Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir Calls for Killing '30 to 40' People in Gaza Nightly

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's minister of national security, said in comments that surfaced Sunday that Israeli forces should be killing "30 to 40" people in Gaza every night, and that the killings shouldn't be limited to people who pose an immediate threat.

"I think targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night," Ben-Gvir said, according to the Associated Press. "Not just those who pose an immediate threat. There are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn't live. They're not even people."

He made the remarks to Rom Braslavski, a former hostage held by Hamas in Gaza, on Braslavski's podcast. The two were discussing Israel's recovery from the October 7, 2023 attack, according to both AP and the Los Angeles Times. Ben-Gvir used the conversation to criticize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to scale back strikes in Gaza under the current ceasefire.

Braslavski told Ben-Gvir he personally wanted to execute convicted terrorists under Israel's death penalty law for Palestinians convicted in military courts of deadly attacks on Israelis, according to Al Jazeera. "I don't want a rope, I want a button on a gun," Braslavski said. Ben-Gvir replied that he'd "turn the world upside down" to make that happen.

Ben-Gvir also said he sees "all of Gaza as ours" and called for Palestinians to be encouraged to leave the territory permanently alongside new Israeli settlement there, a position he has repeated many times, per Al Jazeera.

What Ben-Gvir can and can't actually order

Ben-Gvir has no formal authority over the Israeli military and cannot order strikes himself. Both AP and the Los Angeles Times make that point directly. He does sit on Israel's security cabinet, the group of senior ministers who help shape war and security policy, so his position carries real weight in internal debates even without command authority.

Where his power is concrete: he controls Israel's police force and its prison system, where thousands of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank are incarcerated. The LA Times and AP both note that Israel's top court ruled in 2025 that the prison service under Ben-Gvir was depriving Palestinian inmates of a minimum subsistence diet, after Ben-Gvir had previously boasted about cutting food rations for prisoners.

Israeli media largely ignored the comments, according to the LA Times, which framed that silence as evidence that once-fringe rhetoric like Ben-Gvir's is becoming normalized as Israel heads toward an October 27 election. Ben-Gvir's political influence has grown since the October 2023 attack, in which Hamas killed roughly 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, some of whom later described starvation, beatings and sexual abuse during captivity.