Itamar Ben-Gvir
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Itamar Ben Gvir (born 1977) is a leader of and the spokesman for The Chayil Party, a right-wing Jewish party in Israel. He holds multiple criminal convictions. [1]
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[edit] Party Policy
Among its goals are the transfer of all Non-Jews in Israel who object to Israel as a Jewish state. A member of the Kach Party since the age of 14, Ben Gvir denies that there is a such thing as current membership, citing government harassment as impeding that. Nevertheless, he and his colleagues, mainly the former Kach leaders Noam Federman and Baruch Marzel, remain the students of their teacher and leader, Kach founder and ideologue Rabbi Meir Kahane, as the basis of their arguments.
[edit] Rise to Prominence
Since the 1990 assassination of Rabbi Kahane in New York, Marzel has been the de facto political leader of the former Kach activists. Today, Ben-Gvir is the spokesman and youth organizer and Federman is the most aggressive activist in the field and the spiritual leader of The Hilltop Youth. Ben Gvir has often been accused of incitement for the fierce verbal attacks he throws against political figures, almost always calling them in some way traitors.
Since the February 25, 1994 mass killings of Arabs in Hebron by Dr. Baruch Goldstein security authorities have increased their pressure and surveillance of Ben-Gvir and fellow activists. He has boasted that he was detained in prison more times than he can count, but maintains that every detention was administrative, meaning that he never received trial, and that therefore this constitutes state harassment. Ben-Gvir's causes have often led to media frenzies. A notorious incident was one in Jerusalem in the 1990s when he chased senior Palestinian Authority official Muhammad Dahlan using an Israeli flag as his weapon, a scene that humiliated both local security officials and Dahlan's bodyguards. Ben-Gvir recently led protests during the visit of German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, denouncing the hanging of German flags for the state visit. He claims that the German state doesn't deserve any special honours in the country where its victims' descendants found refuge.
[edit] Current Causes
Since the recent founding of Baruch Marzel's Chayil Party, Ben-Gvir has been named its spokesman, while at the same time leading the far right's efforts against the planned withdrawal of Jewish residents of the Gaza Strip.
Although Kach members have always been known for their violent methods in the name of self-defense, few of their members are ever imprisoned with trial. Ben Gvir has repeatedly denounced administrative detention, but public sympathy is very limited because of his incendiary statements about politicians, including the late Yitzhak Rabin, remarks considered intolerant even by some Israelis close to his views.
The paradox that he uses as his greatest proof, is the principle of why the Kach Party was banned in 1988. Although an article in Israel's Basic Law says that groups that incite for violence or for racist actions cannot stand for elections, the Moledet and Tekhiya Parties that ran the same year for the Knesset (parliament) were never pressured, even though they had very similar views to Kahane's. One reason thought to have provoked the ban was Kahane's volatile demonstrations in Arab areas, as well as polls showing 1/3 of Israeli youth supporting his views on top of an expected 10 seats in the Knesset in the election. A recent example devised by Ben-Gvir to attack the ban was the Shinui Party's 2003 campaign that included statements targeted against Haredim. This testifies, according to him, to the fact that Israeli justice is arbitrary to what defines a racist party, and therefore enforces it whenever it decides to.
Some people believe that Ben-Gvir may be considered slightly less radical than Noam Federman, yet is by no means a moderate. He is married and has a bachelors in law.
