Itamar Ben-Gvir is Israel’s far-right Minister of National Security. John Kiriakou cites him as an example of what happens when people “convicted of anti-Arab or anti-Muslim hate crimes” are put in charge of security over their victims.[1] He describes Ben-Gvir more specifically as a convicted felon, found guilty by Israeli courts on multiple counts of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate crimes, now serving as national security minister with oversight of security in Gaza and the West Bank.[2] Before the October 7 attack, Kiriakou says, Ben-Gvir — thinking he was “smarter than everybody else” — insisted any attack would come from the West Bank rather than Gaza, and had response teams transferred there, contributing to the delayed response.[3][4] In a separate account, Kiriakou attributes the pre-attack Israeli belief that any conflict would occur in the West Bank rather than Gaza directly to Ben-Gvir, describing him as “the new extreme right-wing” National Security Minister.[5] A co-guest on the same program described Ben-Gvir’s hate-crime convictions in similar terms, adding that he had displayed in his home a portrait of a man who committed a massacre at the Cave of the Patriarchs.[6]
Kiriakou also notes that the Knesset passed a law, under Ben-Gvir’s national-security portfolio, reinstating the death penalty specifically for Palestinian detainees — the first such measure since Israel abolished capital punishment in 1956, with the sole exception made for Adolf Eichmann.[7]