Martina Navratilova has sharply escalated her criticism of Israel in recent weeks, and on Friday night she launched a personal attack on National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, calling him “an evil man.” The comments came amid a broader stream of anti-Israel posts she has been amplifying on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
The former tennis great has also repeatedly attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In March, she wrote that she was “not anti-Israel or anti-Jewish,” but was only pointing to “criminal behavior,” adding, “these days, Bibi is doing criminal things.” Weeks earlier, after reports of Israeli shelling in Lebanon, she said that “Israel, or at least Netanyahu, have lost their moral conscience” and added that “Bibi never had one.”
Navratilova has also been a frequent critic of U.S. President Donald Trump. On Friday she wrote, “I hate this toxic, malignant narcissist,” and after U.S. strikes on Iran she posted, “God help us, Trump is a psychopath,” saying he did not care how many people he was personally responsible for killing. In earlier remarks, she called Trump “completely insane,” accused him of violating more laws than all previous presidents combined, described him as a “serial criminal” on many fronts, and said he had turned the United States into a totalitarian state.
The article notes that Navratilova, born in Czechoslovakia and who defected to the United States in 1975 during the Cold War, is regarded as one of the greatest tennis players in history. She won 18 Grand Slam singles titles, 31 in doubles and 10 in mixed doubles, for a total of 59, an Open Era record and second all-time behind Margaret Court’s 64. She was ranked world No. 1 for 332 weeks in singles and 237 in doubles, including a dominant 74-match winning streak in 1984, and became an important public figure in social and political activism.
