Yair Golan, a former IDF deputy chief of staff and current head of the The Democrats party, a merger of Labor and Meretz, said in an interview with the Kan public broadcaster that “
Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don’t return to acting like a sane country.”
The political leader, who is not a current member of Knesset, added that “a sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations.”
Golan accused the current government of being “
full of vengeful types with no morals and no ability to run a country in a time of crisis. This endangers our existence.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Golan, calling his comments “wild incitement” and a “blood libel.”
“I vehemently condemn the wild incitement from Yair Golan against our heroic soldiers and against the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “The IDF is the most moral army in the world, and our soldiers are fighting in a war for our existence.”
The prime minister added that “Golan, who encourages refusal to serve and compared Israel to Nazis while he was still in the military, has now reached a new low when he claimed Israel is ‘
killing babies as a hobby.’”
[...]
While a controversial figure, Golan, 63, emerged as a brief consensus hero in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, when he
headed to the front lines and helped rescue partygoers fleeing the attack
