Ofer Winter launches right-wing ‘People of Israel’ party, pledges to push emigration of Gazans, draft ultra-Orthodox into IDF

Controversial former IDF general Ofer Winter announces that his new right-wing party will be called the “Amcha Yisrael,” or “People of Israel,” party, and will pursue a hawkish security policy while also working to engender unity across Israel’s diverse citizenry.

Addressing a room packed with some 300 supporters in Jerusalem, Winter calls the upcoming October 27 election a “referendum on whether we are capable of handling the real challenges of the State of Israel — integrating the Haredim [ultra-Orthodox] into the IDF, connecting Arabs who want the good of the country, bringing about a significant change in the justice system, and dismantling protection rackets and wild crime stretching from the Negev to the Galilee,” an apparent reference to the wave of violent crime in Arab communities.

Winter, like much of the Israeli political spectrum, argues that there can never be a Palestinian state. But echoing voices on the hardline right, he says the only solution to the situation in Gaza is Palestinian “emigration,” declaring that “an enemy who starts a war against us will pay a heavy territorial price.”

He asserts, “This is the true morality. This and no other. And for this I promise that we will fight with determination.”

He calls on Israel to combat antisemitism abroad and repair what he described as its distorted defense “conception” at home, advocating to applause, “Less politics, more leadership.”

As a senior IDF officer, he says, “I saw how distorted concepts cause an entire system to dismiss alternative thinking” and says Israel’s leadership “ignores threats — even when they are right here, across the fence, when with unbearable arrogance we explain to the enemy that we know better than he does what he intends.”

He adds, “An enemy that launches a war against Israel will never return to the status it held on the eve of the war. We will never abandon our nation’s borders again.”

Winter cites the contributions of Arab and Haredi soldiers and says that “only together will we win.”

Winter has been the subject of controversy for a decade, and was released from the military in 2024 after being passed over for promotion.

He came under criticism during the 2014 Gaza war, when he served as commander of the Givati Brigade, for a letter to his subordinate officers in which he described the operation as a religious war against a “blasphemous” foe. The former Givati Brigade commander was also later accused of passing along sensitive information about the war effort to then-economy minister Naftali Bennett, bypassing the usual chain of command.

Winter argues that experienced politicians brought disaster upon the country, declaring that “anyone who thinks, after October 7, that the public will accept everything remaining the same in the political sphere, without new people entering the system, is making a bitter mistake.”

He promises to “do everything to establish as broad a right-wing government as possible, with as many Zionist partners as possible.”