{"id":3002,"date":"2026-10-20T13:03:45","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T08:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=3002"},"modified":"2026-10-20T13:03:45","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T08:03:45","slug":"israels-ben-gvir-poised-for-election-gains-as-young-voters-turn-to-far-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=3002","title":{"rendered":"Israel’s Ben-Gvir poised for election gains as young voters turn to far right"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

He celebrated his 50th birthday with a cake decorated with a noose. He says he plans to surround jailed Palestinians with crocodiles. In videos, he berates foreign activists captured at sea trying to bring aid to Gaza, forced to kneel at his feet with their faces pressed to \u200bthe ground.<\/strong><\/p>\n

To much of the world and to many Israelis, Itamar Ben-Gvir<\/a>, the bellicose face of Israel\u2019s far right, is a figure from the fringe of politics, despite over four years in power \u200cas police minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government.<\/p>\n

But with an election due next week<\/a>, polls show a boost in his Jewish Power party\u2019s support, reaching beyond its core of militant settlers in the occupied West Bank, to younger, urban voters who might once have considered him beyond the pale.<\/p>\n

According to an opinion poll by Agam Labs at Jerusalem\u2019s Hebrew University, not only are Jewish Power supporters younger than the average Israeli voter, but as many as a third of them will be voting for the first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to think he was \u200ba bit crazy, but then I actually looked at what he was saying, and it all made sense,\u201d said Gavriel Marmon, an 18-year-old student and first-time voter from Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

Marmon points to Ben-Gvir\u2019s sponsoring \u200bof a law<\/a> passed in March that makes hanging the default sentence for Palestinians convicted of attacks on Israelis, which Ben-Gvir celebrated with the noose cake and a noose \u2060lapel pin. The bill is likely to be struck down by the Israeli courts, in part because it would not apply the same punishment to Jews.<\/p>\n

Ben-Gvir is even making inroads in cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, long the bastion of Israeli liberalism. \u200bOdelia Kedmi, 41, said his policy to expand permits for Israelis to carry guns had \u201cput air in my lungs\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s almost like President Trump\u2019s peace through strength,\u201d said Kedmi, whose sister survived the attack by Hamas militants on the Nova music \u200bfestival on October 7, 2023, that triggered the Gaza war. \u201cBut peace through Jewish strength.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u2018Toxic combination for hardline attitudes\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Israel\u2019s October 27 election is the first since the 2023 Hamas-led attacks. Many Israelis blame failures by Netanyahu\u2019s government for the deadliest attacks in Israel\u2019s history, and polls show the prime minister\u2019s own Likud party on course to lose around a third of its 32 seats in the 120-seat Knesset.<\/p>\n

Yet it is still too early to say whether Netanyahu\u2019s opponents can finally unseat the most right-wing government in Israel\u2019s history, thanks to a \u200bshift of many voters, especially the young, even further to the right.<\/p>\n

Opinion polls show both Netanyahu\u2019s bloc and the main Jewish-led opposition parties, led by that of former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, falling short of securing a majority.<\/p>\n

But Ben-Gvir\u2019s \u200bJewish Power, which in 2022 relied on a joint list with two other far-right groups to be sure of making the threshold to win seats, is now forecast to win eight or more seats standing on its own.<\/p>\n

That would put it roughly on \u200cpar with the \u2060rump of the former Labour Party that governed Israel for generations, now known as the Democrats, the only major Jewish-led party that still backs a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Global condemnation over Ben-Gvir actions as police minister<\/strong><\/h3>\n

On Israel\u2019s crowded right, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the governing coalition\u2019s other main far-right figure, has faced wobbles<\/a> for vacillating over an exemption from military service for religious students, resented by many nationalists.<\/p>\n

But Ben-Gvir, staking out the furthest right-wing turf of all, has seen no similar threat to his backers\u2019 enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

On the campaign trail, he speaks in terms of Jewish pride, and vows more conquest of land he says was promised in the Bible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have returned home after two thousand years of exile \u200b, and we need to be proud,\u201d Ben-Gvir said to cheers \u200bfrom supporters at a town hall in Tel \u2060Aviv this month. \u201cWe have to be proud and conquer Gaza, because it\u2019s all ours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben-Gvir, who declined to comment for this story, was known as a hardline extremist long before Netanyahu brought him into government.<\/p>\n

He was convicted in Israel in 2007 of racist incitement and support for a banned terrorist group, for holding up a sign backing Meir Kahane, a slain \u200brabbi jailed in both Israel and the United States for plotting and carrying out violent attacks.<\/p>\n

For years Ben-Gvir was known for displaying a photo in his house \u200bof Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish gunman \u2060who killed 29 Palestinian worshippers in an attack on a Hebron mosque in 1994. He said he would take the portrait down in 2020, in what he called a gesture to deprive a rival right-wing figure of an excuse to exclude his followers from his bloc.<\/p>\n

Since taking charge of prisons under Netanyahu, he has boasted of tougher conditions for Palestinians, cutting food to the barest minimum. Many prisoners have since emerged emaciated<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He also drew condemnation after he released a video of himself mocking detained Gaza flotilla activists<\/a>, forced to \u2060kneel with their \u200bhands bound following their interception in international waters.<\/p>\n

Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway added him and Smotrich to their sanctions lists<\/a> last year \u200bfor inciting violence in the West Bank. The EU has debated a similar move although it has yet to reach consensus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The foreign condemnation is a badge of honour for supporters. Jewish Power is unconcerned about Israel\u2019s image in the West, Yishai Fleisher, a Ben-Gvir adviser and settler spokesperson, said at the \u200btown hall.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe might as well first have our region respect us and accept us, and then the rest of the world will understand: Israel is here to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He celebrated his 50th birthday with a cake decorated with a noose. He says he plans to surround jailed Palestinians with crocodiles. In videos, he berates foreign activists captured at sea trying to bring aid to Gaza, forced to kneel at his feet with their faces pressed to \u200bthe ground. To much of the world and to many Israelis, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the bellicose face of Israel\u2019s far right, is a figure from the fringe of politics, despite over four years in power \u200cas police minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}