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Rabat – Israel’s Minister of Heritage, Amichai Eliyahu, has sparked further uproar with comments in which he delighted in the ongoing destruction of the Gaza Strip and appeared to urge the Israeli Defense Forces to intensify their genocide campaign in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Amichai emphatically endorsed the merciless killing of Palestinians and the destruction of their houses by Israeli occupation forces.
The Israeli minister posted on Thursday a video of the demolition of homes and ruins in Gaza.
“The north of the Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever,” read his scandalous caption of the video. “Blow up and flatten everything, delightful. After we are done, we allocate the lands of Gaza to the soldiers fighting and the settlers who lived in Gush Katif.”
The outrageously racist and genocidal comments angered netizens around the world, with many taking to social media to express their shock and strongly condemn the Israeli minister’s hateful, spiteful comments.
Writing on X, formerly Twitter, one commenter denounced Amichai for reveling in the destruction of Palestinians’ homes and calling for an ethnic cleansing in Gaza. “This guy is literally proud of the genocide they are doing and bragging about the atrocities they committed in Gaza,” the commenter wrote.
Another stressed that the minister’s scandalous comments are a reflection of the Israeli government’s policy of avenging Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel with a punitive, genocidal war on Gaza.
Yet another X commenter called for holding Eliyahu accountable, stressing: “Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu should be charged in the International Criminal Court in the Hage together with the rest of the leadership of the State of Israel with war crimes, crimes against humanity ad genocide.”
Read also: Complicity in Gaza Genocide Unmasks the West’s Moral Decay, Inherent Brutality
Israeli occupation forces have massacred more than 9,100 Palestinians since October 7. Over the past week, meanwhile, Israel has considerably intensified its airstrikes in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, targeting civilians, residential buildings, schools, hospitals, as well as places of worship.
On Thursday, UN experts once again warned of the increasingly deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and reissued an appeal demanding an immediate ceasefire to prevent a genocide in the besieged and relentlessly shelled enclave.
“We remain convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide,” the experts said, stressing: “The time for action is now. Israel’s allies also bear responsibility and must act now to prevent its disastrous course of action.”
Despite such appeals and strong condemnations from governments in the Global South as well as protesting crowds in the Arab world and beyond, Israel has dismissed calls for a ceasefire as it continues to receive unwavering support from Western countries, notably the US government.
US Secretary General Antony Blinken reiterated the US support during a visit to Tel Aviv today.
During his meeting with Israeli president Isaac Herzog, the top American diplomat said: “We stand strong for the proposition that Israel has not only the right, but the obligation to defend itself to make everything possible to make sure that October 7 can never happen again.”
