indictments and was found guilty of at least eight crimes, including possessing Kach literature and inciting racism. Notably, the Israeli military determined that he was too extremist to serve in the Israel Defense Forces during his mandatory service period. This decision applied to a guy who would go on to become the nation’s national security minister.
As a lawyer, Ben-Gvir developed a career defending Jews accused of extremist violence, which gave him a professional identity and a consistent political message: that the Israeli state failed to appropriately prosecute or punish Arab violence while being too willing to prosecute Jewish violence. Ben-Gvir was able to turn a provocateur’s reputation into real electoral weight, and that message found a receptive audience in segments of Israeli society that believed the center-left political establishment had lost touch with security interests.
Running on an overtly Kahanist platform, his Otzma Yehudit party gained six Knesset seats in the 2022 election and joined Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, granting Ben-Gvir the cabinet position that comes with considerable authority over Israel’s domestic security system and police forces.
From the beginning, the position has been controversial. His highly contentious visits to the Temple Mount in 2023 and 2024, which include the al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the world’s most sensitive geopolitical locations, were denounced by Arab nations, foreign allies, and Israeli security officials, who cautioned that the visits heightened tensions in an environment where tensions have historically resulted in violence. His 2021 involvement in stirring conflicts between Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the Sheikh Jarrah district of East Jerusalem before his appointment as a minister and created a pattern that, according to detractors, persisted once he got the backing of the government.
A temporary absence from the cabinet resulted from the Gaza ceasefire incident in early 2025. Ben-Gvir resigned on January 19, 2025, citing the three-phase peace agreement in Gaza as an intolerable compromise. His resignation was in effect for almost two months. He and other Otzma Yehudit members returned to the cabinet in March 2025 as part of an accord related to the restart of Israeli bombings in Gaza.
The story demonstrated the power that far-right coalition partners have over Netanyahu’s administration as well as the particular circumstances under which Ben-Gvir is prepared to use that power. Resignation was justified by a ceasefire. Its effective termination served as adequate justification for a return.
It’s difficult to ignore the fact that Ben-Gvir’s professional path—from an adolescent prohibited from serving in the military due to radicalism to a cabinet minister in charge of national security—reflects something important about the course of Israeli politics during the last 20 years. He is a settler who resides in the occupied West Bank. He is the leader of a party whose political history is clearly rooted in a movement that supported the forcible deportation of Palestinians.
He also has a cabinet position that gives him direct control over Israel’s police. There is currently no conclusive response to the question of whether that combination results in outcomes that are consistent with the democratic values that underpin Israel’s international relations, and both Israeli and foreign observers are analyzing it with considerable disquiet.
