In a heated interview on Channel 13, former Minister of Defense Moshe Ya'alon linked complaints against the IDF to the case of Elor Azaria.
The interviewer Eyal Berkovitch was outraged by the remarks and said: "They slaughtered children, raped children, what are you talking about? They slaughtered us on the seventh of October!"
"I don't accept that, revenge is not a war plan," Ya'alon replied. "War is war," Berkovitch responded, "I expect a former Chief of Staff to go to war in wartime."
"I expect the State of Israel not to send soldiers to kill babies or women," Ya'alon said. "Do you think the Israeli government sends IDF soldiers to kill babies in Gaza?" the interviewer Moriyah Asraf asked. Ya'alon replied: "I think that the moment Rabbis talk about there being no innocents in Gaza, and Smotrich and Ben-Gvir talk about evicting and removing the population and then you'll be clean of Arabs and populate Gaza with Jews - that's not the state I want to live in."
In Likud, they attack Ya'alon following his remarks, "Ya'alon has lost it again. This time he aligns himself with the Hamas propaganda that spreads blood libels against IDF soldiers. Ya'alon - you should be ashamed."