SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 8.21.2026
Perhaps no Israeli leader, aside from Benjamin Netanyahu is more responsible for Israeli criminal behavior than Itamar Ben-Gvir.
The blogger keeps reading reports about Itamar Ben-Gvir. Israel’s Minister of National Security. A man who thinks Palestinians are sub-human; has happily posted videos of himself tormenting protesters who sailed to Palestine to support the people of Gaza and published a video of himself touting ‘gallows’ for Palestinians.
It comes as no surprise that much of the world now treats Israel as a ‘pyrrhia’ State. Its reprisal actions since October 7, 2023 when Hamas brutally murdered 1195 mostly Israelis October 7 attacks – Wikipedia has been labeled ‘Genocide’ by many world leaders and nations.
It is genuinely appalling to learn of how truly despicable is his conduct. The latest inflammatory comments being his wish that 30-40 Palestinians be killed each day.
Call to kill Gazans
In August 2026, he called for killing “30 to 40” people in Gaza every night while speaking to a former hostage, Rom Brasalavski, on a podcast. Ben-Gvir clarified that the killings should go beyond those who “pose an immediate threat”, stating that “there are people there who are not worthy of life… they’re not even people.”[92]
His statement was condemned by the Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, stating that Ben-Gvir’s statement was “inhumane”, “unacceptable” and a violation of international law.[93] Jean-Noël Barrot, France’s foreign minister, also condemned Ben-Gvir’s remarks, calling them “intolerable” and “inhumane”.[94] United Nations secretary-general António Guterres called the remarks as “appaling”, “dehumanizing”, “outrageous”, and “dangerous”.[95] Guterres’ spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, called his remarks as “abhorrent” and “scandalous”.[96]
Ben-Gvir has also called for the ‘hanging’ of Palestinians and showed off the proposed site in a video.
Last year, the commission concluded that “Israel had committed genocide against the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip, found that the intense scale and systematic nature of the Israeli military operations have continued, resulting in unprecedented death, injury and trauma of Palestinian children.”
Here are some findings in the commission’s latest report:
- Israel has killed 20,000 children and injured 44,000 more since 7 October 2023
- Severe physical and mental injuries, mass trauma, orphanhood, separation, disability, repeated displacements, starvation and the collapse of education and healthcare have erased childhood and will continue to affect children in Gaza throughout their lives
- Palestinian children have been arrested and subjected to torture and other severe forms of mistreatment in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, with no information on their whereabouts
- Israeli security forces have used sexual violence against children as part of the collective shaming and oppression, entrenched within a prolonged, ethnic, gendered and intergenerational pattern of occupation and hostilities
Ben-Gvir is a settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank; according to the BBC, his “political background lies in Kahanism—a violently racist movement that supports the expulsion of Palestinians from their lands”. He has a long history of anti-Arab activism, leading to dozens of indictments and at least eight convictions of crimes including incitement to racism and support for, as well as possession of propaganda of, a terrorist organization (the now-illegal Kach political party). As a lawyer, he is known for defending Jews accused of Jewish extremist terrorism in Israeli courts.
Ben-Gvir is known for being a provocateur and has attracted headlines for a variety of reasons: threatening Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on live television in 1995 shortly before his assassination; having had a portrait in his living room of Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish terrorist and mass murderer; calling in 2019 for the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel who are not loyal to the state;[2] inciting violent clashes between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in 2021; and making highly controversial visits to the Temple Mount, where the al-Aqsa Mosque is located, in 2023 and 2024.
Itamar Ben-Gvir (Hebrew: אִיתָמָר בֶּן גְּבִיר [itaˈmaʁ benˈgviʁ]; born 6 May 1976) is an Israeli politician and lawyer who has served as the minister of national security since 2022, except for a two-month gap in early 2025. He is the leader of Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”), an Israeli far-right, Kahanist and anti-Arab party which won six seats in the 2022 legislative election and is part of the thirty-seventh government of Israel.
Top photo: Itamar Ben-Gvir and Benjamin Netanyahu
Holst’s The Planets – Mars, the Bringer of War
Gustav Holst’s The Planets, Op. 32, is a seven-movement orchestral suite composed between 1914 and 1917, inspired by astrology rather than astronomy. The first movement, Mars, the Bringer of War, sets a tone of relentless aggression and military force Wikipedia+1. performed appropriately by the United States Marine Band
Lee's Perspective 