Senior Haredi lawmaker: ‘I don’t understand what we are fighting for in Gaza’

MK Moshe Gafni, the leader of the ultra-Orthodox Degel Hatorah faction — part of the United Torah Judaism party — sparked anger on the political right on Wednesday morning when he said that he does not understand what Israel is fighting for in Gaza.

Opening a meeting of the Knesset Finance Committee, which he chairs, Gafni told lawmakers that he was thankful to God and US President Donald Trump for the end of the war with Iran, and expressed his condolences over the deaths of seven soldiers in Gaza Tuesday.

“But I don’t understand, even to this very moment, what we are fighting for there,” he added. “I don’t understand what the need is. What are we going to do there when soldiers are being killed all the time?… We need a Trump to come here and say, We are returning the hostages, stopping all these things, and returning to normal. But apparently we haven’t merited this yet.”

MK Yinon Azulai of fellow ultra-Orthodox Shas party backed up Gafni’s statement, saying that “we must do everything to end this war now when we are strong, not weak, and bring back the hostages.”

Gafni also found support in the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which tweeted that he was “telling the truth as it is, without embellishment or spin.”

“The war in Gaza has exhausted itself, and is being waged without a clear purpose or real plan. It is time to show courage and say in a clear voice: Return the hostages, stop the fighting. This is the correct solution, this is the only way to complete an Israeli victory,” the group said.

But Gafni’s statement drew heated condemnations from the political right, with National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party charging that national security was damaged by questioning the war in Gaza.

His rhetoric “recalls similar statements by the extreme leftist Moshe Ya’alon, harms Israel’s security and the families of the fallen heroes,” the party said in a statement — referring to the assertion of Moshe Ya’alon, a former Likud defense minister, that Israel was carrying out “ethnic cleansing” in the northern Gaza Strip.

“Our heroic warriors are fighting a mandatory war against… the Nazi terrorist organization Hamas” in order to “restore security to the residents of the south in particular and to the residents of Israel in general, and to return all of our hostages, living and dead,” the statement added. It also said that the sacrifice of fallen soldiers requires Israel to continue the war until victory.

Ben Gvir said that Gafni’s statement was a “shame and a disgrace.”

“What are they fighting for there?” he asked rhetorically. “They are fighting a war of survival, so that there will be no more October 7s, no more rape, massacre and murder,” he told Army Radio, noting that he currently has a son in the IDF.

Yehuda Wald, director general of the far-right Religious Zionism party, also slammed Gafni, arguing that “only a person who does not send his sons to war can speak with such detachment.” The Haredi community almost uniformly does not perform army service.

Sounding a similar note, Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz said that Israelis were fighting in Gaza “so that babies will never again be burned alive inside their homes, as happened in Kfar Aza.”

“It is not surprising that those who don’t understand this threatened only two weeks ago, when Israel was on the verge of attacking Iran, to overthrow a right-wing government in the middle of a war of survival only so as to not take part in that war,” he posted on X.

Gafni’s Degel Hatorah faction is part of the larger United Torah Judaism faction, which recently threatened to dissolve the Knesset over efforts to conscript Haredim.

Lawmakers within the coalition and the opposition have been pushing for legislation that would end the longstanding exemption of yeshiva students from military service to make up for a wartime manpower shortage and ease the burden on reservists.

Gafni also came under fire from the political left and center, although for different reasons.

Addressing the Knesset plenum, Yesh Atid MK Merav Ben-Ari said that there was “no need for Trump” but rather  a prime minister who will “ignore messianic, delusional and mandate-less elements” and heed the nation, which overwhelming supports ending the war and returning the hostages.

Given Gafni’s position within the coalition running the war, his statement is “a shame and a disgrace,” tweeted The Democrats MK Gilad Kariv. “You bear personal and direct responsibility for everything happening in the Strip. If you don’t understand why the war in Gaza is continuing, what the hell are you doing in the coalition?”