Published: 2 December 2024
Last updated: 3 December 2024
A former defence minister who served under Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing" in the northern Gaza Strip.
Ya'alon, a former IDF Chief of Staff and Defence Minister from 2013 to 2016, gave a series of interviews in which he said the forced evacuation of Palestinians met the definition of ethnic cleansing.
“The path we are currently being led down involves conquering, annexing, and ethnic cleansing. Look at the northern Gaza Strip—transfer, call it whatever you want—and establish Jewish settlements. That’s the reality. Now, if you look at the polls, 70% of the public, sometimes more, supports a certain vision: Jewish, democratic, liberal, and so on, along with separation. We cannot lose sight of that. Those leading us now are dragging us toward nothing less than destruction,” he told Lucy Aharish on DemocratTV on Saturday.
A visibly surprised Aharish pressed him: “You just used a phrase I never thought I’d hear from you—ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Is that really what you think? That we’re heading in that direction?”
Ya’alon responded: “Why say ‘heading’? What’s happening there right now? Beit Lahiya is gone, Beit Hanoun is gone. Operations are underway in Jabalya, essentially clearing the area of Arabs.”
When it was put to him that one of the definitions of ethnic cleansing is “mass murder as a means of diluting the population of a specific group in a specific area,” Ya’alon said, “I’m not talking about mass murder” but rather about “a different definition… evacuating a population from its homes, destroying their homes — that’s what’s happening in Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya”.
Comments3
Wesley Parish3 December at 07:50 am
Since when has the IDF been the “most moral army in the world”? And by whose definitions? If you read some of the personal histories of the Nakba, you realize that that was how the IDF started, mass murder, torture, and rape. Not to forget the ethnic cleansing. Events like Kafr Qasim and Sabra and Shatila just didn’t happen out of nowhere. When it comes to Palestinians, the IDF bears an unpleasant resemblance to the British settlers in Australia …
Ian Light2 December at 11:43 pm
After WW2 after the victory against Nazi Germany the USA stationed tens of thousands of troops in Germany and in the beginning hundreds of thousands as did the USSR the United Kingdom and France .
The Education System radically changed to Human Rights Democratic,an immense condemnation of Nazism and full recognition of the Holocaust so Generations would know the horror and despise Nazism .
So with Palestine – the Truth of the Rejection of the Land Sharing Pans ,the extreme limit to
Jewish escape from the Holocaust by the White Power of the United Kingdom forced by Arab blackmail May 1939 and not only to British Mandated Palestine but to Neutral Turkey a vast land easily able to take millions of Jewish people for Temporary Sanctuary .
Turkey has millions of Syrian and Iraqi Refugees but not from October 8 2024 Gazan infants young children their mothers and maternal grand and great grand parents .
A human rights Autonomy first and it will need Generations.
Ian Light2 December at 10:37 pm
Many would agree strongly that the Humanitarian cost in killed and Arab injured civilians has been dire ,excessive and far from “most moral ” particularly painful the deaths of infants ,young children and whole families . There is excess hunger and thirst and lack of medical supplies including anaesthetics ,analgesics and antibiotics . Some Gazan children for the sake of Humane Law have been transferred to Israeli and Arab Hospitals it is True .