© Kenny Holston/The New York Times
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He celebrated his 50th birthday with a cake decorated with a noose. He says he plans to surround jailed Palestinians with crocodiles. In videos, he berates foreign activists captured at sea trying to bring aid to Gaza, forced to kneel at his feet with their faces pressed to the ground.
To much of the world and to many Israelis, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the bellicose face of Israel’s far right, is a figure from the fringe of politics, despite over four years in power as police minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
But with an election due next week, polls show a boost in his Jewish Power party’s support, reaching beyond its core of militant settlers in the occupied West Bank, to younger, urban voters who might once have considered him beyond the pale.
According to an opinion poll by Agam Labs at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, not only are Jewish Power supporters younger than the average Israeli voter, but as many as a third of them will be voting for the first time.
“I used to think he was a bit crazy, but then I actually looked at what he was saying, and it all made sense,” said Gavriel Marmon, an 18-year-old student and first-time voter from Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem.
Marmon points to Ben-Gvir’s sponsoring of a law passed in March that makes hanging the default sentence for Palestinians convicted of attacks on Israelis, which Ben-Gvir celebrated with the noose cake and a noose lapel pin. The bill is likely to be struck down by the Israeli courts, in part because it would not apply the same punishment to Jews.
Ben-Gvir is even making inroads in cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, long the bastion of Israeli liberalism. Odelia Kedmi, 41, said his policy to expand permits for Israelis to carry guns had “put air in my lungs”.
“It’s almost like President Trump’s peace through strength,” said Kedmi, whose sister survived the attack by Hamas militants on the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, that triggered the Gaza war. “But peace through Jewish strength.”
Israel’s October 27 election is the first since the 2023 Hamas-led attacks. Many Israelis blame failures by Netanyahu’s government for the deadliest attacks in Israel’s history, and polls show the prime minister’s own Likud party on course to lose around a third of its 32 seats in the 120-seat Knesset.
Yet it is still too early to say whether Netanyahu’s opponents can finally unseat the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, thanks to a shift of many voters, especially the young, even further to the right.
Opinion polls show both Netanyahu’s bloc and the main Jewish-led opposition parties, led by that of former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, falling short of securing a majority.
But Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power, which in 2022 relied on a joint list with two other far-right groups to be sure of making the threshold to win seats, is now forecast to win eight or more seats standing on its own.
That would put it roughly on par with the rump of the former Labour Party that governed Israel for generations, now known as the Democrats, the only major Jewish-led party that still backs a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict.
On Israel’s crowded right, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the governing coalition’s other main far-right figure, has faced wobbles for vacillating over an exemption from military service for religious students, resented by many nationalists.
But Ben-Gvir, staking out the furthest right-wing turf of all, has seen no similar threat to his backers’ enthusiasm. On the campaign trail, he speaks in terms of Jewish pride, and vows more conquest of land he says was promised in the Bible.
“We have returned home after two thousand years of exile and we need to be proud,” Ben-Gvir said to cheers from supporters at a town hall in Tel Aviv this month. “We have to be proud and conquer Gaza, because it’s all ours.”
Ben-Gvir, who declined to comment for this story, was known as a hardline extremist long before Netanyahu brought him into government.
He was convicted in Israel in 2007 of racist incitement and support for a banned terrorist group, for holding up a sign backing Meir Kahane, a slain rabbi jailed in both Israel and the United States for plotting and carrying out violent attacks.
For years Ben-Gvir was known for displaying a photo in his house of Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish gunman who killed 29 Palestinian worshippers in an attack on a Hebron mosque in 1994. He said he would take the portrait down in 2020, in what he called a gesture to deprive a rival right-wing figure of an excuse to exclude his followers from his bloc.
Since taking charge of prisons under Netanyahu, he has boasted of tougher conditions for Palestinians, cutting food to the barest minimum. Many prisoners have since emerged emaciated.
He also drew condemnation after he released a video of himself mocking detained Gaza flotilla activists, forced to kneel with their hands bound following their interception in international waters.
Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway added him and Smotrich to their sanctions lists last year for inciting violence in the West Bank. The EU has debated a similar move although it has yet to reach consensus.
The foreign condemnation is a badge of honour for supporters. Jewish Power is unconcerned about Israel’s image in the West, Yishai Fleisher, a Ben-Gvir adviser and settler spokesperson, said at the town hall.
“We might as well first have our region respect us and accept us, and then the rest of the world will understand: Israel is here to stay.”
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during an unannounced visit to Israel on Monday, a person familiar with the matter said, as tensions flare between the US and Iran.
The person did not say what the two men discussed during the meeting, first reported by Axios. The Pentagon declined to comment. The Israeli prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hegseth said in a social media post that he had visited US service members in the Central Command area of responsibility, which covers the Middle East, northeast Africa and parts of Asia.
Israel’s Army Radio reported his meeting with Netanyahu took place at an air force base in Israel’s southern desert.
Hegseth’s visit comes amid rising tensions in the Middle East war as tensions flare between the U.S. and Iran over the Strait of Hormuz and as Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthis intensify their attacks on Saudi Arabia.
It also came a day after US President Donald Trump endorsed Netanyahu in next week’s parliamentary election in Israel, the country’s first ballot since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel.
US and Israeli forces launched joint strikes against Iran in late February, setting off the wider Middle East war. Netanyahu told Israeli media this month that he’s not seeking to attack Iran before the October 27 Israeli election. Trump has said he will not attack Iran before US midterm elections in November.
Vice President JD Vance declined to endorse Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's reelection bid, saying he intends to stay out of Israel's election despite President Donald Trump throwing his support behind the Israeli leader.
During an interview Monday with Mark Halperin on "2WAY Tonight," Vance said his focus remains on U.S. candidates ahead of the midterms, Politico reported.
"The president has the most effective endorsement in American or international political history," Vance said. "I endorse American candidates, and that’s where I’m focused on in the midterms. So I’m not getting involved in Israeli elections."
OMAR RAID DRAWS OMINOUS WARNING FROM VANCE AS HE BLASTS PROGRESSIVE REP'S 'RAGE' TOWARD AMERICA
However, Vance made clear that his decision should not be interpreted as opposition to Netanyahu.
"I’m not anti-endorsing him. I’m not pro-endorsing him. I’m not getting involved in Israeli elections," the vice president added.
The comments come one day after Trump gave Netanyahu his "Complete and Total Endorsement" in a lengthy Truth Social post, praising the prime minister as a key U.S. ally and partner in confronting Iran.
"Bibi Netanyahu has been a Great Warrior Prime Minister, and an even greater Partner for Peace in combatting the Islamic Republic of Iran," Trump wrote.
Trump said Netanyahu had remained strong despite intense political pressure.
"Please let this Letter serve to represent my Complete and Total Endorsement of Bibi Netanyahu in his upcoming Race for Re-Election as Prime Minister of Israel. BIBI NETANYAHU WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!" Trump said.
Netanyahu quickly welcomed the president's backing, thanking Trump for what he called his "extraordinary endorsement."
"President Trump, my friend Donald — thank you for your extraordinary endorsement," he said. "Israel has never had a greater friend in the White House. Together we will never let Iran's regime get nuclear weapons. Thank you for your clarity, courage and unwavering support."
Vance's decision to stay out of Israel's election comes after he reportedly waded into another foreign political contest earlier this year.
The vice president previously traveled to Hungary in April, where he campaigned alongside then-Prime Minister Viktor Orban shortly before Orban lost his reelection bid, according to Politico.
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The White House could not immediately be reached by Fox News Digital for comment.
At least eight Palestinians, including four children, were killed in Israeli assaults in different parts of the Gaza Strip over the last two days.
On Monday, October 19, Israeli forces launched drone strikes on north-central Gaza City and the southern city of Khan Younis, killing a Palestinian man and two children.
One day earlier, five Palestinians were killed and several others were injured in Israeli shelling and gunfire across the besieged enclave. This includes two children, who were shot dead by Israeli soldiers in separate attacks.
One of the slain children was identified as 13-year-old Tamer Soboh, who was killed in the northern city of Beit Lahia; the other was Misk al-Dalu, who died after Israeli troops opened fire at tents sheltering displaced people in al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, mass funerals remain common across Gaza as Palestinians dig through the rubble to recover the remains of their loved ones.
On Sunday, the remains of 75 Palestinians were buried in the Sheikh Radwan Cemetery in Gaza city, the majority of whom were children and women killed in Israeli airstrikes that targeted their homes during the three-year genocide.
While mass killings are underway in the war-ravaged territory, the humanitarian crisis further deteriorates not only because of Israel’s continued blockade and restrictions on the entry of goods and supplies, but also because of measures taken by some organizations concerned with providing aid to the population.
On Monday, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) announced that it will reduce food assistance in Gaza by around one-third due to shortage of funding. This means that 500,000 people will lose access to critical assistance.
It is worth noting that since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal aggression on Gaza, the WFP provided food assistance for up to 90% of families in the Gaza Strip.
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