Ben Gvir’s texts show him conspiring with aides to exert power over police – report
Minister’s leaked correspondence with extremist advisers and wife during first year in office is exposed as AG seeks his ouster for meddling inappropriately in law enforcement
Ten months’ worth of correspondence between Itamar Ben Gvir and a coterie of advisers, including his wife and two settler extremists tied to violence against Palestinians, appeared to show the national security minister planning illegal interference in police work, according to an investigative report.
The Channel 13 report, broadcast this week, showed an image-obsessed Ben Gvir citing his voter base as a justification to meddle in police operations and personnel, order operations against Palestinians in East Jerusalem, call for a violent crackdown on anti-government protests and make inflammatory visits to the Temple Mount.
The report also showed that despite his statements to the contrary, Ben Gvir did not call for the destruction of Hamas before the war in Gaza, sparked when the terror group invaded southern Israel on October 7, 2023, to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.
Channel 13 said the report was based on thousands of text and voice messages leaked from a WhatsApp group chat called “Strategy Government.” Many of the messages had Ben Gvir planning press releases with his advisers.
Ben Gvir on Sunday had petitioned the High Court to prevent the airing of the report, saying it infringed on his privacy, but the justices shot down his motion.
The report came as Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara was said to be gearing up to order Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fire Ben Gvir for repeatedly meddling in police operations in a manner that the court has prohibited.
Following are some highlights from the TV report:
A dubious inner circle
Conversations in the “Strategy Government” WhatsApp group revolved around Ben Gvir’s public image. With a close circle of aides, the minister drafted press releases, planned leaks, discussed hostile coverage and debated how statements would resound with his voter base.
The aides included the minister’s wife, Ayala Ben Gvir; Itamar Sassover, then in active service as a soldier in the IDF’s Spokesperson’s Unit; a pseudonymous adviser called “Ofer Cohen,” named by Channel 13 as ultra-Orthodox journalist Moshe Glassner, who denied the report and threatened to sue; US-sanctioned far-right activist Bentzi Gopstein, leader of the violent “anti-miscegenation” group Lehava; and Chanamel Dorfman, Ben Gvir’s chief of staff and the groom at the notorious 2015 “knife wedding,” where celebrators stabbed a photo of 18-month-old Ali Dawabsha, who was murdered a week earlier in an arson attack perpetrated by Dorfman’s friend Amiram Ben Uliel.
Another adviser briefly mentioned in the report was Eli Feldstein, a former Ben Gvir spokesman and now an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suspected of stealing army intelligence and leaking it to foreign media in a distorted manner that would back up the premier’s talking points against a hostage deal.
Shaking down police
When his polling numbers were faltering amid a wave of terror attacks, Ben Gvir chose to go after anti-government protesters, in whom he had up to that point shown little interest, the report said.
Protesters had been rallying weekly in Tel Aviv since the start of 2023, after the newly formed government presented its plan to weaken the judiciary.
A text message by Ben Gvir from the period showed him frustrated with police’s failure to use “water cannons and mounted officers against the dangerous left.”
The minister also felt he should “pick a fight” with Tel Aviv’s police chief at the time, Ami Eshed, for supposedly being too soft on the protesters. According to a separate report in the Haaretz newspaper, Dorfman and Ben Gvir’s wife Ayala hatched a plan to oust Eshed, who eventually stepped down in July of that year.
Correspondence cited by Channel 13 showed Ben Gvir conspiring with then-police commissioner Kobi Shabtai — through Shabtai’s driver, referred to only as Micky — to oust Eshed. As part of their arrangement, Ben Gvir agreed to issue a statement praising Shabtai’s conduct in the face of the protests, according to messages quoted by the network.
Later, suspecting Shabtai of leaking an unflattering story about him, Ben Gvir leaked an embarrassing recording of Shabtai denigrating Arabs, according to correspondence in the group, which also showed that Ben Gvir’s inner circle was satisfied that the minister’s leak had reined Shabtai in.
A fraught relationship with Netanyahu
According to the correspondence cited in the report, Ben Gvir’s inner circle planned a trip to the Temple Mount, a religious flashpoint, in order to demonstrate to Netanyahu that Ben Gvir would “go crazy” over the demolition of an illegal Israeli outpost in the West Bank.
Netanyahu subsequently tried to call Ben Gvir, who didn’t take his call, in a power play he plotted with his advisers, the messages showed.
However, Ben Gvir also tried to curry favor with the prime minister; when anti-government protesters demonstrated outside a Tel Aviv beauty salon where Sara Netanyahu, the premier’s wife, was getting her hair done, Ben Gvir wrote in the group simply: “Rescue Sara.”
Police soon showed up outside the hair salon in massive numbers, but Ben Gvir expressed disappointment at seeing “no batons, no stun grenades, nothing.” On the other hand, the minister’s wife was impressed, and, on the advice of Ben Gvir’s aides, sent Sara Netanyahu videos of the police buildup.
Ayala Ben Gvir also uploaded a video of herself condemning the protesters, but the ministers’ aides advised against publishing it; among other problems, Dorfman pointed out, was that the minister’s wife was standing in front of a bookshelf containing books by the late extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, Ben Gvir’s mentor.
‘Leave Gaza alone’
Ben Gvir has said throughout the war that had the government listened to him, Hamas would have been dismantled so that it couldn’t have carried out the onslaught that sparked the war in Gaza. However, in messages from “Strategy Government” both before and after the war began, he appeared to shy away from demanding Hamas’s dismantlement.
In February 2023 — after a night in which Gaza border communities faced a massive barrage of rockets from the Strip — Ben Gvir mused about whether he should publicly demand a robust response. Dorfman advised against it: “Leave Gaza alone.”
“Even residents of the south don’t want a war over every rocket,” wrote his chief of staff.
Ben Gvir ultimately agreed, noting that Israel had “yesterday killed a never-before-seen number of terrorists” in the West Bank’s Jenin.
Nor did Ben Gvir appear too intent on taking out Hamas once the war broke out eight months later. On the third day of the war, he wrote in the group: “Let’s be realistic — Israel won’t destroy Hamas. Unfortunately.”
Baharav-Miara, the embattled attorney general, is reportedly set to urge Netanyahu to oust Ben Gvir for actions deemed illegal by her office, including orders to police on aggressive crackdowns on anti-government protests, attempts to bar certain protests from taking place, and conspiring to oust police officials.
In January the High Court issued an injunction ordering Ben Gvir to stop intervening in the policing of protests following a ruling last year saying he was forbidden from doing so. The state is set to respond to a petition to the High Court earlier this year demanding that Ben Gvir be fired for repeatedly violating the court ruling.
Netanyahu has said such a demand by the attorney general would trigger a “constitutional crisis.”
