US visit by far-right Israeli minister draws tense protests and 'big fissures' in Jewish community

Associated Press

25-04-2025

NEW YORK (AP) — Far-right Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was speaking to a small crowd at a Manhattan steakhouse Thursday afternoon when a Brooklyn man, who had been hiding in a bathroom for two hours, stormed into the private event.
'Get the (expletive) out of New York!' cried the protester, Gabriel DeFazio. He was swiftly removed by security, though not before telling the minister he would be 'remembered as a Nazi and Palestine will be free.'
So it has gone for Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist settler leader once on the fringes of Israeli politics, as he embarks on his first official U.S. state visit since joining Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet in 2022.
His appearances near Yale University on Wednesday drew hundreds of demonstrators, along with the resignations of several members of the Jewish society that hosted him.
The following night, he visited the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Brooklyn, where he was greeted by scores more protesters who waved Palestinian flags. The group jostled with Orthodox Jewish counter-demonstrators, resulting in six arrests and leaving one woman, who was draped in a kaffiyeh, bloodied, according to social media videos.
Rabbi Motti Seligson, a spokesperson for Chabad, said Ben-Gvir was invited by some members of the community, but that the event was not officially sanctioned or organized by the synagogue's leadership.
The state visit has not only ignited fierce protests but 'exposed big fissures in American Judaism,' said David Vincent Kimel, a former member of Shabtai, the group that hosted Ben-Gvir near Yale University.
Kimel and two others resigned from the group this week, citing the decision by Shabtai's co-founder, Rabbi Schmully Hecht, to host the 'deliberately provocative event.'
'Ben-Gvir represents a grotesque extreme that for tragic circumstances was elevated to high power,' said Kimel, who was born in Israel. 'It'd be like a white society hosting the Ku Klux Klan.'
Hecht didn't respond to inquires from The Associated Press, but he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he admired Ben-Gvir.
'Itamar promotes what he believes is best for his people that democratically elected him,' Hecht said.
A hard-line supporter of Jewish settlements, Ben-Gvir was previously convicted in Israel of racist incitement and support for terrorist groups. He has called for the deportation of all Arab citizens from Israel and, for years, hung a picture in his home of a man who massacred more than two dozen Muslim worshippers.
In 2023, he said that his right to move through the West Bank was 'more important than the right of movement of the Arabs.'
Though once widely shunned by Israel's politicians, Ben-Gvir's influence has grown alongside a rightward shift in the country's electorate. And his brand of ultranationalist religious ideology, which once prompted President Joe Biden's State Department to accuse him of 'sowing chaos,' appears to be finding purchase with American officials as well.
He kicked off his trip to the U.S. with a dinner on Monday at Mar-a-Lago, where he said he met with Republican Party officials who expressed support for his plan to bomb food and aid depots in Gaza.
A spokesperson for Ben-Gvir did not reply to a request for comment about who he had met with, though it did not appear that President Donald Trump was among the attendees.
From there, he visited the Miami Police Department, a Jewish school in Florida and a Jewish-owned gun shop, according to social media posts.
Other scheduled events have since been canceled, including a meeting with a Hasidic congregation in Brooklyn and a Modern Orthodox synagogue on Long Island, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.
On Thursday, a group of Jewish leaders gathered in New York to denounce Ben-Gvir, including U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, who called him a 'racist, terrorist, Jewish supremacist.' As a response to Ben-Gvir's visit, Nadler said he planned to introduce legislation to combat violence in the West Bank.
DeFazio, the protester who confronted Ben-Gvir at the steakhouse event, said his brief disruption was aimed at calling attention to the extremist politics that were becoming 'normalized' in both the U.S. and Israel.
'I was shocked to see he can freely traipse around the U.S., through our most prestigious campuses and even New York City,' he said. 'When I realized this guy was coming here, it became my duty to make sure he didn't feel welcome.'