7 November 2023

Army says Amichai Friedman’s comments don’t align with its values after he told soldiers that Israel would make its former settlement bloc in Gaza look ‘tiny’

The rabbi at an Israeli military training base celebrated Israel’s actions in Gaza with messianic fervor and exulted over Israel someday controlling a swath of territory from Lebanon to Gaza in a video that went viral on social media Sunday. The military said he had been summoned to meet with superiors and explain himself. 

Rabbi Amichai Friedman, the rabbi at the Nahal Brigade’s training base, addresses a group of young soldiers in the video. He tells them that when he daydreams and imagines that “there are no murdered, no hostages, no injured people,” he’s left with “maybe the happiest month” of his life.

He explains that

“we have reached the point where the people of Israel are moving to a higher level. We were born 75 years ago as a new people. 

“We built a foundation, we started working on our bodies, and we grew, finding our identity and what we wanted to do with ourselves: what is good, bad, evil, and impure and what we want to preach” to the world, he continued.

As the soldiers chant and cheer, he concludes that “the whole country” is “ours,” adding that he means “all of it … including Gaza, including Lebanon!

“The entire promised land!” he says. “We’re returning to it big time! Gush Katif” – the former Jewish settlement bloc in Gaza evacuated in the 2005 disengagement – will be tiny compared to what we’ll achieve with God’s help!”

He concludes by saying that Israel teaches the world “what goodness and justice are and what morality and values are” and vowing that Israel “will eliminate evil and uproot Hamas, we will destroy our enemies, destroy all of them.”

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The original source of this article is Haaretz

Copyright © Allison Kaplan Sommer, Haaretz, 2023