Moshe Ya’alon speaks at a protest against the proposed changes to the legal system, in Tel Aviv, on January 28, 2023. (Photo credit: Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)
Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, a former Israeli minister of defense and chief of staff, stated that the Israeli army is no longer a moral army and that he is worried that executions of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers may be taking place, Channel 14 reported on 25 September.
Ya’alon, who served as Minister of Defense from 2013 to 2016 under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, made the comments during a talk he delivered this week to a forum of reservist naval personnel.
He stated there is no reason why the recruitment into the army of Jewish religious settlers, known as “Hilltop Youth,” who often murder Palestinians to drive them off their land in the occupied West Bank, will not also “execute” Palestinians while in uniform with the Israeli army.
Israeli soldiers and drones in Gaza have regularly executed Palestinian civilians in cold blood since the start of the war on 7 October last year.
In the same conversation, Ya’alon claimed that he was the one who prevented previous attempts to assassinate Hamas military head, Muhammad Deif, and Hamas founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin when senior Hamas officials were in the same apartment because he did not want innocents to be harmed.
The Israeli military claimed it assassinated Deif in an airstrike in July that killed at least 90 people and wounded 300 in Al-Mawasi, an Israeli-designated “safe zone” west of Khan Younis.
Yassin, a paraplegic, was assassinated by Israel in 2004 while he was being pushed in his wheelchair out of an early morning prayer session in Gaza City. An Israeli Apache helicopter fired hellfire missiles at Yassin, killing him, his two bodyguards, and nine bystanders.
In 2017, Ya’alon spoke out against the execution of a Palestinian man by an Israeli soldier. The soldier shot the Palestinian man in the head from close range long after the man had been subdued following an attempt to stab other Israeli soldiers.
🚨Israel's ex-Defence Minister admits "the IDF is no longer a moral army"
Same Yaalon bragged in 2017 that "There are hardly any senior government officials & Knesset members who have had to kill more [Palestinians] than me"
So you can imagine how far worse things have become… pic.twitter.com/MxEaRgmQk6
— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) September 24, 2024
While condemning the execution, Ya’alon also boasted, “There are hardly any senior government officials and Knesset members who have had to kill more than me.”
During his comments at last week’s forum, Ya’alon also said that religious settler leaders in Israel’s current government are seeking to “transfer,” or ethnically cleanse, Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.
The religious settler movement has had a significant influence on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government through National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Both have stated their desire to cleanse the West Bank and Gaza of Palestinians and annex Palestinian land for Jewish settlement.
The former defense minister stated further that religious settler leaders in the government are seeking to spark an apocalyptic war allegedly prophesied in Jewish scripture known as the battle of “Gog and Magog.”
Source: thecradle
