Itamar Ben-Gvir

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

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".

A far-right member of the Knesset and a settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Ben Gvir has faced criminal 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 Kach, classified by Israel as a terrorist group, which espoused Kahanism, an anti-Arab and religious Zionist ideology.

Ben Gvir had been long accused of being a provocateur, having led several contentious marches to the Temple Mount as an activist and member of Knesset, 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.