Opposition MKs slam ‘fascist’ bill targeting Democrats leader Golan for allegedly slandering IDF

During a heated debate in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, opposition lawmakers denounce “fascist” legislation to strip former high-ranking security officials of their rank for allegedly slandering the military.

“It’s a fascist law,” Yesh Atid MK and former Mossad deputy director Ram Ben Barak declares during a shouting match with coalition lawmakers, whom he accuses of “trying to silence criticism.”

“You are a fascist government,” he declares, prompting Likud MK Osher Shekalim to scream ,”Shame on you.”

Yesh Atid MK Mickey Levy, a former senior police official, queries why ministers with criminal convictions, such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, should be able to decide to penalize officers.

“Is this a fascist country or a democracy?” he asks.

The legislation is dubbed the Yair Golan bill by critics because it is widely seen as aimed at the chair of the leftwing Democrats party. Last May, Justice Minister Yariv Levin called on the IDF to revoke Golan’s military rank in the wake of his comment that Israel was killing babies in Gaza “as a hobby” — a comment that the former deputy IDF chief of staff later said was a criticism of the “most failed government in Israel’s history” and not the military.

Likud MK Ariel Kallner subsequently proposed a bill that would penalize senior officers in the security services for encouraging refusal to enlist in the IDF, calling for reservists to halt volunteering, or “slandering” the security services, which passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset in December. Such officers would be stripped of their military rank and privileges.

The bill states that if the relevant minister finds that current or former officers in the IDF, Shin Bet, Mossad, Israel Police, or other security agencies have engaged in such behavior, they may be demoted or lose their pensions or other benefits granted to veterans.

Golan, who previously dismissed the “petty uproar surrounding an unimportant law by an unimportant MK who wants to deny me rights,” writes on X: “This is what Netanyahu’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is busy with during a multi-front war that they are incapable of winning.”

“The north is collapsing, and they are persecuting officers, persecuting the opposition, and abandoning the fighters and the State of Israel. This is a coalition of poison, despair, and destruction. They can pass whatever delusional law they want; when this government is replaced, we will cancel everything,” he writes.