IN partnership with Scotland for Palestine, we publish quotes from key Israeli figures exposing the genocidal sentiment which has fuelled two years of atrocities.
Quotes in Hebrew have been translated to English.
Bezalel Smotrich (finance minister and leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party): At a “Settlements Conference”, he said: “Within a few months, we will be able to declare that we have won. Gaza will be totally destroyed. In another six months, Hamas won’t exist as a functioning entity.”
He told the listening audience that the population of Gaza, some 2.3 million Palestinians, would be “concentrated” in a narrow strip of land between the Egyptian border and the so-called Morag Corridor, which runs the width of Gaza between Khan Younis and the border city of Rafah.
The area would be a “humanitarian” zone, the Religious Zionism leader said, “absent of Hamas and terrorism”.
The rest of the Strip, he added, “will be empty”.
Moshe Sa’ada (Likud Knesset member): “Just like it’s clear to everyone today that the right wing was right in the political matter regarding the Palestinian issue, today it’s simple: you go everywhere and they tell you ‘exterminate them’. In the kibbutzim they tell you ‘exterminate them’.
“My friends at the prosecutor’s office who fought with me on political matters, in debates, they say to me: ‘Moshe, obviously we should exterminate all the … Gazans.’ I mean, these are statements I had never heard.”
Zvi Sukkot (Religious Zionism Knesset member): “To occupy, to annex, to destroy all the houses there, to build large and spacious neighbourhoods, large settlements that will be named after the nation’s heroes who fought there, to distribute plots of land to the soldiers who fought, to the wounded who fought – so that Palestine Square will become the Israeli heroes’ square. Watch the words from the victory lobby in the Knesset today.”
Daniella Weiss (founder of Nachala, an Israeli settler organisation): “No Arab will remain in Gaza. The Arabs have finished this chapter. On October 7, a new chapter in the history of the Middle East and the world was opened. Hamas has no option to stay [in Gaza], Hamas supporters have no option of staying [in Gaza], and those who want a quiet life, they can live a quiet life in Canada, in Scotland, in Egypt…”
Beni Ben Muvhar (regional council leader): “Up until the Litani [river]. Level all of it. They’re all terrorists, no-one is a citizen from anything you’re seeing. Destroy all the villages. They are not villages, they are Redwan and Hezbollah terrorist hubs.”
Bezalel Smotrich (below) said Palestinians should be encouraged to emigrate from the Gaza Strip to leave a different situation on the ground at the conclusion of the war: “1.8 million Gazans should be encouraged to emigrate to change facts on the ground after war.
“If there were 100,000-200,000 Arabs in the Strip and not two million, the whole conversation about the day after [the war] would be completely different,” Smotrich told Army Radio. “They want to leave. They have been living in a ghetto for 75 years and are in need.”
Marilyn Baron (mother of an Israeli soldier who died in Gaza): “I think that politicians must accept to press the button … no-one must inhabit this land if it is not the Jewish people.”
In an interview with i24NEWS FR, she said that Israel is a country that is armed with nuclear weapons and that politicians should agree to “press the button”.
Zvi Yehezkeli (Israeli Channel 13 News commentator) said that 100,000 Gazans should have been killed in the opening blow.
David Azoulay (ex-Knesset politician and now head of the Metula town council): “Israel should make Gaza look like Auschwitz museum.” He proposed sending all Gazans to refugee camps in Lebanon and flattening the whole Strip so it becomes an empty museum like Auschwitz.
He told radio station 103FM that Israel should be sending Palestinian Gazans fleeing the fighting to refugee camps in Lebanon, with the entire Gaza Strip being emptied and levelled and turned into a museum like the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
“After October 7, instead of urging people to go south, we should direct them to the beaches. The Navy can transport them to the shores of Lebanon, where there are already sufficient refugee camps. Then, a security strip should be established from the sea to the Gaza border fence, completely empty, as a reminder of what was once there. It should resemble the Auschwitz concentration camp,” he said in an interview with Ben Caspit and Yinon Magal.
He went on: “Tell everyone in Gaza to go to the beaches. Navy ships should load the terrorists on to the shores of Lebanon. The entire Gaza Strip should be emptied and levelled flat, just like in Auschwitz.
“Let it become a museum, showcasing the capabilities of the state of Israel and dissuading anyone from living in the Gaza Strip. This is what must be done. To give them a visual representation.”
And he said: “What occurred on October 7 was a second Holocaust. Lebanon already has refugee camps, and that’s where they should go. We should leave Gaza desolate and destroyed to serve as a museum, demonstrating the madness of the people who lived there.”
Later, he clarified his stance about the situation in the north: “Hezbollah is observing the situation in the south, and if we don’t address it properly, they will see it as a weakness. No matter how strong terrorism may be, we cannot live in fear or uproot people from their homes. We must act decisively.”
Azoulay finished the interview by saying: “The displaced residents of the north deserve to know when and how they will return home. We don’t want war or casualties. However, I don’t believe Hezbollah will surrender peacefully.”
Shimon Riklin (Israeli journalist): “I am for war crimes, I don’t care if I’m criticised, I am unable to sleep without watching homes in Gaza being destroyed, more houses, more buildings, I don’t want them to have anything to go back to.”
Danny Neumann (former Knesset member): He expressed disturbing advocacy calling for the extermination of the people of Gaza, labelling all of them as “terrorists” and dehumanising them.
He called for the flattening of Gaza, the cleansing of its “dust” and the building of a new secure area for Israel in its place.
Rafi Kishon (lecturer and comedian) proposed to flood Gaza with toxic waste and set it all on fire.
Arieh King (deputy mayor of the Israeli-run Jerusalem municipality) called for burying alive dozens of Palestinian civilians whom he described as “subhuman”. King called the unarmed men, who were arbitrarily grabbed from their homes in Gaza by the Israeli army, “Nazi Muslims”.
“We have to pick up the pace,” he said on Twitter/X, referring to the Israeli army’s “elimination” of Palestinians.
King added that if it were up to him, he would have used the D-9 armoured bulldozers to bury the men alive, calling them “ants”, saying: “They are not human beings and not even human animals, they are subhuman and that is how they should be treated.”
Yinon Magal (Israeli soldier): “I am coming to conquer Gaza and give it to Hezbollah in their heads and stick to one mitzvah. Erase the seed of Amalek [biblical tribe hostile to the Israelites]. I left my house behind and until victory, I will not return. You know our slogan. There are no uninvolved.”
Cabinet Sources select excerpts: “Besides the issue of control of the Strip, a plan drawn up by Ron Dermer at [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s request (above), which examines ways to thin the population in Gaza to a minimum, is also expected to cause controversy.”
“For the Prime Minister, this is a strategic goal, the top of the security considers it an unrealistic fantasy … And if already at the stage of conducting the war there are different opinions, then on the question of ‘the day after’, the significant differences between the main players are already evident.
“And the issue of the day after is one of the most sensitive today, and dealing with it does not take place in any official forum but only in internal consultations.
“Even the new demand not to cause harm to the displaced people in the southern Gaza Strip when the IDF starts operating there, can be answered with a non-binding statement that ‘we will try’.”
“Another programme is added to this. Most of the cabinet ministers do not know about it. Not even the ministers of the war cabinet. It is not discussed in these forums due to its obvious explosiveness: thinning the population of Gaza to the minimum possible.
“Joe Biden is strongly opposed and so is the entire international community. Yoav Gallant, the chief of staff, and the top of the IDF claim that there is no such possibility. But prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees this as a strategic goal.
“He even tasked his confidant in the War Cabinet, minister Ron Dermer, to formulate a staff work on the matter.
“This is a plan that will bypass the American resistance without a confrontation, the Egyptians’ determined resistance without them starting to shoot refugees who will enter their territory through the Philadelphia axis, and the general global resistance that will arise when the first Gazans leave their home and migrate to another place.”
Intelligence Ministry Document: Despite its name, the Intelligence Ministry is not directly responsible for any intelligence body, but rather independently prepares studies and policy papers that are distributed to the Israeli government and security agencies for review, but are not binding.
The ministry’s annual budget is 25 million Israeli shekels (about £5.7m) and its influence is considered relatively small. It is currently headed by Gila Gamliel, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party.
This Israeli government ministry prepared a detailed proposal to forcibly transfer Gaza’s resiednts to Egypt amid a large-scale military offensive on the Gaza Strip, following Hamas’s deadly assault and massacres in southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, reflecting how the idea of forced population transfer was being raised to the level of official policy discussions. Such plans would constitute a serious war crime.
A source in the Intelligence Ministry confirmed to Local Call/+972 that the document was authentic, that it was distributed to the defence establishment by the ministry’s policy division and “was not supposed to reach the media”.
Tally Gotliv (Likud Knesset member): “At this very moment, aid trucks continue to enter the Gaza Strip! Enough! How long will we bow our heads and endure the shame? That’s not how you defeat terrorism. Stop everything immediately, bring back a total blockade. Return instructions to open fire in the north of the Gaza Strip against all incoming Gazans. Let the soldiers and commanders win. Thanks to them and thanks to their courage and understanding of the necessity of fighting, we will win.”
Itamar Ben-Gvir (national security minister and leader of the far-right Jewish Power party): “I want the possibility to behead head after head, head after head of the Nukhba.”
Nissim Vaturi (Likud Knesset member and deputy speaker of the Israeli Parliament): “All the preoccupation with whether or not there is internet in Gaza shows that we have learned nothing. We are too humane. Burn Gaza now, no less!”
Shlomo Karhi (communications minister): Israel’s minister of communications called on the IDF to cut off the foreskins of Hamas fighters, as David did with the Philistines in the Tanakh, as “revenge”.
Bezalel Smotrich: “I am now finishing a condolences visit to the families of Nathaniel Harosh and Yossi Hershkowitz, God avenge their blood, who fell in Gaza. The families’ message is unequivocal: we don’t stop until Amalek is exterminated for good.
“Those who paid the highest price demand from us that the price not be in vain. They are right. So it will be with God’s help.”
Narkis (Singer): Journalist David Sheen reported: “Pop singer Narkis sings with Israeli soldiers for an extermination and colonisation which will be exemplary and inspire other countries to copy it: ‘We’re finishing off Gaza! We’ll return Gush Katif [former Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip]! We’re a light unto the nations!’”
Amihai Eliyahu (Jewish Power Knesset member and heritage minister): Yaki Adamker reported that in an interview with him and Israel Cohen, minister Amichai Cohen said in a level voice: “We would not have given humanitarian aid to the Nazis. There is no such thing as non-involved in Gaza.”
Question: “So what? Should we drop an atomic bomb on all of Gaza?”
Minister Eliyahu: “This is one of the options.”
Question: “But are there more than 240 Israeli abductees in Gaza?”
Minister Eliyahu: “Praying and hoping for their return, but there are also prices in war.”
Yitzhak Kroizer (Jewish Power Knesset member): On Twitter/X in response to @IsraelGaley: “The Gaza Strip should be wiped off the map”. To @tuchfeld: “Everything must be done to return the abductees to their home. At the same time, the Gaza Strip needs to be flattened and everyone has one sentence and that is death.
“I think minister Amichai Eliyahu sent a very clear message: the Gaza Strip should be erased from the map in order to send a message to the rest of our enemies, with this goal we should also return our abductees.
“There are no innocents in the Gaza Strip, not all those who entered to rape and kill our children were armed with Hamas ribbons on their foreheads, some were civilians. They are Nazis and Nazis. There is only one sentence: death.”
Galit Distel Atbaryan (Likud Knesset member and former information minister): “Hate the enemy. Hate the monsters. Any vestige of internal bickering is a maddeningly stupid waste of energy.
“Invest this energy in one thing: Erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth. That the Gazan monsters will fly to the southern fence and try to enter Egyptian territory. Or they will die and their death will be evil. Gaza should be erased.”
Tally Gotliv (Likud Knesset member): “Without hunger and thirst among the Gazan population, we will not succeed in recruiting collaborators, we will not succeed in recruiting intelligence, [or]… in bribing people with food, drink, medicine, in order to obtain intelligence.”
Naftali Bennett (former prime minister pictured below): “Crush, crush, crush. Properly. […] Patience. We have time. […] Crush, crush and crush the Nazi enemy, before sending in our soldiers, our boys. Crush these Nazis with a firepower never before seen here. […] Let a thousand terrorist mothers on the other side cry and not one more mother on our side.”
Nir Barkat (Likud Knesset member, economy minister and former mayor of Jerusalem): “You remember the Second World War? What [the allies] did to Germany? These are enemies of Israel, they want to wipe us out, they are our enemies!”
Interviewer: “But you say you don’t have a problem with innocent civilians, so why not lift the blockade?”
Barkat: “Bring us the kidnapped back! You want any kind of humanitarian consideration? Bring the over 200 kidnapped people […] and we will consider.”
Interviewer: “[…] But laying siege to a civilian population is…”
Barkat: “That’s what concerns you right now?! The real question is: how do we wipe these people off the face of the Earth. This is the question!”
Interviewer: “I’m saying, the taking of hostages, by [Hamas], is a war crime – but also laying siege [to] a civilian population is a war crime. Does that not concern you?”
Barkat: “We are at war. And when you have the people controlling Gaza using civilians to take cover […] – it’s not gonna work with Israel anymore. We will not … We are going to target them. And we are saying to the civilians, the innocent civilians: don’t give cover to terrorists.
“What we’ve been through in Israel we have not seen since the Nazi times. ISIS times. OK? And so, Israel will wipe them off the face of the earth.”
Moshe Feiglin (Israeli politician and leader of the Zehut party): “It is not Hamas that should be eliminated. Gaza should be razed and Israel’s rule should be restored to the place. This is our country.”
Arieh King (deputy mayor of Jerusalem): “If the prime minister … cared, or his ministers from the State of Israel cared, there would have been 150,000 dead already in the Gaza Strip and not a single building in the Gaza Strip would have been left standing.”
Boaz Bismuth (Likud Knesset member): “We must not show mercy to cruel people, there is no place for any humanitarian gestures – we must erase the memory of Amalek.”
Amit Halevi (Likud Knesset member): “This victory should [consist of] two aims: 1. No more Muslim land in the Land of Israel. What they imagine, as if it is Dar al-Islam, will forever be Israeli territory, ‘the holy land’ [said in Arabic], which belongs to the Israelites […]
“That is what victory is. And after we make it into Israel land, Gaza should be left as a monument, like Sodom, nothing sown and nothing growing [Deuteronomy 29:23]. And the second […] aim is: full Israeli control […] Full military and civilian control. Nothing less.”
Nissim Vaturi: In a series of edited tweets, Vaturi posted first: “Erase Gaza. Nothing else will satisfy us. It is not acceptable that we maintain a terrorist authority next to Israel. Don’t leave a child there, expel everyone.”
He then edited the tweet to: “Erase Gaza. Nothing else will satisfy us.
“It is not acceptable that we maintain a terrorist authority next to Israel. Do not leave a child there expel all the ones who will remain so that they will not have a resurrection.”
And finally: “Erase Gaza. Nothing else will satisfy us. It is not acceptable that we maintain a terrorist authority next to Israel. Do not leave a child there, expel all the remaining ones at the end, so that they will not have a resurrection.”
Yoav Kisch (minister of education): “This [attack] is not enough, there should be more, there should be no limits to the response, I said it a million times, until we see hundreds of thousands fleeing Gaza, we, the IDF has not achieved its mission.
“This is a phase that should happen, I am saying this cause these are instructions that were said to the IDF […] I also do not want [the IDF] to get inside [Gaza] before crushing everything, I’d rather the falling of 50 buildings than one more casualty to our forces.”
Yoav Gallant (Former defence minister and former Likud Knesset member): “We are imposing a complete siege on the city of Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and are acting accordingly.”
Effi Eitam (Former brigadier general in the IDF, adviser to Netanyahu since October 7): “The goal should be clear: an aggressive [ground] manoeuvre, with a lot of firepower, which will take a toll also from civilians, but this is not the time for these types of calculations.
“Those who raised this snake which emerged from its lair on Saturday, including the civilian population, will have to deal with the consequences. That’s how it has been in all wars, throughout the entire history.
“Of course, they are not a target in and of themselves, but anyone who stands in our way to dealing with the snake – Hamas, its activists, its infrastructure, its regime – pity the evil, and pity his neighbour.
“Anyone standing in our way should know he’ll be hit, and hit hard [….] Right now, the state of Israel has one goal: to annihilate. To annihilate, I’m using that word.”
Ariel Kallner (Likud Knesset member): “Nakba to the enemy now! This day is our Pearl Harbour. We will learn our lessons in due time. At the moment, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48. A Nakba in Gaza and a Nakba to anyone who will dare to join! A Nakba to them, because like in 1948, the alternative is clear.”
Benjamin Netanyahu (Israeli prime minister pictured above): “We will avenge with great force the black day they have inflicted upon the State of Israel and its citizens. As Biyalik said: revenge for the blood of a little child – has yet been devised by Satan.
“All the places where Hamas is positioned at, of [sic] this city of evil, all the places Hamas is hiding in, operating in, we will turn them into piles of rubble. I’m telling the residents of Gaza: get out of there, now. We will operate everywhere, and in full force.”
Isaac Herzog (Israeli president): “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true …”
Benjamin Netanyahu: On October 17, 2023, amid reports of a deadly explosion at the Ahli al-Arabi hospital in Gaza, users on Twitter/X claimed a day-old post from Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been deleted.
The post from @IsraeliPM, the official government account of the prime minister’s office, had read: “This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.”
Israel Katz (defence minister) said Gaza would be “destroyed” if Hamas did not surrender.
Israel Katz: “A mighty hurricane will hit the skies of Gaza City today.”
Israel Katz: As Israel launched its ground assault, Katz said: “Gaza is burning.”
Bezalel Smotrich: “Gaza will be entirely destroyed”