Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Israeli leftist pol faces wrath over ‘baby-kill hobby’ claim - Canaan Lidor

 

​ by Canaan Lidor

Hostile crowd at Beersheva conference shouts down the Democrats leader Yair Golan.

 

Protesters chant "traitor" as Yair Golan speaks at a conference in Be'er Sheva, Israel on may 27, 025. Photo by Canaan Lidor.
Protesters chant "traitor" as Yair Golan speaks at a conference in Be'er Sheva, Israel on may 27, 025. Photo by Canaan Lidor.

Even before he got up to deliver his speech in Beersheva on Tuesday, the Israeli left-wing politician Yair Golan, and former IDF deputy chief of staff, found himself surrounded by angry protesters who were determined to prevent him from delivering it.

The protest, which was unusually intense even for Israel’s polarized political scene, was over Golan’s remarks last week that “a sane country doesn’t kill babies as a hobby.”

Occurring in a city that’s a right-wing stronghold; it reflected low tolerance in Israel for rhetoric that is seen as vilifying soldiers as the country’s leaders and troops are being demonized abroad and prosecuted for disputed war crimes charges.

“You don’t get to speak!” one protester screamed at Golan, who was sitting with an aide and a driver inside a car at the parking lot of the Kaye College, the venue for the annual Sderot Society and Education conference.

“Go home, traitor” and “murderer” were among the chants that dozens of protesters hurled at Golan around his car, and for the duration of his presence at Kaye College.

The venue’s extremely potent amplification system nonetheless overpowered the protesters, allowing the head of The Democrats movement to deliver a speech that began with Golan accusing the protesters of “knowing nothing but hate” and having “learned nothing” from the murder of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.

Golan continued to characterize his listeners as “blind” supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “cowards,” which he contrasted with himself, “a brave man whose courage was tested under fire.” Golan assured his listeners that he “loves” them despite what he’d said about them.

“You’re afraid of me, so you hate me. I am courageous and don’t fear you at all, so I have love for you,” Golan, a reserve major-general in the IDF, bellowed from a podium surrounded by police officers who prevented the hostile and booing crowd from approaching.

Protesters surround a car where the Democrats movement head Yair Golan sits before his address at a conference in Beersheva, Israel on May 27, 2025. Photo by Canaan Lidor.

“Where were you, you zeros, on Oct. 7? I was risking my life,” he added. He was referencing the fact that on the day of the Hamas invasion in 2023, Golan donned his uniform, received a weapon and arrived in his private vehicle and rescued many survivors who were trapped in the area of the Nova music festival massacre.

Almog Cohen, a lawmaker for the Otzma Yehudit right-wing party, encouraged the crowd, joining their jeers and whistling. “I don’t think this is a new reality for Yair Golan, but he came to a right-wing bastion and that’s why he received such a passionate rebuke,” Cohen told JNS.

Cohen, a former police officer, fought Hamas terrorists on the streets of his native Ofakim. After accompanying his wife and three children to a safe space, he helped stave off the invasion by dozens of heavily armed terrorists.

“With the typical arrogance of people from his political persuasion, Yair Golan says and maybe even believes that he alone risked his life. That’s not true. But what is true is that he alone is now putting at risk Israeli soldiers, helping to build cases against them abroad so that they are apprehended and prosecuted like criminals,” Cohen said.

Almog Cohen, right, speaks with protesters demonstrating against Yair Golan at a conference in Beersheva, Israel on May 27, 2025. Photo by Canaan Lidor.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir also spoke at the conference, praising the protesters. “You called Yair Golan a traitor. It’s true, he’s indeed a traitor. He should be arrested,” said Ben-Gvir.

Golan has not apologized for his remark on the killing of babies “as a hobby,” which was widely repeated by Israel’s critics and haters abroad. He has since said he did not mean to criticize Israeli soldiers but the policies of Israel’s government. He did not address the remark during his attempt at a speech in Beersheba.

Simcha Rothman, the head of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, noted his disdain for protests that silence speakers. Rothman has been targeted in this way often by left-wing demonstrators for his prominent role in promoting Israel’s judicial reform.

“But there’s a line, which Yair Golan crossed. That line is: You don’t attack the IDF, certainly not during war, and amplify the enemy’s propaganda and lawfare against them. The reaction we saw here demonstrates that Golan had crossed that line,” Rothman said at a Q&A on stage.

Centrist and left-wing lawmakers, including National Unity party leader Benny Gantz, condemned the protests against Golan at the conference, which brought together dozens of lawmakers, ministers, educators and scholars.

The controversy around Golan also played out during panel discussions at the conference, including before Golan arrived there.

Gadi Taub, a historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a prominent conservative pundit, referenced Golan’s remark as fueling global antisemitism during a panel discussion on Diaspora Jewry.

“As we fight global antisemitism, there are those among us who fuel it. When a reckless, stupid and violent person like [Golan] says things that could have served the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer,” Taub said. “Let me add that some Diaspora Jews and their organizations have turned into our adversaries, to put it mildly.”

He noted that J Street, which purports to be a pro-Israel group, supported stopping arms shipments to Israel in the early months of the war with Hamas and the fighting with Hezbollah.

These tendencies, he argued, are part of a debate within the Jewish people that has been going on for well over a century about Zionism. “Socialist Jews have wrestled with Zionism, Liberal Jews in Germany have, and so do some American Jews,” he said. The surge in antisemitism following Oct. 7, he added, showed that their attempts to isolate themselves from Zionism were in vain.

Speaking before dozens of Israeli teenagers ahead of their military service, Taub told them: “The hateful identity politics and radical ‘anti-colonialism,’ which is the cloak of antisemitism, have worked their way into Israeli academia.”

Taub also said that “the good news” is that Israel will likely see a wave of aliyah, Jewish immigration, from Europe and beyond. Meanwhile, young Israelis are showing a “surprising” level of resistance to what he defined as leftwing indoctrination and defeatist messaging.

Gadi Taub speaks at a conference in Beersheva, Israel on May 28, 2025. Photo by Canaan Lidor.

“The TikTok generation, that I had feared would not fight when push came to shove, turned out to be a generation of lions and lionesses,” Taub said. “I don’t know where you get it from, it must be from home, because you’re certainly not getting it at school,” he added.

Or Yaari, a 19-year-old high school graduate who is undergoing a training program for enlistment in the IDF special forces, said Taub’s address was both inspiring “and worrisome, because I knew more or less what academia was like abroad,” he told JNS, “but I hadn’t even considered that I would meet that sort of thing on a campus in Israel.”


Canaan Lidor

Source: https://www.jns.org/israeli-leftist-pol-faces-wrath-over-baby-kill-hobby-claim/

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

No comments:

Post a Comment