Police Beef Up Security Around Far-right MK Ben-Gvir Amid Death Threats

Police have increased the security detail for far-right Knesset member Itamar Ben-Gvir after receiving information on threats to his life, Israel’s Channel 13 News said on Sunday. Police termed the threat level that he faces as 5 out of a maximum of 6. Ben-Gvir, who represents the Kahanist Otzma Yehudit faction of the Religious Zionism party in Israel’s parliament, will now travel with three security guards. In addition, security cameras will be installed at his home. The lawmaker has had a number of altercations since being elected to the Knesset in 2021, including one in which he waved a gun at an Arab parking attendant who asked him to move his car from a prohibited spot; and another when he faced off against an Arab Knesset member, Joint List MK Ayman Odeh, who was visiting a Palestinian hunger striker at Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot. In 1995, a few weeks before the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Ben-Gvir – at the time an activist associated with the Kach movement that was outlawed for its support of terrorism – appeared on television holding a Cadillac emblem that had been torn off of the prime minister’s car, and said, “We got to his car, and we’ll get to him, too.”