(Joe Lauria/Consortium News) — Moshe Ya’alon, a former Israeli defense minister and army chief, has caused an uproar in Israel by publicly accusing the Israeli government of ethnically cleansing Palestinians in Gaza.
Twenty-four hours after he first made the remark he was invited by a television interviewer on Monday to apologize. He refused.
“What I said accurately reflects what’s happening on the ground,” he said, adding that he intentionally used the term “ethnic cleansing.”
Ya’alon defined it as “evacuating civilians from their homes and demolishing those homes, as is happening in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya,” in northern Gaza. In his initial remarks, Ya’alon said Israel’s aim in Gaza was to “conquer, to annex, to purify an ethnic identity.” He added: “They are cleansing the area from the Arabs.”
