Controversial Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir is scheduled to travel to New York next month to participate in the annual United Nations policing summit, Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz has reported. Ben Gvir will lead a delegation from Israel’s national security ministry to the two-day conference, which is set to run from July 7 to 8 under the official theme “Investing in Peace”. The high-profile gathering brings together security ministers and police leaders from across the globe to explore how national and cross-border law enforcement agencies can work together to advance shared goals of global peace, security and inclusive development.
What makes Ben Gvir’s upcoming appearance notable is his years-long, public record of fierce criticism against the United Nations. As recently as June 2024, after Israel was added to the UN’s blacklist of state actors responsible for harming children in conflict zones, Ben Gvir launched a scathing attack, claiming the global body had aligned itself with Hamas and become an accomplice to terrorist activity. Earlier that same year, he publicly celebrated Israeli forces’ destruction of a facility belonging to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (UNRWA) in occupied East Jerusalem.
Just one week before news of his planned UN trip broke, Ben Gvir sparked international outrage by calling for the abduction of Lebanese women and young people as a pressure tactic against the Hezbollah militant group. “Let’s start thinking outside the box about Hezbollah,” he stated in public comments. “Conquering territory and killing many terrorists, but also detaining their women and youth and taking them to terrorist prisons… That’s what hurts them the most.”
The month prior to that call, a video showing Ben Gvir overseeing the mistreatment of activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla, which was seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza, went viral online and drew widespread condemnation both inside Israel and across the international community. Footage captured Ben Gvir waving an Israeli flag and confronting the detained activists while Israeli Prison Service officers forced the detainees to kneel face-down on the ground and manhandled them. The incident prompted official criticism from multiple world leaders, including representatives from nations whose citizens were among those detained. While condemnation also emerged within Israel, much of the domestic criticism centered on concerns that the embarrassing incident had severely damaged Israel’s global reputation.
Ben Gvir, who resides in the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba in the occupied Palestinian city of Hebron, has long been the public face of efforts by Israeli settlers to storm Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a flashpoint site sacred to both Muslims and Jews. His far-right ideological views are rooted in the legacy of Meir Kahane, an ultranationalist American-Israeli rabbi, former Israeli lawmaker and founder of the Kach Party, a movement that openly advocated for the creation of an ethnically pure Jewish state and the expulsion of all Palestinians from Israeli-controlled territory.
Ben Gvir joined Kach as an activist at the age of 16, years before the party was designated a terrorist organization by the United States and banned by the Israeli government following the 1994 Ibrahimi Mosque massacre in Hebron. In that attack, Kach member Baruch Goldstein opened fire on unarmed Palestinian worshippers at the holy site, killing dozens of people. Despite the attack’s global notoriety, Ben Gvir has openly praised both Kahane and Goldstein. He has repeatedly referred to Kahane as a “holy man, a righteous man”, and for decades kept a portrait of Goldstein hanging on the wall of his personal residence. A previously unearthed video from a Jewish Purim celebration also shows Ben Gvir dressed in costume as Goldstein, declaring “He is my hero.”
In 2007, Ben Gvir was convicted by an Israeli court on charges of inciting racism and supporting a banned terrorist organization, after he was found carrying a sign that read “Arabs out”. Police also discovered Kahanist posters in his vehicle that read “It’s us or them” and “There is a solution – expel the Arab enemy.” For many years prior to entering politics, Ben Gvir worked as a lawyer representing Israelis accused of anti-Palestinian incitement and violent attacks against Palestinians. His highest-profile client was one of two Israeli teenagers charged with carrying out a 2015 arson attack on a Palestinian family home in the West Bank village of Duma, an attack that killed an 18-month-old Palestinian baby and multiple other family members.
Just days before news of his planned UN trip was confirmed, Ben Gvir was forced to scrap a separate trip to the United States to attend a friend’s wedding after he encountered unexpected difficulties securing a US travel visa. However, a source familiar with the plans told Haaretz that Ben Gvir is not expected to face similar barriers for his upcoming UN trip, thanks to his official status as a sitting Israeli cabinet minister.
This independent reporting was originally published by Middle East Eye, which provides in-depth, independent coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and global affairs.