UTJ organ Hamodia publishes op-ed blaming southern kibbutz residents for October 7
Lawmakers blast article in which former candidate for Haredi party claimed left-leaning southerners brought disaster on themselves, need forgiveness for blaming government
A newspaper linked to an ultra-Orthodox political party in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition has come under fire after publishing an opinion piece blaming dovish residents of communities near the Gaza border for the October 7 massacre by Hamas.
The Friday op-ed in Hamodia, closely affiliated with the Agudat Yisrael faction of the United Torah Judaism party, was met with fury Monday from members of the opposition, who highlighted it as an unprecedented “disgrace.”
In the article, writer Menachem Klogman argued that members of kibbutzim along the Gaza border should seek forgiveness for being “full partners” in the security failures that allowed thousands of Hamas-led fighters to invade their communities on October 7, killing some 1,200 people, kidnapping over 250 more and leaving much of the Gaza border area in ruins. He also accused them of misplacing blame.
“The people of the Gaza border kibbutzim… bear heavy responsibility for the disaster that occurred on the holiday of Simhat Torah,” he wrote.
Klugman, who was placed Number 108 on UTJ’s 2021 Knesset slate, was attempting to wade into an ongoing controversy surrounding many southern communities’ refusal to participate in a state ceremony marking the first anniversary of the attack.
Many southern residents accuse the government of evading responsibility for failing to thwart the attack or respond to it, and have expressed anger over the fact that some 97 hostages kidnapped that day remain in Gaza.
Instead of attending the state event, those in the south should “hold a separate ceremony, intended for themselves, not in the name of ‘memory,’ but in order to seek forgiveness and atonement for their share in the disaster, and decide to change their way of life,” Klugman wrote.
“They should also seek forgiveness and atonement from those whom they’ve falsely blamed,” as well as from God, he added.
The article was pilloried in the Knesset on Monday after Yesh Atid MK Naor Shiri read an excerpt from it during a Knesset Finance Committee meeting.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, really,” he said, calling the article “antisemitic.”
“Tell me, is this normal? What country do we live in? This is a disgrace,” he said. “This writer should be put in jail.”
Most members of kibbutzim are thought to lean to the left of the political spectrum.
In the article, Klugman blamed them for being a driving force behind the decision to pull Israeli settlements out of Gaza in 2005. He also accused them of pushing the idea that Hamas was deterred from carrying out such a large-scale attack on Israel, along with “the heads of the military and the other security services, who gave the government false information about what was happening among our enemies.”
During the Knesset discussion, Yesh Atid MK Vladimir Beliak pointed a finger at Housing and Construction Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, who heads both UTJ and Agudath Israel, and who is thought to have final say over content published in the paper.
“There’s a minister in the government who represents this,” Beliak said.
Committee chair Moshe Gafni, who leads the Degel Hatorah faction that makes up the other half of the UTJ alliance, came to Goldknopf’s defense.
“What do you want from Goldknopf?” he asked. “How is he connected to this?”
There was no comment on the controversy from either the party or Hamodia.
