Bentzi Gopstein

**Ben-Zion** "**Bentzi**" **Gopstein** (Hebrew: בן־ציון "בנצי" גופשטיין; born 10 September 1969) is an Israeli-Orthodox Jewish conservative activist and politician.

He founded and directs Lehava ("Flame"), an Orthodox-Jewish Israeli far-right and anti-assimilationist organization.

He worked for the Council of Kiryat Arba, Hebron, a Jewish settlement where his defender Itamar Ben-Gvir, the chairman of Otzma Yehudit, viewed as a successor to the Kach party that Baruch Goldstein used to work for, resides

In November 2019, he was indicted on charges of incitement to terrorism, violence, and racism. In April 2024, he was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of State and the European Union.

He is listed with his name spelled in several variations on the sanctions list of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

## Kahanism

Gopstein is a student of [Meir [HaCohen] Kahane](861660) and adherent of Kahanism, the ideology named for and developed by him, promoted by his banned movement Kach and Kahane Chai in Israel. He has participated in memorials to [[Meir] Kahane](861660).

Kach and Kahane Chai incited for racism and advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

After Meir Kahane was assassinated, Ben-Zion Gopstein was arrested, and then released, in a case involving the unsolved murder of an Arab couple. In 1994, Gopstein was assigned to administrative detention as a result of his involvement with Kahane's then-banned organization.

Gopstein praised the '94 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, committed by Baruch Goldstein, who used to represent Kach party as #3.

Since Goldstein was killed, he passed on his mantle to an inner circle, composed of Orthodox Jewish-Israeli conservative activists who shared similar backgrounds, personality traits, features, ethnicity and inheritance, such as Baruch Marzel/Yekutiel Ben-Yaakov.

In the context of the Hebron settler movement, the ideological and political "inheritors" of Baruch Goldstein’s legacy and broader Kahanist movement.

The following details connect these figures through shared origins, political roles, and actions in Hebron:

Political Succession: Following the 1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, Baruch Goldstein served as the de facto chief of the Kach party. After Goldstein's death in 1994, he was succeeded by Baruch Marzel, Yekutiel Ben-Yaakov, who maintained the party's activities until it was officially outlawed in Israel and the United States.

Their shared roots:

Baruch Goldstein: Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, he was a medical doctor who immigrated to Israel in 1983.

Baruch Marzel: Born in Boston, Massachusetts. While his family moved to Israel when he was an infant, he is often grouped with Goldstein due to their shared Northeastern U.S. roots and early involvement in Kahane's Jewish Defense League (JDL).

Yekutiel Ben-Yaakov: Like Goldstein, he originates from Brooklyn, New York, and was a long-time associate of Kahane, Marzel.

Hebron as a Spiritual Center: All three figures centered their lives and activism in the Hebron area. Goldstein lived in the adjacent settlement of Kiryat Arba, while Marzel resides in the Tel Rumeida enclave in the heart of Hebron.

Veneration of Goldstein's Legacy:

Marzel has been a primary figure in turning Goldstein's gravesite in Kiryat Arba/Hebron into a pilgrimage site, organizing "parties" and prayer services there to honor him as a "holy martyr".

Yekutiel Ben-Yaakov has similarly maintained the Kahanist infrastructure, often leading the _Kahane Chai_ wing that continued to lionize Goldstein's 1994 massacre at the Ibrahimi Mosque.

In 2015, in a tape-recorded talk, Gopstein justified burning down churches based on the religious teachings against idolatry by 12th-century Jewish philosopher and scholar Maimonides. Later that year, he advocated expelling Christians from Israel and banning celebration of Christmas there. Later that year, he advocated expelling Christians from Israel and banning celebration of Christmas there.

In 2017, Gopstein and Ben-Gvir sued journalist Yoaz Hendel who called them draft-dodgers saying they wanted to join the IDF but the army "... did not want two guys who it was feared would try to stir up unrest among soldiers and turn them into extreme right-wingers like themselves.

They were known to be trouble-makers and the IDF did not want to mess with them".

## Hemla

Gopstein has served as public relations director of Hemla ("Mercy"), a publicly funded non-profit. For many years, Hemla focused on "saving the daughters of Israel" from mixed marriages with non-Jewish men, and received up to $175,000 each year from the state between 2005 and 2013. The Public funding, or at least a part of it, went to the salary earned by Gopstein.

While some considered Hemla to be focused on keeping Jewish women from dating non-Jewish men, Gopstein described the charter of the Hemla in an interview with Haaretz:

### Anti-LGBTQ and Pro-Heterosexualist activity

In the past, the organization sought to disrupt and protest the Jerusalem Pride Parade, in order to fight what Gopstein called "LGBT terrorism", stating that the LGBT and alternative community "are bringing disaster to Israel". In 2023, the _Times of Israel_ captioned a photo of him as "Extremist, far-right rabbi Ben-Zion Gopstein shouts 'it’s not pride, it’s an abomination' at the protest against the Jerusalem Pride Parade, June 1, 2023."

### Advocacy outside Israel

Gopstein wrote a letter to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg protesting both Zuckerberg's marriage to a non-Jewish woman and Palestinian, Syrian, and other Arabs's use of Facebook. He complained, "In Israel, too, assimilation is hitting us quite a bit because of your Facebook, where every Mohammed is '<nowiki/>_CitySlicker_<nowiki/>', and every Yosef calls himself _'Prince Charming_<nowiki/>'".

In 2018, Gopstein started a fund-raiser to raise money to sue Facebook for censorship.

## Attitude towards Christians

As a disciple of Meir Kahane, Ben-Zion Gopstein called for Christian churches to be burnt down.

The discussion centered on whether Rabbi Moshe Ben-Maimon's ruling to eliminate idol worship was valid also for modern times. On the Haredi website Kooker, Gopstein published an article in December 2015 calling for the suppression of Christmas celebrations in Israel and the expulsion of Christians, whom he likened to vampires. Calling the Catholic Church "the deadly enemy of the Jewish people for centuries", he wrote, "Their missionaries prowl for prey in Jerusalem." In response, Israeli groups have asked he be investigated for incitement.

## Election bans

In the run-up to the September 2019 Knesset election, Gopstein boycotted a hearing of the High Court of Justice on whether representatives of _Otzma Yehudit_, such as Baruch Marzel, Dr. Michael Ben-Ari, and even Itamar Ben-Gvir should be allowed on the ballot. He claimed that "the judges already made their decision" and would overturn the Law of Return if given the chance.

## Indictment

In late November 2019, nine years after an initial complaint had been filed by the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism regarding his behavior, Gopstein was indicted for incitement to violence, racism, and support for terrorism on the basis of a series of statements he made over a five-year period from 2012 to 2017, such as praising Baruch Goldstein, defending the actions of youths involved in the Zion Square assault, calling Palestinians a cancer, and stating that there was no shortage of Arabs who deserved to be beaten up. He also declared that "full redemption of the country" would not come until the "cancerous growth" known as the Al-Aqsa mosque was destroyed. The indictment was approved by the Israeli Attorney General. Gopstein responded by declaring he would persist in campaigning against Jewish-Arab coexistence, and asserted that the indictment was tantamount to state-sponsored persecution.

## Personal life

Gopstein is married to Anat Gopstein, and has eight children.