Internal Strife in Israel + Other Headlines

Tuesday Digest (12.03.24)

Former Israeli Defense Minister Lobs War Crimes Accusation at Netanyahu

Because I’m a student of Bible prophecy and passages like Zechariah 14, I’m never surprised when other nations of the world turn against Israel. The Bible tells us this will happen.

But it caught me by surprise this weekend when a prominent former defense minister of Israel accused his own country of war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Israel’s security community doesn’t often criticize its own people, but that’s what Moshe Yaalon did Sunday in an interview with a radio station in Israel:

“I speak on behalf of commanders who serve in northern Gaza,” he said. “War crimes are being committed here.”

Yaalon is a former member of Netanyahu’s Likud party. He was Israel’s defense minister from 2013 to 2016, a span which included the six-week war in Gaza in 2014. But he has since become a frequent critic of Netanyahu, and even resigned in 2016 saying he no longer had faith in Israel’s prime minister.