With calls of ‘traitor,’ hecklers disrupt Yair Golan speech at conference
The left-wing Democrats party leader argues back that protesters are tearing the country apart; opposition leaders condemn jeers, far-right minister Ben Gvir praises them
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleThe Democrats party leader Yair Golan was heckled and booed by protesters who called him “a traitor” on Tuesday during his speech at a conference, prompting the former army general to tell the crowd that they “know nothing but hate.”
Golan, leader of the left’s flagship party, has become the locus of right-wing protests since saying last week that Israel was killing babies in Gaza “as a hobby,” comments he later walked back.
While opposition party leaders condemned the hecklers and praised Golan, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declared that the accusation was correct.
Protesters were seen on video shouting “traitor” at Golan and attempting to drown out his speech with jeers, whistles, sirens, and other noisemakers.
“Shame on you,” Golan responded over the din at the annual Sderot conference for education and society, which was held at Kaye Academic College of Education in Beersheba. “You are tearing apart the state, at a conference whose purpose [is to discuss] how to rebuild what you haven’t yet taken apart.”
“It’s because of people like you that [former prime minister Yitzhak] Rabin was murdered,” he told the hecklers. “If you had the courage, you would listen, but you are afraid, distrustful, and that causes you hate that leads to violence. You won’t make me hate because I am a courageous person… I dare to love you.”
“At my advanced age, I went to save people from the Nova party. I risked my life while you sat at home in safety,” he yelled at the crowd.
אחרי שכינו אותו ׳בוגד׳ יאיר גולן פתח במתקפה על המשתתפים בכנס שדרות:
אין בכם כלום חוץ משנאה, אתם לא יודעים כלום חוץ משנאה
בגילי המתקדם יצאתי למסיבת הנובה לסכן את חיי בזמן שישבתם בבית
אתם מפרקים את מדינת ישראל pic.twitter.com/fiyIv6tg41
— מיכאל שמש Michael Shemesh (@shemeshmicha) May 27, 2025
Though long a controversial figure, Golan, 63, emerged as a brief consensus hero in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, when he headed to the front lines and helped rescue partygoers fleeing the attack on the Nova music festival where some 350 people were slaughtered.
According to the Walla news site, protesters at the conference also attempted to block Democrats MK Naama Lazimi from entering, telling her to “go to Gaza.”
Immediately after Golan spoke, deputy minister Almog Cohen of Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party rushed onto the stage — though he reportedly had not been invited to speak — and offered praise to the hecklers.
יאיר גולן הגיע לשדרות!
מה אומרים, ערוצי התרעלה ידווחו על הקריאות מהקהל? pic.twitter.com/JrX8NMvtXo— Igal Malka – ???????????????????????? (@igal_malka) May 27, 2025
Ben Gvir also spoke at the conference, where he backed the hecklers, telling the crowd, “They are right, Yair Golan really is a traitor.”
“A person like that should not be an Israeli politician,” Ben Gvir said. He criticized Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara for not ordering Golan’s arrest over his babies-killing remark.
Later, Golan accused Cohen of leading the hecklers “in an attempt to bust up the speech.”
“I know that this is incitement from above,” Golan wrote on X, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The same man who incited to murder Rabin continues to incite also today.”
Opposition Leader MK Yair Lapid in a post to X wrote that “Yair Golan is not a traitor and I completely condemn the calls against him.”
He added, “Itamar Ben Gvir, a criminal who was convicted of supporting terror and was the national security minister of October 7, is a danger to the security and welfare of the country.”
Benny Gantz, leader of the opposition National Unity party, came out in support of Golan, saying in a post to X that during his military career, he “endangered his life for the state and dedicated his life to its security.” Golan was a deputy chief of staff of the IDF.
Gantz said that “the calls of ‘traitor’ should be completely condemned, and the first to condemn them should be the prime minister.”
In an interview last Tuesday that caused a political firestorm, Golan told the Kan public broadcaster that “Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don’t return to acting like a sane country. A sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not set itself the aim of expelling populations.”
Golan said later in the day that he had not been criticizing the army but rather the government.
Still, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that Golan would be permanently barred from reserve duty, wearing a military uniform and entering army bases, and called his Gaza remarks a “blood libel.”
On October 7, the Palestinian terror group Hamas led thousands of attackers to invade southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, abducting 251 as hostages to Gaza, and triggering the ongoing war there.
Netanyahu has been repeatedly accused by the left over the years of encouraging incitement that led to Rabin’s killing, or at the very least of contributing to the incendiary political climate that led to his assassination by a Jewish extremist. He has rejected such claims as “attempts to distort the historical truth.”
The Jerusalem District Court in 2008 convicted Ben Gvir of incitement to racism and supporting a terror organization over a placard he held reading “Arabs out” after a Palestinian terror attack in Jerusalem, and anti-Arab signs he had in his car that referred to the far-right Kach movement, a Jewish group that was banned as a terror organization.
The Times of Israel Community.