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Netanyahu Replaces Fired Israeli Defense Minister With 'Another Genocidal Lunatic'
"Israel just doubled down on prolonging its genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza," said one observer.
Nov 05, 2024
Palestine defenders on Tuesday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of swapping one "genocidal lunatic" for another after the right-wing leader fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and replaced him with Israel Katz, who was serving as foreign minister.
"Israel just doubled down on prolonging its genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza," journalist and genocide scholar Samira Mohyeddin said on social media following Netanyahu's moves.
Netanyahu cited what he called a "crisis of trust" that "gradually deepened" as his reason for the changes, which came as Israel is waging war on Gaza and Lebanon while bracing for Iranian retaliation for recent Israeli attacks on the Middle East nation.
"In the midst of a war, more than ever, full trust is required between the prime minister and the minister of defense," Netanyahu said Tuesday, according toThe Jerusalem Post. "This trust has cracked between myself and the defense minister."
Katz, a member of Netanyahu's Likud party, previously held several Cabinet posts, most recently as Israel's top diplomat. He was the minister of energy and infrastructure on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants launched a surprise attack on Israel that left more than 1,100 people dead—at least some killed by fratricidal fire—and over 240 others kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
Two days later, Katz issued an order to "immediately cut off the water supply from Israel to Gaza."
"Electricity and fuel were cut off yesterday," he said. "What was will not be. All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave."
Katz's directive followed Gallant's
order for a "complete siege" of Gaza.
"There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed," Gallant said. "We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly."
These statements by Gallant and Katz are
cited in the International Court of Justice's January 26 provisional order for Israel to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza. Israel—which is on trial for alleged genocide at the ICJ—has been accused of ignoring this and subsequent orders issued by the tribunal.
On Tuesday, Israeli state media reported that the Israel Defense Forces has completed its division of Gaza into two parts, and that "there is no intention to allow the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes."
Katz has also come under fire for declaring United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres "persona non grata in Israel" for criticizing the country's war on Gaza, which has left more than 155,000 Palestinians in Gaza dead, wounded, or missing and millions more starving and sick.
While serving as Israel's foreign minister, Katz was also condemned for threatening "severe consequences" for nations that officially recognize Palestinian statehood. Nearly 150 of the 193 United Nations member states recognize Palestine.
Katz also raised eyebrows in 2022 after he
made a thinly veiled threat to ethnically cleanse Arab citizens of Israel. Responding to Israeli Arab students who displayed the Palestinian flag on college campuses, Katz said "remember '48," a reference to 1948, when Israel declared its independence amid an ethnic cleansing campaign in which more than 750,000 Arabs were expelled from Palestine to make way for Jewish settlement.
Palestinians call this mass dispossession and expulsion the
Nakba, which means "catastrophe" in Arabic.
"Remember our independence war and your Nakba," Katz said. "Don't stretch the rope too much... If you don't calm down, we'll teach you a lesson that won't be forgotten."
"Ask your elders—your grandfathers, and grandmothers—and they will explain to you that in the end, the Jews awaken, they know to defend themselves and the idea of the Jewish state," he added.
In one of his final acts as foreign minister, Katz on Monday
initiated the process of annulling a 1967 agreement between Israel and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which Israel accuses of being "infiltrated" by Hamas. The U.N. strongly refutes Israel's accusation.
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Netanyahu's Likud Party Backs 'Preparing to Settle Gaza' Event as Genocide Continues
"This is what the war in Gaza is about," said one critic. "This is what the U.S. is tacitly backing."
Oct 17, 2024
Bolstering fears that Israel plans to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to make way for Jewish colonization, the ruling Likud party of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week sent out invitations to an event near the border of the embattled coastal enclave titled "Preparing to Settle Gaza."
Haaretzreported that the event—which is set to take place next week—is part of an initiative launched by Nachala, a Jewish supremacist movement whose members build illegal settler outposts in the occupied West Bank and whose ultimate objective is Israeli annexation of all of Palestine. The larger initiative's sponsors include the far-right Religious Zionist and Jewish Power parties.
"The event is not just a theoretical conference, but a practical exercise and preparation for renewed settlement in Gaza," Nachala said. "The return to settlement in Gaza is no longer just an idea but a process that is already in advanced stages, with government and public support."
A poster advertising the event declared: "Gaza is ours. Forever."
According to The Times of Israel, 10 of the 32 Likud members of the Knesset and one Cabinet member, Social Equality Minister May Golan—a self-described "proud racist"—said they would attend the event. Haaretz said far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, and Periphery Development Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf are also expected to attend.
Other Knesset lawmakers who say they'll go to the conference include Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi—who once called for Gaza to be "wiped off the face of the Earth"—and Tally Gotliv, who said Israel should use nuclear weapons for "crushing and flattening Gaza without mercy."
Nachala said the event will include a tour of Kibbutz Nirim, which was attacked by Hamas-led fighters on October 7, 2023. However, the kibbutz published a statement saying no such tour will take place.
"We are still waiting for the government and coalition members to take responsibility for the catastrophic failures of October 7 and for the deep wound still in our hearts," the community said. "Instead of holding political events aimed at establishing settlements, the government should focus on bringing home the 101 hostages and supporting the reconstruction of Gaza border communities."
Ben-Gvir and Smotrich attended and spoke at a similar event sponsored by Nachala in January. Both ministers called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.
Netanyahu has repeatedly claimed that he has no intention of resettling Gaza, which Israel conquered in 1967 and from which Jewish settlers and Israeli forces withdrew in 2005, while maintaining a physical and economic stranglehold on the strip.
The prime minister's claim stands in stark contrast with plans by others in his party and government to recolonize Gaza, as well as Likud's founding charter, which
states that "between the [Mediterranean] Sea and the Jordan [River] there will only be Israeli sovereignty."
Last year, Amir Weitmann, who chairs Likud's Libertarian faction, published a plan examining the economics of forcibly transferring Gazans to Egypt's Sinai Desert. A separate 2023 proposal by then-Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel, who is also a Likud member, would ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, forcing them into the Sinai.
Former MK Moshe Feiglin, who quit Likud to found the right-wing Zehut Party, earlier this year invoked Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as he called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip and create a "Hebrew Gaza."
"This is our country, all of it," Feiglin said, adding, "As Hitler said, 'I cannot live if one Jew is left.' We can't live here if one 'Islamo-Nazi' remains in Gaza."
Israeli forces earlier this month launched a major assault on northern Gaza that, in practice, resembles a plan pushed by a group of retired generals, which argued for forcibly displacing people in the north and starving those who remain.
Some Israeli opposition lawmakers condemned the upcoming settlement conference.
"A year later, and it's like we haven't learned a thing," MK Gadi Eisenkot of the National Unity party said Wednesday. "Today, we were informed of the intention to set up settlement projects in the Gaza Strip, a controversial issue in Israeli society."
"This is not what our sons and daughters sacrificed their lives for," added Eisenkot, whose son and nephew were killed in Gaza last year.
The resettlement conference comes amid Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza, for which the U.S.-backed country is
on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice. More than 150,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded—including at least 10,000 people who are missing and feared buried beneath rubble—by Israel's 377-day onslaught, which has also forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened millions of Palestinians.
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Israeli Lawmakers Reaffirm Genocidal Rhetoric on Eve of ICJ Trial
"I stand behind my words," said Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi. "It is better to burn down buildings rather than have soldiers harmed. There are no innocents there."
Jan 10, 2024
Two Israeli lawmakers from right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party doubled down Wednesday on calls to destroy or depopulate Gaza, prompting an admonition from the country's attorney general on the eve of an emergency hearing in the South African-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
In an interview with Hakol Baramah radio, Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi—who once called for Gaza to be "wiped off the face of the Earth"—said he did not regret his November call for Israel to "stop being humane" and "burn Gaza now."
"I stand behind my words," Vaturi said, according toThe Times of Israel. "It is better to burn down buildings rather than have soldiers harmed. There are no innocents there."
Referring to Palestinian civilians trapped in northern Gaza, Vaturi added that he has "no mercy for those who are still there."
"We need to eliminate them," he asserted.
On Tuesday, Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara cautioned government officials against making inflammatory statements like Vaturi's.
Baharav-Miara said officials are "obligated to act according to the principles of international law and the laws of war."
"Statements that call for, among other things, intentional harm to uninvolved citizens, are against the prevailing policy and may constitute criminal offenses, including incitement," she added.
Vaturi's remarks came as more than 90,000 Palestinians have been killed, wounded, or left missing by 96 days of largely indiscriminate Israeli bombardment of Gaza, where around 90% of the territory's 2.3 million residents have been displaced and most of its infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to Palestinian and United Nations officials.
Meanwhile, Haaretzreported that Danny Danon, a former United Nations ambassador now serving in the Knesset, said in a Wednesday radio interview that Israel must "not do half a job" in Gaza.
That, Danon said, means "voluntary migration" of Palestinians from Gaza—a euphemism, critics say, for an ethnic cleansing campaign akin to the Nakba, or "catastrophe," in which more than 750,000 Arabs were forcibly expelled from Palestine during the war to establish the modern state of Israel in 1948.
In November, Danon co-authored a Wall Street Journalopinion piece suggesting the ethnic cleansing of some of Gaza's population to Western countries that would accept the refugees.
Danon and Vaturi's remarks came as the International Court of Justice prepared to convene an emergency hearing Thursday in The Hague in a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and backed by nations including Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, Venezuela, Jordan, and Bolivia.
The filing in the World Court specifically mentions "direct and public incitement to genocide by senior Israeli officials and others."
These include individuals from Netanyahu and other senior Cabinet and military officials to Knesset members and municipal leaders.
Meanwhile, leftist Israeli lawmaker Ofer Cassif is being targeted for removal from the Knesset after becoming the first parliamentarian to express support for the ICJ genocide case against his country.
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