(JTA) — NEW YORK — As he told an audience of his plan to encourage Palestinians to voluntarily leave the Gaza Strip, Itamar Ben-Gvir shrugged off the threat of being arrested on foreign soil for violating international law.
“I take my vacations in Tiberias or Eilat,” the Israeli national security minister quipped in Hebrew. “I don’t go abroad much.”
If there was any irony in that statement — said while Ben-Gvir sat on the top floor of the Wall Street Grill, a tiny kosher restaurant in Manhattan’s Financial District — he didn’t allude to it. And though he isn’t facing arrest while in the United States, this trip has been far from a smooth one for the most prominent figure on Israel’s far Right.
Ben-Gvir landed in Florida on Monday, and came to New York City via an appearance at the Jewish society Shabtai at Yale University, where hundreds demonstrated against him and briefly set up a protest encampment. The appearance at Shabtai stirred controversy within and outside the group, and at least one synagogue has canceled a planned Ben-Gvir appearance this weekend.
Protests greet Ben-Gvir
In Manhattan, UnXeptable, the Israel-American anti-Netanyahu protest group, drew a lineup of local Jewish politicians and activists to speak out against him in earshot of the space where he spoke. The exact location of his talk, also hosted by Shabtai, wasn’t sent out to confirmed attendees until about two hours before it was set to begin.
If the intention was to avoid protesters, it didn’t work. Minutes into his remarks, a man barged in and yelled, “Get the f*** out of New York, Itamar!” proceeding to compare him to a Nazi before being removed by security.
Later, the first question from the audience came from Guy Benjamin, a former Israeli Air Force pilot who told Ben-Gvir he left Israel “because of people like you, honestly” — calling Ben-Gvir a “promoter of racism” and criticizing him for opposing an agreement to free the Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
That, in turn, prompted a rejoinder from Phillip Jacobs, a Ben-Gvir supporter, who interrupted Benjamin and told him, “Knock it off, you’re insulting him.”
Even the person who introduced Ben-Gvir, Shabtai board member Nava Greenfield, said that when she read about his record, “not a single position spoke to me, and many truly upset me.” She went on to defend Shabtai’s mission of providing a forum for a diversity of political views.
If anything, Ben-Gvir seemed energized by the protests, even as he simultaneously promoted his hardline record while endeavoring to convince his audience that he is no longer the extremist he once was.
A disciple of the late extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, Ben-Gvir has in the past been convicted of incitement to racism, and charged with other crimes. Speaking to the New York audience, Ben-Gvir said he had grown.
“That’s one of the reasons I’m here in the United States: Too often, my name is mentioned in all kinds of contexts that are either not true or are from the past,” he said. “I’ve done many things that always began from, and came to, one thing: love of Israel.”
At another point, when Tablet journalist Liel Leibovitz, who was interviewing Ben-Gvir, quoted back his previous criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the minister, age 48, responded, “First of all, decades have passed. You’re bringing up things from my past when I was 17, 18, 23 and 25.”
Ben-Gvir said he did not agree with everything Kahane said. “When I was young, I thought we’d have to expel all of the Arabs, and now I think the reality is more complex,” he said.
But he still praised Kahane, who was born and raised in New York, and founded the extremist Jewish Defense League here before moving to Israel and becoming a politician. His party was shunned by other politicians, and later banned from Israel’s parliament for racism.
“Whoever reads Rabbi Kahane, and learns about Rabbi Kahane, sees one very, very strong thing from him: a great love of Israel,” Ben-Gvir said, adding later, “You can’t take from Rabbi Kahane what he did here with the Jewish Defense League, and the fact that he acted and was murdered because he’s a Jew who acted for the state of Israel.”
And Ben-Gvir didn’t shy away from his record. Among the policies he touted:
Making conditions harsher in Israel’s security prisons (before he took control, he said, “The terrorists had a summer camp.”).
Encouraging civilian gun ownership in Israel — he said the number of annual civilian firearm permits issued by the Israeli government has grown from 8,000 to 200,000.
Promoting Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, a longtime cause of elements of Israel’s religious right (“Did you know that there’s apartheid against Jews?”). He drew applause after describing how now, Jews are allowed to pray at the holy site, which is also revered by Muslims and has long been a flashpoint of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And Ben-Gvir said another reason he was in the United States was to promote President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza — to depopulate the enclave of Palestinians and have the United States take it over. He has previously boasted about scuttling deals to end the war and release the remaining hostages. He also called for food warehouses in Gaza to be bombed and power generators there to be shut off.
“I want more and more and more activism,” he said. “I want us to implement the Trump plan. I want a more forceful war.”
(On Thursday, a State Department spokesperson said the idea of bombing food supplies is “in complete contradiction” to US aims.)
Those policies, and more, were what brought a small crowd of American and Israeli Jews to protest outside the restaurant, along with a roster of speakers including Rep. Jerry Nadler, the Manhattan Jewish Democrat; Comptroller Brad Lander, who is running for mayor; Rabbis Jill Jacobs, Sharon Kleinbaum and Josh Weinberg, and activist Offir Gutelzon.
Protesters held Israeli flags in addition to signs with a red circle and dash over Ben-Gvir’s face. One homemade sign read, “Fascism has never been good for the Jews.” They chanted “Shame!” as well as “Criminal” in Hebrew.
“The best thing we can do to stand up both for Israeli democracy and for New York values is to shun Itamar Ben-Gvir,” Lander said in an interview. “He is committing human rights violation after human rights violation and its completely inconsistent both with the values of a Jewish and democratic Israel and with the values of New York City, so we’re saying, get out of our city.”
Jacobs, who heads the liberal rabbinic group T’ruah, said that if given the chance to confront Ben-Gvir, she would say, “You claim to be a religious person, and you should know redeeming captives is one of the most important Jewish commandments, and you are boasting about violating it.”
In the room with Ben-Gvir were some people who agreed with his vision.
“He could use a little bit of a filter, but 90% of what he says, in the end, is correct,” said Phillip Jacobs. He was the attendee who later accused another audience member, Guy Benjamin, of “insulting” Ben-Gvir.
Ben-Gvir did not seem to mind Benjamin — and in fact became visibly animated when responding to his criticisms. At the end of his talk, he addressed Benjamin again.
“I want to cause your kids and you to come back to Israel,” Ben-Gvir said. “You don’t have to love me. That’s OK.”
