▶ Watch Video: Uproar over Itamar Ben-Gvir’s degrading treatment of flotilla activists
Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, in a podcast published over the weekend, called for “30 to 40” people to be killed per night in targeted assassinations in the Gaza Strip.
Discussing Israel’s response to the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza, and Israel’s recent move to reduce the number of strikes being carried out in the decimated Palestinian territory, Ben-Gvir said: “It’s no secret, I disagree with the prime minister … I think targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night.”
“Not just those who pose an immediate threat,” added the Israeli cabinet member. “There are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.”
The security chief made the comment to Rom Braslavski, who was previously held as a hostage in Gaza, on his Sunday podcast.
ilia YEFIMOVICH/AFP/Getty
Israel once had a block of 21 settlements — known as Gush Katif — in the Gaza Strip, but the settlers and Israeli forces pulled out of the enclave two decades ago.
“I see all of Gaza as ours,” Ben-Gvir said in the taped interview. “Settlements not just in Gush Katif but throughout Gaza, encouraging as much emigration as possible, sending them to their countries. And for the terrorists, no emigration, nothing, just to kill them one by one.”
Legal experts and the Secretary-General of the United Nations have warned that any move to force Palestinians to leave Gaza could amount to ethnic cleansing.
Israel’s vast network of settlements in the occupied West Bank — the other, much larger Palestinian territory — are considered illegal by the United Nations, the International Court of Justice and many other entities and nations. Israel’s current government has encouraged new construction in the West Bank, however, and it disputes the illegality of most of the settlements in the territory.
“Inciting violence”
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi posted about Ben-Gvir’s comments on X Monday. “These confessions must be recorded and preserved for the day of reckoning and trial of these criminals,” he wrote.
Similar statements by Ben-Gvir and other senior Israeli officials have been presented to the U.N. as evidence of an alleged genocidal intent by Israel’s government in Gaza.
The national security minister is no stranger to controversy.
In May, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — whose was able to form his coalition government thanks to support from far-right politicians including Ben-Gvir — publicly rebuked his security minister after video emerged online of Ben-Gvir’s treatment of pro-Palestinian flotilla activists in custody.
Last year, five longstanding U.S. allies — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom — announced sanctions against Ben-Gvir “for inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Slovenia, the Netherlands and Spain followed suit later in 2025.
This year, Ireland and France banned Ben-Gvir from entering their territory.
Ben-Gvir is a follower of Kahanism, a movement named after a long-dead rabbi who espoused violent ethnonationalism and advocated for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.
The security chief’s first moment in the spotlight came in 1995, when he stole the Cadillac emblem off then-Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin’s car. Rabin was hated among the Israeli far-right for signing the Oslo Peace Accords with the Palestinians. Ben-Gvir held up the badge to a TV camera and said: “Just as we got to his car, we will get to him.”
Rabin was assassinated weeks later by a Jewish far-right nationalist.
Ben-Gvir has had numerous run-ins with police and several court appearances, including one during which he was convicted of inciting racism for taking part in attacks on Arabs, and for supporting a Jewish nationalist terror cell.
Ben-Gvir has no control over Israel’s military actions, but he runs the country’s prisons and national police force, and has boasted of reducing food rations for Palestinian prisoners.
Israel had, until recently, been launching strikes in Gaza most days. The attacks have killed more than 1,250 people since a truce came into effect in October, according to health officials in the Hamas-run territory.
Israel appears to have reined in its attacks in a suspected concession to President Trump, after Netanyahu rejected a U.S.-backed peace plan for Gaza last week.