Ben-Gvir emerges from extremist right to become a leading figure in Israel elections

For many years Itamar Ben-Gvir was considered beyond the pale, on the extremist fringes of the Israeli racist right: today he has emerged as a leading figure in the Israeli election campaign who could determine the fate of the November contest.

Polls this week showed Mr Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Strength) party winning eight or nine seats in the 120-seat Knesset parliament, emerging as the fourth largest party.

With the polls showing the bloc supporting former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu only a seat or two short of clinching an overall majority, Mr Ben-Gvir will be able to demand a key ministerial portfolio if Mr Netanyahu is given the mandate to form a coalition.

He has already made it clear that his party will not sit in a coalition where Arab parties are represented.

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Mr Ben-Gvir came to prominence as a leading supporter of slain Rabbi Meir Kahane, who served in the Knesset from 1981-1985 and whose Kach party was then banned for its anti-Arab racism.

The army refused to enlist him because of his extremist views.

In 1995, a few weeks before the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, he appeared on television brandishing a Cadillac emblem stolen from Rabin’s car and declared: “We got to his car, and we’ll get to him too.”

Mr Ben-Gvir had a photograph of settler Baruch Goldstein, another supporter of Meir Kahane, who massacred 29 Muslims at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron 1994, hanging in his home.

He has been indicted more than 50 times, mostly on public disorder charges, but most cases were dismissed by the courts.

Mr Ben-Gvir’s ongoing legal battles prompted him to become a lawyer and make a career of defending right-wing extremists, notably young Jewish settlers from illegal West Bank outposts.

In recent years, after he entered politics, he claimed to have moderated some of his more extreme views. He removed the photograph of Baruch Goldstein and urged his supporters to stop chanting “Death to the Arabs,” suggesting “Death to the Terrorists” as more appropriate.

His surge in the polls has created a headache for Mr Netanyahu, as his opponents are highlighting Mr Ben-Gvir’s racism as an indication of what a Netanyahu-led government will look like.

An editorial in the liberal daily Ha’aretz this week warned of the danger posed by Mr Ben-Gvir, which it termed a game-changer.

“He is changing the balances in Israeli politics and dragging us rightward towards increasingly brutal ultranationalism and racism, and an increasingly profound hatred for democracy, liberalism and secularism. We must recognise the fact that Ben Gvir is a game changer, that he is unifying the ultra-Orthodox, the settlers and Likud into a large bloc.”