Israely Former MP invokes Hitler in call to expel Gaza’s ‘Islamo-Nazi’ population
Israely Former MP invokes Hitler in call to expel Gaza’s ‘Islamo-Nazi’ population
Moshe Feiglin in TV interview calls for resettlement of Gaza and expulsion of Palestinians
Israeli far-right Zehut (Identity) political party chairman Moshe Feiglin gives a joint press statement with Prime Minister and Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu (unseen) in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, on 29 August 2019 (Jack GUEZ / AFP)
By MEE staff
Published date: 16 June 2024 16:43 BST | Last update: 4 hours
Israeli politician and former Likud lawmaker Moshe Feiglin invoked Adolf Hitler when urging in a TV interview the expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, whom he described as “Islamo-Nazis”.
In a panel discussion on Channel 12, Feiglin called for resettlement in Gaza and argued Israel should transform the Palestinian territory into a “Hebrew Gaza”.
“We are not guests in our country, this is our country, all of it,” he said in the video shared on Sunday in Israeli social media.
“As Hitler said, ‘I cannot live if one Jew is left’. We can’t live here if one ‘Islamo-Nazi’ remains in Gaza.”
Feiglin represented Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud between 2013 and 2015 before leaving it to establish his own far-right Zehut (“Identity”) party.
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Earlier this year, he announced his intention to run against Likud in the next elections, saying the decision was spurred by what he described as Netanyahu’s failures in handling of the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu has led a devastating war on the Gaza Strip for over eight months, which has killed over 37,000 Palestinians and left the besieged enclave an uninhabitable hellscape.
Feiglin, addressing a far-right rally calling for the deportation of Palestinians from Gaza in January, said: “We need a different prime minister who is willing to stick his neck out to win. Zehut will provide, whenever elections happen, such a candidate.
“For us, the war in Gaza is not merely a defensive war. It’s a war of liberation, the liberation of the land from its occupiers,” Feiglin told crowds of supporters.
Feiglin has also previously called for the “complete destruction of Gaza, before invading it … Destruction like Dresden and Hiroshima, without a nuclear weapon” in an interview with Al Jazeera in October 2023.
Earlier this month, Feiglin participated in provocative raids of Al-Aqsa Mosque along with dozens of ultra-nationalist Israelis.
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has repeatedly called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, arguing that the reconstruction of settlements in the enclave was the only solution to the current conflict.
In an interview with an Israeli TV channel in May, Ben Gvir said he wants to move to Gaza after the end of the war and once the enclave has been resettled by Israel.
In January, several Israeli ministers spoke at a conference promoting the resettlement of Gaza while attendees chanted “death to Arabs”.
After capturing Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war, Israel built 21 settlements in the enclave that were populated by Jewish settlers.
In 2005, however, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon dismantled and evacuated the settlements, a move that was staunchly opposed by many right-wing Israelis, including Ben Gvir
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