Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has slammed the police for contradicting his claim that he has intelligence saying that there are plans to assassinate him and the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Speaking on Israel’s Kan TV, Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, accused some of the protesters against the government of plotting murder.

Though “most of them [the protesters] are good people, among them are those planning the next political murder, who say ‘you have to kill Ben-Gvir, Sara Netanyahu, to murder Benjamin Netanyahu,’” he declared.

He said he had seen “intelligence assessments” and that there were “leftist anarchists who some time ago crossed the red line and are planning to kill me and the prime minister.”

He also claimed that the demonstration last week outside a Tel Aviv hairdresser’s — inside which Sara Netanyahu was having her hair done — was “an attempted lynching,” citing further “intelligence material” he received on the matter.

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Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir pictured speaking to bystanders as he walked to the site of a reported attack in a settler neighbourhood in East Jerusalem on January 27, 2023. (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP)

But a senior police officer told the broadcaster that he was unaware of any such intelligence relating to potential political murder.

In response, Ben-Gvir then tweeted that he was “shocked” that police sources would contradict him and vowed to “wipe clean any politicisation from professional police work.”

The politician’s remarks were ill-received by opposition leaders. Citing the fact that Ben-Gvir was exempted from army service because of his extremist views, the National Unity party leader Benny Gantz said: “A person [Ben-Gvir] who was involved in [Jewish] terror instead of being drafted into the army is delegitimising patriotic protesters. Ben-Gvir and the inciters are the fuel for [military service] refusal.”

Yair Lapid

Yair Lapid (Getty Images)

On Sunday, the IDF chief of staff, Major-General Herzl Halevi, told Prime Minister Netanyahu of his concern at the growing threat of reservist walkouts because of the government’s proposed judicial reform. And on Monday, all 10 living former commanders of the Israeli Air Force called on the prime minister to halt the judicial overhaul, calling the process “a severe and concrete danger to national security”.

Thirty-seven of the 40 reserve pilots in a major air force squadron have said they will not report for training later this week.

Not mincing his words, opposition leader Yair Lapid called Ben-Gvir a liar and a “clown,” accusing him of “inventing ‘intelligence materials’ that do not exist. This is not only ridiculous, but it is also dangerous”.