As if dealing with terrorists and pro-Hamas supporters isn’t enough, we also have to deal with our extremist government ministers intent on both undermining our moral position in this war and inflaming our own radicals. I came across a couple articles in Times of Israel that just left me stunned.
Our Heritage Minister, Amichai Eliyahu reportedly said we should use nuclear weapons in Gaza.
Asked in an interview with Radio Kol Berama whether an atomic bomb should be dropped on the enclave, Eliyahu said, “This is one of the possibilities.”
Eliyahu, a member of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, does not have any connection to the three-member war cabinet directing the war against the Hamas terror group, nor is he part of the broader security cabinet.
When it was pointed out to the minister that there are some 240 hostages currently held in the Gaza Strip, Eliyahu doubled down.
“I pray and hope for their return, but there is a price to be paid in war,” he said. “Why are the lives of the abductees, whose release I really want, more important than the lives of the soldiers and the people who will be murdered later?”
Far-right minister says nuking Gaza an option, PM suspends him from cabinet meetings | The Times of Israel
Fortunately Prime Minister Netanyahu disavowed his comments, and suspended Eliyahu from cabinet meetings. Eliyahu should have been fired although doing that would only agitate Itamar Ben-Gvir which could, in turn, threaten Netanyahu’s position. 🤷
To make matters worse, our Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich said that Israel will “control Gaza after the war”. He said he will refuse to invest in defending our southern border and, instead –
“The most important thing is that there will be no more Hamas, that the Strip will be under the operational control of the IDF for years, and that we will not return to the same misconceptions,” he told Channel 12. “We will be there, we will rule there and we will maintain security.”
The last thing we should do is actually go occupy Gaza once our military goals are achieved in Gaza.
In another article, our National Security Minister dismissed the growing violence in Judea and Samaria as “graffiti” where this violence could easily become yet another front for our soldiers. Bear in mind that one of the reasons the IDF was not able to respond quickly to the attacks on 7 October is reportedly because we had troops deployed in Judea and Samaria to address violence between radical Jews in the settlements and their Palestinian neighbours.
Ben Gvir, the leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, reportedly asked why so much attention needed to be given to the “graffiti” Israeli youth are daubing on Palestinian property.
Upon hearing this, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly shot down Ben Gvir and told him the settler violence is much more serious than that, Channel 12 reported.
Amid Shin Bet warnings, Ben Gvir said to dismiss deadly settler violence as ‘graffiti’ | The Times of Israel
Israel is embroiled in a justifiable war against a monstrous force while another seems to be trying to take advantage of this situation to score political points while undermining our efforts to create a more secure Israel going forward.
RSS – Posts
What do you think?