A highly decorated former Israeli defense minister has caused a firestorm by accusing Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in northern Gaza. <\/p>\n
Moshe Ya\u2019alon, who served for three decades in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), including in the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit, and as the military\u2019s chief of staff, also said that he believed Israel was losing its identity as a liberal democracy and becoming a \u201ccorrupt and leprous fascist Messianic state.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cConquering, annexing, ethnic cleansing \u2013 look at northern Gaza,\u201d Ya\u2019alon told Israel\u2019s Democrat TV. <\/p>\n
The interviewer expressed surprise at Ya\u2019alon\u2019s use of the phrase \u201cethnic cleansing,\u201d asking, \u201cIs that what you think \u2013 that we\u2019re on the way there?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWhy \u2018on the way?\u2019\u201d he responded. \u201cWhat\u2019s happening there? There\u2019s no Beit Lahia. There\u2019s no Beit Hanoun. They\u2019re currently operating in Jabalya, and essentially, they\u2019re cleaning the area of Arabs,\u201d he said, referring to the IDF. <\/p>\n
The Israeli military has for two months been carrying out an intense and deadly operation in northern Gaza, targeting what it says are resurgent Hamas militants. It has told all civilians that for their own safety, they must go to a humanitarian area in southern Gaza. Thousands of Palestinian civilians have refused to leave, after more than a year of being told to evacuate to areas of Gaza that are then also targeted by Israeli strikes. Vanishingly few aid deliveries have been allowed into northern Gaza, according to the World Food Programme. <\/p>\n
The Israeli military, responding to Ya\u2019alon, denied that it was ethnically cleansing northern Gaza and said that it operated \u201cin accordance with international law, and evacuates civilians based on operational necessity, for their own protection.\u201d <\/p>\n
The government has not yet presented a plan for post-war governance in Gaza. It has also denied it is implementing a \u201csurrender or starve\u201d proposal in northern Gaza put forward by a retired military general, Giora Eiland \u2013\u202fthough it did consider the plan. <\/p>\n
\u201cI held up a mirror to the statements of many ministers and Knesset (parliament) members in the government,\u201d Ya\u2019alon said in a second interview, with Channel 12. \u201cUnder this title, ethnic cleansing is effectively being carried out; I don\u2019t have another word for it.\u201d <\/p>\n
The interviewer said that such a phrase evoked \u201cdark periods\u201d in history. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s right, and I purposely used this term to ring the alarm bells,\u201d the former defense minister responded. <\/p>\n
Extremist factions in Israeli politics have called for Jewish settlement in Gaza nearly since the outset of the war , following Hamas\u2019 October 7, 2023, attack. Soldiers serving in Gaza have regularly promoted the return of Gush Katif \u2013\u202fGaza settlements destroyed when Israel unilaterally withdrew from the territory in 2005. And the ideas have gained traction: In October, hundreds of activists and several senior sitting ministers attended a Gush Katif conference near the Gaza border. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to stay there, we need to establish a flourishing Jewish settlement there,\u201d Israel\u2019s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said in an interview with Israel TV channel Kan on Monday. \u201cBoth because this is the land of Israel and also because this guarantees the security of the residents of the South.\u201d <\/p>\n
Ya\u2019alon joined a growing chorus in recent weeks referring to Israel\u2019s military operation in northern Gaza as \u201cethnic cleansing.\u201d <\/p>\n
Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an editorial at the end of October titled: \u201cIf it looks liked ethnic cleansing, it probably is.\u201d Human Rights Watch last month said in a 154-page report that Israel\u202fhad overseen the forced mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza in a deliberate and systematic campaign that amounts to a war crime and a crime against humanity. Josep Borrell, the European Union\u2019s top diplomat, said he believes that \u201cit is not by chance that\u202fthe words \u2018ethnic cleansing\u2019 are increasingly used\u202fto describe what is going on in north Gaza.\u201d <\/p>\n
The International Criminal Court last month issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, saying it had \u201creasonable grounds\u201d to believe that Netanyahu bears criminal responsibility for war crimes including \u201cstarvation\u202fas a method of warfare\u201d and \u201cthe crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.\u201d It also issued a warrant for a senior Hamas official. <\/p>\n
The former defense minister said that upon seeing what\u2019s happening in Gaza, he could no longer use the oft-cited monicker for the IDF as the \u201cmost moral\u201d military in the world. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe IDF is not the most moral army today,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to say that.\u201d <\/p>\n
His intervention drew harsh criticism from former military colleagues. \u201cTo lie and harm the State of Israel and the IDF is not following a compass \u2013 this is lawlessness,\u201d the politician Benny Gantz, who also served as IDF chief of staff, said in a statement. \u201cThe IDF has bent over backwards to minimize loss of civilian life,\u201d Naftali Bennett, who also served in the Sayeret Matkal commando unit, said. \u201cThe population is moved away from danger for its own safety. It is not only the IDF\u2019s right to do so, itis its obligation.\u201d <\/p>\n
Ya\u2019alon said that while military commanders may believe their actions are purely operational, politicians have other plans in mind \u2013\u202fand his words were aimed at them. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m talking about soldiers moving populations, thinking it\u2019s for operational purposes,\u201d Ya\u2019alon said. \u201cBut the intention of Smotrich, Ben Gvir, Strook, and Daniela Weiss\u201d \u2013 all avowed settlers \u2013 \u201cis an open and declared one.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A highly decorated former Israeli defense minister has caused a firestorm by accusing Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in northern Gaza. Moshe Ya\u2019alon, who served for three decades in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), including in the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit, and as the military\u2019s chief of staff, also said that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}