From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
Levin calls on IDF to strip Yair Golan of rank after comment on killing babies
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Justice Minister Yariv Levin calls on the IDF to revoke The Democrats chief Yair Golan’s military rank in the wake of his comment this morning that Israel was killing babies in Gaza “as a hobby.”
“The terrible things that Yair Golan said this morning are a vile and despicable blood libel, the brainchild of the greatest haters of Israel,” Levin says in a statement calling his statement an “unprecedented low for the Labor Party.”
“This is also a testing time for the heads of the army. Anyone who spreads such a lie about IDF soldiers can no longer bear the rank of general. The revocation of the ranks is the least that can be done to erase the slander that has been cast on our loved ones who are fighting right now on the battlefield for the release of the hostages and the victory over our enemies,” Levin declares.
A former commander of the Northern Front and the Home Front and deputy IDF chief of staff, the retired major general was passed over for the position of IDF chief of staff in 2018, after a 2016 speech in which he likened contemporary trends in Israel to the “disturbing processes” that took place in Europe in the run-up to the Holocaust.
Golan entered politics in 2019 as part of the left-wing Democratic Union’s electoral slate before joining Meretz ahead of the March 2021 elections.
He subsequently won the Labor party primary and became chairman in May 2024, overseeing its merger with Meretz to become the party now known as The Democrats.
He made headlines and received accolades in 2023 when he headed to the front lines of Hamas’s October 7 onslaught on his own initiative and rescued many partygoers fleeing the massacre at the Nova rave.
The Times of Israel Community.