Itongadol.- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly slammed Deputy Chief of General Staff Mag.-Gen. Yair Golan on Sunday for comments he made last week suggesting there were certain parallels between what happened in Nazi Germany during the last century and developments in Israel today.
Netanyahu said these words were “outrageous” and “baseless.”
“They should not have been said at any time, certainly not when they were said,” Netanyahu said at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting, Golan made his remarks last Wednesday night on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The general\’s words, he said, “do an injustice to Israeli society and cheapen the Holocaust.”
Netanyahu said that while Golan has many merits, “his words on this matter were completely mistaken and are unacceptable to me.”
Netanyahu\’s comments were his first public statements on the matter since Golan gave his speech at a ceremony at Tel Yitzhak. After Golan\’s comments caused a furor, Netanyahu called Defense Minister Moshe Ya\’alon, and the following morning Golan issued a clarification.
Unlike Netanyahu, Ya\’alon publicly gave Golan backing, issuing a statement Tuesday saying that he has “total faith in the Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan, a distinguished and valued soldier. The attacks against him and the current criticism against him are deliberate distortions of interpretation of the things he said last night.”
Ya\’alon described the criticisms as “more attempts to cause political harm to the IDF its officers. God help us if we allow this to happen. The job of every commander in the IDF, and especially senior commanders, is not only to lead soldiers into battle, but also to outline the way and the values using both a compass and a conscience.”
At the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said that every country has manifestations of intolerance and violence. “Israel\’s democracy is strong,” he said, “It rejects these manifestations and deals with them through legal and other means.”
Netanyahu also addressed the recent tension in the south, saying that the IDF will continue to operate as necessary to discover and neutralize attack tunnels.
“We are not sparing any efforts or resources to provide security to the citizens of the communities near Gaza,” he said. “These communities have flourished over the last two years, with an increase in the number of residents. We are working to continue that trend. We are not looking for an escalation, but we will not be deterred from what is needed to ensure security.”
Several lawmakers in the opposition referred to Netanyahu’s controversial remark last year implying that Hitler did not intend to kill the Jews until Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini convinced him to do so.
Zionist Union faction chairwoman Merav Michaeli siad “someone who took away Hitler’s responsibility for the idea to exterminate the Jews should not join the chorus of criticism of someone who spoke from his heart about the populist discourse in Israel, for which the prime minister is very much responsible.”
MK Shelly Yacimovich (Zionist Union) said “it’s absurd that he who cheapened the Holocaust in the most brutal way dares to accuse the deputy chief of staff.
“The amount of times the prime minister used the memory of the Holocaust for his political needs is infinite…He who lives in glass houses, etc. This is pure cynicism,” Yacimovich stated.