Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, during an interview in his office at the Knesset in Jerusalem in July 2024. Photo by Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg via Getty Images

By Louis Keene April 27, 2025

Itamar Ben-Gvir’s protest-beset U.S. visit culminated with a stop at the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters, where the far-right Israeli politician who boasted about repeatedly preventing hostage deals was feted with song and dance — and defended outside by a Hasidic crowd that assailed protesters with chants of “death to Arabs.”

The clashes Thursday outside 770 Eastern Parkway resulted in six arrests, according to the New York Police Department. One man, Oscar Vidal, 28 of Bayonne, N.J., was charged with assault, criminal mischief and harassment; the other five were issued summons and released.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said NYPD was investigating an assault on a woman by counter-protesters.

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Hate has no place in New York City. pic.twitter.com/8wlliBFjMx

— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) April 27, 2025

In the headquarters’ main synagogue — which the Chabad movement’s formal leadership does not oversee — Ben-Gvir prayed, participated in a celebration of Torah study and, after addressing the hundreds of men packed into the space in what resembled a stump speech, led them in a chant about the coming of the Messiah.

Itamar Ben Gvir speaks to a full house at the World Headquarters of Chabad in New York City last night. pic.twitter.com/u5crcKVmyZ

— Israel Now (@neveragainlive1) April 25, 2025

While the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters said it was not involved in Ben-Gvir’s invitation, the Israeli national security minister did tour the building accompanied by the movement’s chief librarian, Rabbi Berel Levine — who does work for the movement — and Rabbi Danny Cohen of Chabad of Hebron, the West Bank city where the Tomb of the Patriarchs has frequently been the site of deadly Israeli-Palestinian violence. Ben-Gvir lives just east of Hebron in Kiryat Arba, an Israeli settlement.

Ben-Gvir’s appearance in Crown Heights drew a slew of protesters, as it had when he spoke earlier in the week at a Jewish intellectual society based at Yale but unaffiliated with the university.

The protesters amassed outside the iconic three-gabled, red brick building. Hundreds of men and boys dressed in Hasidic garb engaged them, and as the night wore on, the shouting match turned physical.

Video from the scene showed Hasidic men surrounding and shoving a protester from Neturei Karta, a small Haredi Orthodox anti-Zionist group, to the ground and kicking him; a man snatching a Palestinian flag from a woman, then shoving her when she tries to retrieve it; scores of men and boys following a woman being escorted to safety by a police officer, pushing her, throwing objects at her and shouting epithets.

Another video showed a man wearing a white button-down shirt and tzitzit fringes lighting a keffiyeh on fire.

According to Rabbi Motti Seligson, Chabad’s director of public relations, the Ben-Gvir protesters were violent, too, using pepper spray.

It was not clear what role Vidal allegedly played in the violence.

Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, who does public relations for the Chabad headquarters, did not address the violence by Hasidim, but said on X that Ben-Gvir protesters were “spewing hateful, inflammatory rhetoric at innocent passersby, myself included.”

Video showed a few dozen protesters — organized by Within Our Lifetime, a local pro-Palestinian group — chanting slogans that included, “Resistance is justified when people are occupied” and “We don’t want no two states, we want all of it.”

“Let’s be clear: this was not about free speech or peaceful demonstration,” Behrman wrote. “This was an antisemitic, Hamas-supporting rally. It was meant to intimidate, to provoke, and to spread fear.”

Within Our Lifetime did not respond to a request for comment.

The head of the ultra-nationalist Otzma Yehudit party, Ben-Gvir had said the purpose of his trip was strengthening ties between Israel and American Jews. But the visit mostly accentuated internal Jewish division.

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove and Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, respectively among the most prominent Conservative and Reform rabbis in New York, were among the hundreds of protesters who protested a talk Ben-Gvir gave earlier Thursday in Manhattan. Also among the protesters were U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Jewish Democrat; Brad Lander, the Jewish New York comptroller who is running for Mayor; and members of UnXeptable, an expatriate Israeli protest movement.

Brad Lander, mayoral candidate and the city’s highest-ranking Jewish elected official, at protests against Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir outside Wall St Grill:

“We stand here and say as proud Jewish New Yorkers: Get the hell out of our city.” pic.twitter.com/IeTF3ea4Oj

— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) April 24, 2025

In an event hosted by Tablet, Ben-Gvir reiterated his calls for a “more forceful war” in Gaza, which he said would entail the bombing of food warehouses in the enclave. Calls by far-right Israeli politicians to starve the Gaza population have fueled allegations that Israel is committing war crimes. Ben-Gvir also promoted President Donald Trump’s plan to depopulate Gaza of Palestinians and have the United States take it over.

Ben-Gvir is a deeply polarizing figure in Israel, with large swaths of the population seeing him as extremist, racist and war-mongering.

He says he has used his leverage over the coalition government of embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to keep Israel’s war in Gaza going — even if it meant preventing the return of hostages held by Hamas since its Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. (Ben-Gvir resigned in January over the deal that secured the release of 25 hostages, but rejoined the government last month after the January ceasefire lapsed.)

Support for Ben-Gvir is high among Chabad members in Israel, turning out in large numbers for his party, which was formed by admirers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. Kahane envisioned an Israel that included the West Bank and Gaza and in which Arabs could not vote; his party, Kach, was banned by Israel in 1994 for inciting racism. Ben-Gvir was convicted of incitement to racism in 2007.

Ben-Gvir’s visit to the 770 synagogue follows an appearance earlier this year by Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defense minister with whom Ben-Gvir often butted heads.

It was unclear who invited Ben-Gvir, though Chabad outlets said it was “local residents.” Seligson said the event was not officially sanctioned or organized by the synagogue’s leadership. He declined to comment on Ben-Gvir’s political views.

Beyond Crown Heights, Ben-Gvir’s appearance seemed to divide the Chabad movement. A reader who wrote in to Anash, a website that serves the Chabad world, asked whether inviting a controversial figure might “deter others from putting on tefillin.”

The respondent, Yisroel Nelberg, seemed to agree.

“Inviting him to speak officially at 770 risks sending a message that Chabad is siding with him,” Nelberg said. “And that’s something the Rebbe was consistently, clearly against.”

Commenters fiercely objected to the conclusion.

“Once Gallant was allowed to speak,” one wrote, “it would be a terrible thing if the door were closed on Ben-Gvir.”

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