“In Gaza, everyone is involved. Everyone voted for Hamas. Anyone over the age of four is a Hamas supporter. And our goal at the moment, and this is in continuation of what you said, is to turn them from Hamas supporters to Hamas dislikers,” stated former head of Mossad’s Captive and Missing Division.
Rami Igra claimed, during an interview broadcast on Israeli state television, that all civilians in Gaza are guilty and deserve to face Israel’s policy of collective punishment, which prevents food, medicine and humanitarian aid.
This is not the first time that Israeli officials have incited against civilians in Gaza. In November, the Israeli occupation Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu said that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza is a possible solution to destroy it and an option that must be studied.
Eliyahu, a member of the extremist Otzma Yehudit party headed by Itamar Ben-Gvir, explained in statements to the Israel Hayom newspaper: “Death does not frighten the residents of Gaza, and we must know what scares and terrifies them, in order to force them to leave, and wipe them off the face of the Earth. They should tremble in fear and terror.”
He added: “I do not agree with describing the residents of Gaza as civilians. There are no civilians in Gaza and there is no difference between them and Hamas.”
In mid-October, Israeli President Isaac Herzog incited the killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip, asserting that everyone in Gaza was involved in the war.