The extreme right-wing security minister in the government of Israel has publicly called for the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) to carry out a ‘nightly assassination quota’ of Palestinians in Gaza.
Ultra-Zionist Itamar Ben-Gvir said: ‘I think targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night’.
In comments that came to light on Sunday, Ben-Gvir clarified that he was not talking about targeted killing of ‘terrorists’ but of all Palestinian men, women and children. He said the IOF should kill ‘Not just those who pose an immediate threat – there are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.’
Palestinians, for Ben-Gvir and the Zionist regime he serves, are sub-human not worthy of life.
These remarks by Ben-Gvir were made to Rom Braslavski, a former captive of the Hamas resistance movement, in a podcast that has been widely shared across Palestinian media but largely ignored in Israel.
Ben-Gvir plays a crucial role in the Netanyahu regime leading the Jewish Power Party that forms part of the ruling coalition government.
While he has no formal authority over the IOF, as security minister he sits on Israel’s security cabinet that shapes the genocidal war against Palestinians across Gaza and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank.
In his role he has control over Israel’s police and prison services. Israeli prisons are ‘hell holes’ for Palestinian prisoners who face a regime of torture and starvation, while Ben-Gvir has boasted of deliberately worsening conditions, and as minister he has championed the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of ‘deadly attacks’.
During the podcast, Ben-Gvir further called for the complete occupation of the Gaza Strip and the mass expulsion of over two million Palestinian inhabitants.
The Palestinian rights group, The Gaza Rights Centre (GRC), denounced Ben-Gvir’s inflammatory remarks, charging him with openly promoting the forced displacement of the local population from the Gaza Strip and endorsing genocidal policies.
In a statement issued on Sunday, the GRC emphasised that Ben-Gvir’s statement clearly aligns with the international legal definitions of incitement to genocide.
The GRC cited the 2024 ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which identified Israeli participation in genocide in Gaza and urged the international community to take action in accordance with the Genocide Convention by implementing sanctions against Israeli leaders and ending political and military assistance to the Zionist regime.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, Kazem Gharibabadi, posted on X: ‘These admissions must be documented and preserved for the day these criminals are going to be tried.’
Gharibabadi continued: ‘This Zionist criminal simultaneously speaks of expelling Palestinians and settlement construction throughout Gaza,’ adding, ‘these confessions must be recorded and preserved for the day of reckoning and trial of these criminals.’
Ben-Gvir has a long record of making inflammatory speeches urging genocide and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and the entire occupied territories. He has championed the state murder of Palestinian prisoners and led attacks by settlers against villages and Palestinian homes by Zionist settlers protected by the IOF.
Last year, the Labour government sanctioned Ben-Gvir over ‘repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities’ in the occupied West Bank.
Even this token sanctioning was met with howls of outrage from the United States and Netanyahu, while having absolutely no effect on the expanding genocidal war that has killed over 1,250 people in Gaza since the ‘ceasefire’ took hold in October.
Sanctioning Ben-Gvir was simply a gesture by the Labour government while Zionist genocide is taking place before the eyes of workers and youth in the UK and world.
The time for gestures is over, and the working class must act by forcing the TUC to call a general strike to bring down the Labour government that criminalises anti-genocide protesters while defending the genocidal Israeli state, going forward to a workers government and socialism.
A workers government will sanction the entire criminal terrorist state of Israel and immediately recognise the independent State of Palestine and provide it with all the material support it needs to flourish.
