Itamar Ben-Gvir is an Israeli lawyer, and a leader in the Israeli far-right Otzma Yehudit party. He is known for defending Jewish radicals on trial in Israel. He has called for the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel who are not loyal to Israel. Ben-Gvir is currently running for a seat in the Knesset in the upcoming elections in the first slot of the Otzma Yehudit electoral list.
Biography
Itamar Ben-Gvir was born on 6 May 1976, and grew up in the affluent Jerusalem suburb of Mevaseret Zion. His father was a Kurdish-Jewish immigrant from Iraq who worked at a gasoline company and dabbled in writing, while his mother was a homemaker. His family was secular, but as a teenager, he adopted religious and radical right-wing views during the First Intifada. He first joined a right-wing youth movement affiliated with Moledet, a party which advocated transferring Arabs out of Israel, and then joined the youth movement of the even more radical Kach and Kahane Chai party, which was eventually outlawed by the Israeli government. He became youth coordinator of Kach, and claimed that he was detained at age 14. When he came of age for conscription into the Israel Defense Forces at 18, he was exempted from service by the IDF due to his extreme-right political background. Ben-Gvir continued to be associated with the Kahanist movement. In the 1990s, he was active in protests against the Oslo Accords. In 1995, a few weeks before the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Ben-Gvir came to public attention for the first time when he appeared on television brandishing a Cadillac emblem that had been stolen from Rabin's car and declared: "We got to his car, and we'll get to him too." However, when forming the Otzma Yehudit party, he claimed that it would not be a Kach Kahane Chai or splinter group. He carried out a series of far-right activities that have resulted in dozens of indictments. In a November 2015 interview, he claimed to have been indicted 53 times. In most cases, the charges were thrown out of court.
Political Life
Itamar Ben-Gvir was the parliamentary assistant in the 18th Knesset for Michael Ben-Ari On 23 July 2017, he was part of the leadership of a protest that included dozens of people outside of the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem. The protest was in conjuncture of both Lehava and Otzma Yehudit. On 25 February 2019, Ben-Gvir said that Arab citizens of Israel who were not loyal to Israel "must be expelled". Ben-Gvir has a photo of Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Muslims at the Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994, hanging in his home.
Law
Ben-Gvir sometimes represented himself during his many indictments, and at the suggestion of several judges, he decided to study law. Ben-Gvir studied law at the Ono Academic College. At the end of his studies, the Israel Bar Association blocked him from taking the bar exam on grounds of his criminal record. Ben-Gvir claimed the decision was politically motivated. After a series of appeals, this decision was overturned, but it was ruled that Ben-Gvir would first have to settle three criminal cases in which he was charged at the time. After being acquitted in all three cases on charges including holding an illegal gathering and disturbing a civil servant, Ben-Gvir was allowed to take the exam. He passed the written and oral examinations, and was granted a license to practice law. As a lawyer, Ben-Gvir has represented a series of far-right Jewish activists suspected of terrorism and hate crimes. Notable clients include Benzi Gopstein and two teenagers charged in the Duma arson attack. Haaretz described Ben-Gvir as the "go-to man" for Jewish extremists facing legal trouble, and reported that his client list "reads like a 'Who's Who' of suspects in Jewish terror cases and hate crimes in Israel". Ben-Gvir is also the lawyer for Lehava, a far-right Israeli anti-assimilation organization which is active in opposing Jewish intermarriage with non-Jews, and has sued the waqf. Ben-Gvir says that his work as a lawyer for far-right Jewish activists is motivated by a desire to help them, and not for money.
Personal life
Ben-Gvir is married to Ayala Nimrodi, who grew up in Jerusalem and is a distant relative of Ofer Nimrodi, the former owner of the Maariv daily newspaper. The couple has five children, and they live as settlers in Hebron.
