After overseeing rough handling of Palestinian prisoners, Ben Gvir posts proud video |
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir toured a prison where he oversaw guards roughly manhandling Palestinian security prisoners, posting on Saturday a video of the visit in which he boasted about the implementation of his minimalist policy for inmate conditions.
A Palestinian prisoner’s rights organization accused Ben Gvir, whose portfolio includes the Israel Prison Service, of exacting “revenge” on detainees.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, far-right Ben Gvir visited Ofer Prison in the West Bank, accompanied by Prison Service chief Kobi Yaakobi as well as relatives of victims of deadly Palestinian terror attacks.
In footage filmed on Friday, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, and force them face-down onto the floor.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video, while offering no context or explanation for the depicted scenes.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added as he stood in a cell, gesturing towards a group of prisoners lying piled together, face down, their arms bound behind them, in a corner of the room.
הגעתי יחד עם משפחות שכולות לעקוב מקרוב אחר ההיערכות לרמדאן ולוודא שמדיניות המינימום שאני מוביל יחד עם נציב שב״ס מיושמת במלואה, בלי הנחות למחבלים. Advertisement if(typeof rgb_remove_toi_dfp_banner != "function" || !rgb_remove_toi_dfp_banner("#336x280_Middle_1")){ window.tude = window.tude || { cmd: [] }; tude.cmd.push(function() { if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf("rgbmedia-app") > -1){ tude.setDeviceType("mobile"); } tude.refreshAdsViaDivMappings([ { divId: '336x280_Middle_1', baseDivId: '336x280_Middle_1', } ]); }); } באתי לחזק ויצאתי מחוזק.הרגע שבו נתי סמדר, שאיבד את אביו בפיגוע הנורא בקרית יובל, הודה לי, נתן לי כוח להמשיך. מחויב למשפחות השכולות… pic.twitter.com/siG0yAD557 — איתמר בן גביר (@itamarbengvir) February 14, 2026
הגעתי יחד עם משפחות שכולות לעקוב מקרוב אחר ההיערכות לרמדאן ולוודא שמדיניות המינימום שאני מוביל יחד עם נציב שב״ס מיושמת במלואה, בלי הנחות למחבלים.
באתי לחזק ויצאתי מחוזק.הרגע שבו נתי סמדר, שאיבד את אביו בפיגוע הנורא בקרית יובל, הודה לי, נתן לי כוח להמשיך.
מחויב למשפחות השכולות… pic.twitter.com/siG0yAD557
— איתמר בן גביר (@itamarbengvir) February 14, 2026
The visit took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Knesset.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al‑Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far‑right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
The Hamas terror group on Saturday said Ben Gvir’s remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the hardest-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
The minister, who took up his position at the end of 2022, has repeatedly boasted of making conditions more difficult for security prisoners, including reducing rations, arguing he was “here to make sure the terrorists get the bare minimum.”
In September, the High Court of Justice ruled that the IPS was failing to provide enough food for Palestinian detainees and ordered conditions be improved. Still, recent testimony from released prisoners indicates conditions have not changed, with some reporting extreme hunger and abuse.
Previous reports compiled in 2024 from the Public Defender’s Office of Israel’s Justice Ministry showed that Palestinian security detainees held in Israeli prisons suffered from severe and systematic violence from prison guards, deprivation of food, and medical neglect, while also having been subjected to unsanitary conditions that caused and exacerbated outbreaks of disease in the prisons.
Independent verification of the treatment of detainees has become more difficult since the start of the war in Gaza following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack, when Israel barred prison visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross, a role the Geneva-based body has played in conflicts around the world for a century.
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and triggered the war. A ceasefire was reached in October 2025.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, the last person to be executed was the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann, in 1962.
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