Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, has called for the killing of “30 to 40” people in Gaza each night and advocated the re-establishment of Jewish settlements across the Palestinian enclave.
Ben-Gvir, a hardline settler previously convicted of incitement to racism, made the remarks during an interview on a podcast hosted by Rom Braslavski, who was taken hostage by the Palestinian militant group Hamas during its October 7 2023 attack on Israel. The attack triggered the war in Gaza.
In the interview, Ben-Gvir said he disagreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent scaling back of military operations in Gaza, which has come amid a push by US officials to implement a peace plan unveiled by President Donald Trump last year.
“I think we should be doing 30 to 40 targeted assassinations per night,” Ben-Gvir said. He added that the targets should not be limited to people who posed an immediate threat, saying: “There are people there who don’t deserve to live . . . They are not even people.”
Ben-Gvir also called for Jewish settlements to be re-established in the Palestinian territory. He said he envisaged “all Gaza” belonging to Israel and repeated his previous calls for Palestinians to “emigrate”.
“I imagine settlements not just in Gush Katif but throughout Gaza, and encouraging emigration, the more the better,” he said, referring to settlements that were dismantled by Israel in 2005. “And for the terrorists, there should be no emigration. We should just kill them one by one.”
His comments came against the backdrop of the devastating consequences of the war. During Hamas’s October 7 attack, militants killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and took more than 250 hostages to Gaza, where they were kept in harsh conditions, with many saying they suffered abuse in captivity.
Israel responded with a ferocious offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 73,000 people, according to Palestinian officials, and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave. The toll includes 1,200 people killed since a ceasefire took effect last October.
The scale of Israel’s military campaign has drawn intense international criticism. Over the past two years, a growing number of groups, ranging from a UN commission to human rights organisations and genocide scholars, have accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel has vehemently denied the accusations and insisted that it complies with international law.
Ben-Gvir’s latest remarks add to a series of inflammatory statements by the far-right minister, who oversees Israel’s police and prison system. He has previously boasted of making conditions in Israeli prisons tougher, amid widespread reports of abuse of Palestinian prisoners.
His Jewish Power party has also spearheaded efforts to pass a controversial law imposing the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis in acts of terror, while not applying the same penalty to Jewish Israelis who kill Palestinians in similar circumstances.
During the podcast interview, Braslavski, who was one of the final hostages to be freed by Hamas in October 2025, asked to be allowed to execute people sentenced to death on terrorism charges. Ben-Gvir responded that he would do everything possible to fulfil the request.
“I will move heaven and earth and I promise you to do everything so that this happens,” Ben-Gvir said. “It is one of my greatest dreams to see you there.”
The remarks place Ben-Gvir’s calls for further killings and the return of Jewish settlements alongside his broader advocacy for harsher measures against Palestinians, highlighting the continuing influence of far-right positions within Israel’s government as the war and its humanitarian consequences remain the subject of intense international scrutiny.
