Itamar Ben Gvir and the Shame of Religious Zionism

He's morally obtuse, theologically shallow, and shockingly ineffective. Yet many Religious Zionists continue to be enthralled by Itamar Ben Gvir.

On February 25th, 1994, Dr. Baruch Goldstein entered Maarat HaMachpelah, the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, carrying an assault rifle and 140 rounds of ammunition. Because he was dressed in an army uniform, guards assumed that he had license to be there with his weapon, and didn’t stop him as he entered into a prayer area for Muslims. He opened fire, killing 29 Muslim worshippers; another 125 were injured. Goldstein was eventually hit in the head with a fire extinguisher, after which the crowd beat him to death.

Goldstein’s murderous act was one of the greatest crimes perpetrated in Israeli history by a Jewish person. It was murder, pure and simple, and was also a terrifying desecration of the divine name. In the words of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein zt’l, “A person, whatever his former merits may have been, departed this world while engaged in perpetrating an act of awful and terrible slaughter, teva ayom ve-nora, and thereby, beyond the crime itself, desecrated the name of heaven, trampled upon the honor of the Torah and mitzvot, soiled and sullied the image of Knesset Yisrael, and endangered the future of [Jewish] settlement in Judah, Samaria, and Gaza.”¹

Rabbi Yehuda Amital zt’l wrote, “The sin committed against the sons of Yishmael, the son of Avraham, is only one side of the coin. The other side shows a terrible transgression against God and against the Torah, whose ‘ways are ways of pleasantness, and all of its paths are peace.’ Who dares to garb the Torah and its commandments in such cruelty and ugliness? It has become clear that not only Islam but also the fringe element of Orthodox Jewry is capable of producing terrorists with skullcaps. Not enough has been done, among the students and teachers of Torah, to uproot such false thoughts and ideas… Baruch Goldstein besmirched the Jewish nation and the Torah with the disgrace of spilling innocent blood. Beyond the moral and religious baseness of killing innocent people as they knelt in prayer, the terrible murder caused a desecration of God’s Name in the eyes of the entire world.”

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks zt’l added, “Such an act is an obscenity and a travesty of Jewish values. That it should have been perpetrated against worshippers in a house of prayer at a holy time makes it a blasphemy as well... Violence is evil. Violence committed in the name of God is doubly evil. Violence against those engaged in worshipping God is unspeakably evil.”²

Immediately, some tried to justify Goldstein’s heinous act by saying that a Hamas attack upon the Jewish population of Hebron was imminent, and that he slaughtered the worshippers in order to avert it. Others suggested that as a physician who had repeatedly witnessed the spilling of Jewish blood, he simply snapped.

It doesn’t matter. Hamas also “justifies” its violence against Jews. Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 people at prayer while injuring another 125. He was a murderer whose act should be universally condemned in the strongest and most uncompromising terms.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir had, for many years, a picture of Baruch Goldstein hanging on the wall of his living room.

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The list of Itamar Ben Gvir’s morally offensive positions is long and not very varied; they all involve extremism, fundamentalism, threats of violence against Arabs, and excusing violence perpetrated by Jews. While he claims that he moderated³ his positions as he got older - and there was a lot to moderate, as he was a passionate supporter of Meir Kahane, the racist demagogue⁴ who advocated expelling all non-Jews from the State of Israel and whose party was banned by the Supreme Court from running in Knesset elections - the picture of Goldstein remained in his home until 2020, when he removed it, by his own admission, for the sake of political expediency.

Moreover, a “moderated” form of Kahanism is a far cry from a complete rejection of racism and racist violence - and Ben Gvir has never disavowed Kahane, continuing to view him as a source of inspiration and as a mentor, even visiting his grave last November. The creeping Kahanism behind his supposed moderation can be seen in his willingness to countenance violence by hilltop youth against Palestinians, and a refusal to call those who attack or kill innocent Arabs terrorists. This is not a matter of loving Jews; it is an example of racism, pure and simple.

It is upsetting that many Religious Zionist Jews, who value and try to further the Torah’s moral and ethical vision, allow a man like this to represent them.

But Ben Gvir is not merely morally bankrupt; he is also shockingly ineffective at his job.

As the Minister of National Security, he is responsible for overseeing the police department, and prohibited by law from directing or meddling in its operations - a prohibition which he has wantonly and repeatedly ignored by politicizing and improperly influencing police activity. Moreover, Ben Gvir has utterly failed to stop violent crime, particularly in Arab towns and cities; since his appointment as National Security Minister, criminal violence has skyrocketed. As reported by the Times of Israel, “Arab Israeli homicide numbers more than doubled in 2023.” That same article also notes that while official numbers have not yet been released, an unofficial count shows that 2024 was even worse.

Let’s not forget that Ben Gvir was the Minister of National Security on October 7, 2023 - the date of the worst violation of Israeli national security in the country’s history. Like most members of the current government, Ben Gvir has consistently avoided taking any responsibility for government failures on and after October 7, while repeatedly pointing fingers at everyone else who, according to his self-centered logic, caused all the problems.

What Itamar Ben Gvir does more effectively than almost anyone in Israel is talk tough. Many on the Israeli right have an unfortunate tendency to be enthralled by fighting words, and to lionize those who articulate ideas that, to more moderate minds, sound outrageous. (In fact, Prime Minister Netanyahu has effectively made use of this tactic for the past twenty years, verbalizing policies and enunciating threats that are significantly more extreme than his actual policies and voting record, which have been, perhaps surprisingly, somewhat moderate for a right wing politician.) Ben Gvir has effectively masked his incompetence in national security matters by repeatedly enunciating policy positions that are militant and, at times, extreme. And his supporters are captivated by the only person who, in their minds, tells it like it is - even if that means sometimes crossing the line into the realm of the absurd.

It’s not that Ben Gvir’s views are inevitably wrong; rather, they are shallow, uncomplicated, and mind-numbingly predictable. He always advocates - in every conceivable scenario and on every front - for more fighting, for never making any deals, for demonstrating Jewish power no matter the international opprobrium or potentially negative consequences. He represents a caricature of a right wing demagogue, a loud and obnoxious talking head which oozes superficiality.

Finally, let’s discuss the ideology of “Jewish Power” championed by Itamar Ben Gvir.

As articulated by Rabbi Elli Fischer in a recent Facebook post, the entire creed advocated by Ben Gvir and his Otzmah Yehudit (Jewish Power) party represents a fundamental theological error. Almost no Israeli - left, right, or center - denigrates the importance of building a strong, robust, and effective army. That, however, is a far cry from the Ben Gvir attitude that “My power and the might of my hand has given me this prosperity.” (Devarim 8:17) As Rabbi Fischer accurately notes, the Otzmah Yehudit campaign slogan of “Who here is the Master of the House?” - clearly implying that the correct answer to this rhetorical question is we, the Jewish people - contradicts the Biblical assertion that “The land is Mine, for you are strangers and resident aliens to me.” (Vayikra 25:23) We ignore this theological principle at our own peril - but complex theological thinking was never Ben Gvir’s forte.

(It’s worth noting that the right wing government, by refusing to denounce the Chareidi parties’ insistence that blanket military exemptions be granted to wide swaths of their population, is objectively doing more to constrain the IDF than those on the left who insist on much wider conscription. Ben Gvir’s Otzmah Yehudit party has repeatedly threatened to leave the government for one reason or another - and temporarily did so to protest the ceasefire from January to March - but never over the issue of Chareidi military exemptions. In fact, Ben Gvir has been unusually conciliatory towards the Chareidi parties, saying that coercion won’t work and supporting legislation to effectively enable draft evasion.)

In short, Ben Gvir is ineffective as a government minister, shallow and shortsighted as a policymaker, and dead wrong in his understanding of Jewish theology. Nevertheless, these pale in comparison with the moral perversion that he represents. Let’s not forget that until political realities forced him to take it down, Ben Gvir decorated his home with a portrait of a mass murderer.

As Rav Lichtenstein concluded the letter cited above, “Woe to the ears that hear this! But if it has been decreed that we must hear it, at least there should be a clear protest which expresses not just disassociation, but also disgust and shock. We must make this protest not just to protect our public image, but to preserve our self-image.”

Rav Lichtenstein sent this letter in response to several rashei yeshiva who eulogized Baruch Goldstein in their yeshiva halls - in particular, to Rabbi Dov Lior, who responded to his letter by writing, “Yes, I did eulogize the late Baruch Goldstein (may Hashem avenge his blood), who was lynched by the non-Jews in the Cave [of Machpelah]. A Jew who is killed because he is a Jew must certainly be called kadosh, a holy martyr, just as we refer to the kedoshei ha-Shoah, the holy martyrs of the Holocaust, without investigating their previous conduct.”⁵

There have been many, many Jews killed because they were Jews - but Baruch Goldstein was not one of them. He was killed because he murdered 29 people at prayer. The fact that Rabbi Lior does not acknowledge this should be extremely concerning.

Rabbi Lior is considered the spiritual mentor of Otzmah Yehudit.

Rabbi Lichtenstein’s words of condemnation and pain need to be said anew with regard to the Religious Zionist embrace of Otzmah Yehudit and Itamar Ben Gvir.⁶

1. Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, Leaves of Faith (volume 2), pp. 255-256. Reprinted from Tradition 28:4.

2. The Jewish Chronicle, 4 March 1994, quoted here.

3. This claim of moderation fits the pattern of European neofascists who rebrand themselves as populist right wing leaders under the guise of having moderated their positions. I thank Daniel Goldman for noting this similarity.

4. Meir Kahane advocated racist policies and countenanced violence, while advocating a shallow theology that selectively quoted isolated Torah sources while completely ignoring the traditional halachic process. The fact that Ben Gvir continues to view him as a person worthy of admiration is a moral, religious, and political travesty.

5. Leaves of Faith (volume 2), p. 257.

6. At the risk of stating the obvious: the reasons I enunciated for rejecting Ben Gvir and Otzmah Yehudit have nothing to do with any particular policy position or a dismissal of right wing values. From my perspective, a person can be a card carrying Religious Zionist who staunchly identifies with Israel’s political right wing, and can still be horrified by Ben Gvir’s popularity. In fact, until he was “kashered” by Prime Minister Netanyahu in 2021, the vast majority of Israelis - including those on the right - considered Otzmah well beyond the pale.