Ben-Gvir Tells Imprisoned Palestinian in Campaign Video: 'I Want to Kill You, I Want to Put You to Death'

Itamar Ben-Gvir stood over Hassan Salameh, a Hamas member Israel has held since 1996, flanked by armed and masked guards, and told him he wanted him dead.

"These are the conditions I gave you. But it's not the end. I want to kill you. I want to put you to death."

The footage, published Sunday, less than a month before Israel's October 27 election, shows Israel's National Security Minister telling Salameh he would go to hell in the afterlife, then adding, "But here I'm responsible for hell." Salameh was convicted over his role in deadly 1996 Jerusalem bus bombings. Ben-Gvir said the confrontation gave him "closure," recalling that he had protested as a teenager after the bombings, decades before he took charge of Israel's prison and police portfolio.

In a post accompanying the video, Ben-Gvir made the electoral purpose explicit. He said that if he becomes defence minister in the next government, he would work to execute Palestinian prisoners like Salameh and advance what he calls the "voluntary migration" of Palestinians out of Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian Prisoner's Society said Monday the video fits a wider pattern of Israeli politicians using detainees for "political and electoral one-upmanship," competing to appear the most hardline toward prisoners. The group said such videos should not be dismissed as campaign theater, warning that repeated threats against Palestinian prisoners and their leaders endanger their lives.

The Salameh video is not an isolated stunt. In August 2025, Ben-Gvir entered a prison to confront Marwan Barghouti, the imprisoned Fatah leader, telling a visibly gaunt Barghouti that Israel would "wipe out" anyone who harmed Israelis. More recently he filmed himself confronting Palestinian women held at Damon prison, mocking their complaints about water and medical access and citing deteriorating prison conditions as one of his achievements in office.

The videos have repeatedly run into Israel's own election rules. In June, the Central Elections Committee ordered Ben-Gvir to remove footage of him taunting detained flotilla activists, after Supreme Court Deputy President Noam Sohlberg ruled it constituted election propaganda made through improper use of public resources. The committee had already found earlier videos of Ben-Gvir touring a prison and a police boat to be similar misuse of security forces for campaigning.

The Salameh video follows a legislative win Ben-Gvir secured in March, when the Knesset passed a law permitting the death penalty in specified cases involving Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks. No one has yet been executed under it. His Jewish Power party has said it will demand control of the defence and justice ministries in coalition talks, and he has unveiled a Gaza plan, "Disengagement 710," that includes a government ministry dedicated to facilitating Palestinian emigration.