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Israel should be killing “30 to 40” people each night in Gaza and should build Jewish settlements in the Palestinian enclave, the country’s far-right national security minister has said in an interview.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, a hardline settler previously convicted of incitement to racism, made the comments 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, which triggered the war in Gaza.
Ben-Gvir in the interview 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. “Not just those who pose an immediate threat. There are people there who don’t deserve to live . . . They are not even people.”
Ben-Gvir also called for the re-establishment of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territory, saying that he envisaged “all Gaza” belonging to Israel, and reiterating 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.”
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, which has killed more than 73,000 people, according to Palestinian officials, and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave. It has killed a further 1,200 people since a ceasefire took effect last October.
The ferocity of the offensive has drawn intense international criticism, and 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 accusations of genocide and has insisted that it complies with international law.
Ben-Gvir’s statements are the latest in a string of inflammatory rhetoric from the far-right minister, who oversees the Israeli police and prison system.
He has previously boasted of making conditions in Israeli prisons — where there have been widespread reports of abuse of Palestinian prisoners — tougher.
His Jewish Power party also spearheaded a drive to pass a controversial law that imposes the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis in acts of terror but not on Jewish Israelis who kill Palestinians in similar circumstances.
During the 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 said that he would do everything he could to fulfil Braslavski’s 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.”
