Ministers Gantz, Ben Gvir accuse each other of harming national security
War cabinet minister spars with far-right police minister, following reports Washington may sanction the IDF’s Netzah Yehuda battalion
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Cabinet ministers Benny Gantz and Itamar Ben Gvir each accused the other of damaging Israeli security on Sunday, in the wake a report that the United States is planning on sanctioning the IDF’s ultra-Orthodox Netzah Yehuda battalion.
Speaking with reporters in the Knesset on Sunday afternoon, Gantz — a former IDF chief of staff and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet — declared, without explicitly naming Ben Gvir, that “ministers who damage national security should not sit in the cabinet.”
Just as soldiers do not get a break on the battlefield, neither should the country’s leaders, he continued, calling on his fellow politicians to “set a personal example, and certainly not engage in division or attempts to pass laws and decisions that harm our security and political interests.”
Israel’s focus should be on partnership and not on “favoring a sector or a group,” he said — likely referring to recent efforts to maintain ultra-Orthodox Jews’ exemption from military service.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, in turn, insisted that it was Gantz, not him, who was harming national security.
“The person who harmed the security of the State of Israel, who drove the concept of containment and surrender to Hamas, endangered Golani’s soldiers, brought in workers from Gaza, opened the checkpoints in the West Bank, shut down the emergency response teams, and hosted [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] in his home, is Gantz,” Ben Gvir said, referring to Gantz’s stint as defense minister between 2020 and 2022.
“In my opinion, someone like him should not sit in the cabinet,” the ultranationalist minister added.
The two men’s spat came on the heels of a Saturday evening report by the news site Axios that the United States intended to sanction the military’s Netzah Yehuda Battalion, a unit previously involved in a series of controversial and violent incidents in the West Bank.
Netzah Yehuda was created so that ultra-Orthodox and other religious soldiers could serve without feeling they were compromising their beliefs. The soldiers do not interact with female troops to the same extent as other servicemen and are given additional time for prayer and religious study.
The military said Sunday that it was unaware of reports that the United States intended to sanction the unit.
Members of the unit have been involved in multiple controversial and violent incidents and have also been convicted in the past of torturing and abusing Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
“Imposing sanctions against an IDF unit is not the right way to act against the State of Israel,” Gantz stated in response to the Axios report, saying the infantry unit is “an integral part of the IDF” and was bound by military and international law. “We are the only country that listens to the United States,” said Gantz. “They should simply talk to us.”
Describing the report as “extremely serious,” Ben Gvir said on Saturday that he expected “Defense Minister Yoav Gallant not to submit to American dictates” — adding that “if there is not anybody at the Defense Ministry who will back up the battalion as required, I will ask to absorb them into the Israel Police and the Ministry of National Security.”
Opposition and Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid called the reported American move “a mistake” and said Israel should battle to have it canceled. But, he went on, “the source of the problem is not at the military level but at the political level.”
The world, Lapid said in a post on the X social media site, “knows and understands” that the far-right Ben Gvir, who oversees the Israel Police, “does not want the police to enforce the law in the West Bank” and allied far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich “is not opposed to Jewish terrorism and extreme settler riots.”
Lapid’s comment came just under a week after he declared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government “an existential threat to Israel.”
Ben Gvir has previously been convicted for incitement to violence and supporting a terror group for distributing stickers that read “Expel the Arab enemy” and “Kahane was right.” He was not accepted for compulsory service in the IDF because of far-right activism in his youth.
He is a security hardliner, has been highly critical with the Biden administration, and has been condemned internationally for endorsing what he calls the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from Gaza.
Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.
