Lehava (להב"ה‎ "Flame," Hebrew: למניעת התבוללות בארץ הקודש LiMniat Hitbolelut B'eretz HaKodesh; Prevention of Assimilation in the Holy Land) is a far-right and Jewish supremacist[1] organization based in Israel that strictly opposes Jewish assimilation, objecting to most personal relationships between Jews and non-Jews.

"[8] Lehava (להב"ה‎) is an acronym for the Hebrew phrase LiMniat Hitbolelut B'eretz HaKodesh (For the Prevention of Assimilation in the Holy Land).

[10][11][12] Gopstein had run-ins with the police for disorderly conduct while active with Kahane's movement Kach, which was banned from Israeli politics as racist in 1988.

Its splinter group, Kahane Chai, also "condones violence as a viable method for establishing a religiously homogenous [sic] state."

[18][19][20] The lawyer defending Lehava members arrested in December 2014, attorney Itamar Ben-Gvir, is another one of the most prominent Kahanists in Israel.

Three members of Lehava were arrested and indicted in 2014 for committing arson and spray-painting anti-Arab graffiti at the Max Rayne Hand in Hand: Center for Jewish Arab Education in Israel (Yad B'Yad) Bilingual School in Jerusalem, and Lehava's leader, Bentzi Gopstein, along with other group members, was arrested shortly thereafter for incitement.

[7] The organization gained notoriety in 2010 after sending an open letter to Israeli Jewish supermodel Bar Refaeli urging her to break off her relationship with American actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who is Roman Catholic.

[16][17][27] Multiple rebbetzins, acting on behalf of Lehava, issued an open letter urging Israeli women not to associate with "non-Jews".

[32] In 2014, it organized hostile protests against a mixed couple from Jaffa, objecting to the marriage of Mahmoud Mansour, an Israeli Arab, and his bride-to-be, Morel Malka, who converted from Judaism to Islam ahead of the wedding.

When the couple appealed to a court to ban the demonstration, a judgement was handed down allowing the protest to proceed, but no closer than 200 metres away from the site of the ceremony in the Israeli town of Rishon Letzion.

Liat Bar-Stav, a journalist who went undercover in the Lehava organization, described how their members looked for Jewish females who might be dating Arabs.

If members thought they had discovered any, they would follow Gopstein's instructions: approach the woman, and forward her phone number to the organization for further action.

[42][43] Prior to the 2018 march, Gopstein called LGBT activists "terrorists" and urged supporters to counterdemonstrate with banners saying "Jerusalem is not Sodom".

"[5] Gopstein wrote an article for a local website, Kooker, in which he declared: "Missionary work must not be given a foothold... Let's throw the vampires out of our land before they drink our blood again.

In May 2016, IRAC stepped up the campaign, releasing statistics showing that Lehava's social media efforts were generating approximately 200,000 anti-Arab hate postings per year to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, about a quarter of which call for physical violence against Arabs.

[46] In May 2016, the Anti-Defamation League sent a letter to Israel's Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit, encouraging action to be taken to curb Lehava and Gopstein.