LONDON: A retired Israeli army general, and former Mossad spy, has described his country’s occupation of the West Bank as “absolute apartheid,” and compared its methods with those once employed by Nazi Germany.
Amiram Levin, once the head of Israel’s Northern Command, the part of the armed forces responsible for policing the Lebanon and Syria border region, and a former deputy head of Mossad, also condemned far-right politicians close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over rights abuses in the Palestinian territory.
Violence in the West Bank has escalated over the past 15 months amid increasingly frequent Israeli raids, rampages by Jewish settlers in Palestinian villages, and Palestinian street attacks. According to the UN, at least 196 Palestinians and 24 people in Israel have been killed during hostilities since January.
Speaking to Kan Reshat Bet radio on Sunday, Levin said there has been no democracy in the West Bank since 1967, and the Israeli army is “standing by and watching the rampant settlers, and is beginning to be complicit in war crimes.”
He has been outspoken in the past and made extreme comments about Palestinians, including in 2017 when he said they “deserved” to be occupied. Now, however, he has directed his anger toward the current right-wing Israeli government.
“Walk around Hebron and you will see streets where Arabs cannot walk, just like what happened in Germany,” he said.
In a thinly-veiled reference to Finance Minister Belazel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, he added: “I am not pitying the Palestinians, I am pitying us. We are killing ourselves from within. Bibi (Netanyahu) failed here; he placed criminals and draft dodgers in key positions, who in a civilized country would be sitting behind bars.”
Danny Danon, a senior figure within Israel’s ruling Likud party, rejected the comparisons with Adolf Hitler’s regime and said: “Those who compare us to Germany or the Nazi regime should be examined.”
