Ben Gvir to Bella Hadid: “Every Day Jews Who Have Done Nothing Wrong are Murdered”

Edited by: Fern Sidman

Israel’s national security minister lashed out at supermodel Bella Hadid on Friday for criticizing his recent fiery televised remarks about Palestinian terrorists who have savagely murdered Jews throughout the Judea and Samaria region and across Israel.

In an interview earlier this week with Israel’s Channel 12 following two deadly Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the liberated lands of Judea and Samaria, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir argued that his right to freedom of movement as a Jewish settler outweighs the same right for Palestinians whose objective it is to stage terror attacks.

“My right, the right of my wife and my children to move around Judea and Samaria, is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs,” Ben-Gvir said on Wednesday, according to an AP report. “The right to life comes before freedom of movement.”

Addressing Mohammad Magadli, a well-known Israeli-Arab television host who was in the studio, Ben-Gvir added: “Sorry, Mohammad. But that’s the reality,” the report added.

His statement drew widespread criticism as left wing media commentators as they attempted to use it as proof of allegations that Israel was turning into an anti-Democratic and “racist” state.

Protesters thronged outside Ben-Gvir’s home in settlement of Kiryat Arba on Friday to condemn his remarks. The catchphrase “Sorry, Mohammad” became meme fodder for social media as critics who posted it.

Bella Hadid, a world-famous supermodel and social media influencer whose father is Palestinian, shared an excerpt from Ben-Gvir’s interview with her 59.5 million followers on Instagram on Thursday, writing: “In no place, no time, especially in 2023 should one life be more valuable than another’s. Especially simply because of their ethnicity, culture or pure hatred,” as was reported by the AP.

She also posted a video from leading Israeli rights group B’Tselem showing Israeli soldiers in the city of Hebron telling a resident that Palestinians are not permitted to walk on a certain street because it is reserved for Jews. “Does this remind anyone of anything?” she wrote, the AP reported.

In response, Ben Gvir on Friday posted his thoughts on the social medial platform X, formerly known as Twitter. According to a report on the Israel National News web site, he wrote: “To the Israel-hater Bella Hadid, good morning. I saw yesterday that you took a segment of mine from an interview, and distributed it to the whole world in order to make me out to be racist and uneducated. I invite you to Kiryat Arba, to see how we live here, how every day Jews who have done nothing wrong to anyone in their lives are murdered here, what threats my wife and children receive every day from terrorists who live nearby.”

Ben Gvir added: “So yes, the right of me and my fellow Jews to travel and return home safely on the roads of Judea and Samaria outweighs the rights of terrorists who throw stones at us and kill us. I neither apologize nor recant my statements, and I’ll say them another 1,000 times too,” as was reported by INN.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Ben-Gvir’s comments in a statement Friday night, saying that Israel “allows maximum freedom of movement” in Judea and Samaria.

Netanyahu added that, “Unfortunately, Palestinian terrorists take advantage of this freedom of movement to murder Israeli women, children and families by ambushing them at certain points on different routes. Thirty-four civilians have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists in 2023, many of them while driving home. The most recent incident occurred when Bat-Sheva Nagari was murdered on route 60 in Judea in front of her 6-year-old daughter,” the statement noted.

“This is what Minister Ben-Gvir meant when he said ‘the right to life precedes freedom of movement,” Netanyahu added.

Earlier this week, Palestinian terrorists opened fire on an Israeli car near Hebron, killing 40 year old kindergarten teacher Bat Sheva Negri and seriously wounding Aryeh Gottlieb, the driver. That attack came just days after a Palestinian terrorist murdered an Israeli father and son in the town of Hawara.