The Israeli army is committing crimes that resemble Nazi Germany in the occupied West Bank, a highly decorated former Israeli general on Sunday.
During an interview with Israelâs public broadcaster Kan Reshet Betradio, Amiram Levin, the former head of the Israeli armyâs Northern Command, said of the occupied territories,
there hasnât been a democracy there for 57 years, itâs total apartheid.
âThe IDF, which is forced to exert sovereignty there, is rotting from the inside ⊠itâs standing by, looking at the settler rioters and is beginning to be a partner to war crimes ⊠these are deep processesâ Levin continued.
However, it was when Levin was asked to elaborate on the âprocessesâ that the former general invoked Nazi Germany.
âItâs hard for us to say it, but itâs the truth. Walk around Hebron, look at the streets. Streets where Arabs are no longer allowed to go on, only Jews. Thatâs exactly what happened there [in Nazi Germany], in that dark country,â Levin answered.
Far-right rising
Levinâs comments come after he delivered a scathing attack during a speech at a protest against the Israeli governmentâs judicial overhaul on Israelâs far-right cabinet ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, claiming they were trying to âdrag you [Israelis] into war crimesâ.
The general, who was also deputy head of Mossad, pointed to their backgrounds, saying as settlers âthey do not know democracyâ.
Analysts, human rights groups and international bodies, including those affiliated with the UN, accuse Israel of carrying out systematic apartheid against Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank.
The far-right coalition government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has made Israelâs apartheid-like policies more blatant and harder to deny, with extremist ministers inciting violence and discrimination.
Recent months have seen both a rise in settler violence and Israeli state violence against Palestinians, with hundreds of cases of sometimes deadly settler attacks on Palestinian towns.
The Israeli army has recently carried out a host of deadly raids on locations in the occupied West Bank, with more Palestinians killed so far this year than in all of 2022.
Source: Mronline.org