WhatsappIf there are those who cannot agree that the Israel Defense Forces are a force of good and not cruelty, then we have lost something far greater than a political argument.
At a time when Israel is at war, the nation is mourning its dead and soldiers are risking their lives defending the country, certain lines must never be crossed. Yet Yair Golan, the former Israel Defense Forces deputy chief of staff who is now head of the left-wing Democrats Party, obliterated one of those lines with a single, devastating sentence: “A sane country doesn’t kill babies for fun.”
He wasn’t talking about the terrorist Hamas regime that kidnapped, tortured and murdered Israeli children in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. He wasn’t talking about the monsters who slaughtered infants in their homes during the Hamas-led terrorist attacks that Black Shabbat, or held baby Kfir Bibas and his brother, Ariel, hostage in Gaza before brutally killing them.
No. Golan was talking about our own IDF soldiers—the very men and women he once commanded.
The moral bankruptcy of Golan’s statement becomes clear through the eyewitness account of Natanel Engel, who was present at Israel’s forensic institute when the bodies of the Bibas children were returned in February. His account, shared on his social media, cuts through political rhetoric to reveal the devastating truth.
“This past February, when the bodies of the Bibas family were returned—baby Kfir and his brother Ariel—I was there. At the forensic institute,” Engel wrote. “I saw what was done to them. The marks. The abuse. The evil. And most of all—I saw the faces of the staff who treated them: a team that’s seen it all. Hundreds of bodies have passed through there since that horrific day. Bodies of babies, women, soldiers, civilians. But when it came to the children of this family, even they broke. They stood there, silent. Eyes filled with tears. Eyes hollow. There was no need to speak. It was all written on their faces.”
Engel continued, then, “I hear Yair Golan say, ‘A sane country doesn’t kill babies for fun,’ and he’s talking about IDF soldiers. Not Hamas. Not the murderers who shot, kidnapped, tortured, who held these children in captivity, one of them still nursing, without receiving breast milk! But our soldiers. Our brothers. Our sons. The ones who protect even him.”
This isn’t political theater. This is the testimony of someone who witnessed, firsthand, the results of actual baby-killing perpetrated by Hamas, not the IDF.
To paraphrase more of Engel’s remarks, IDF soldiers are the same people who have repeatedly provided medical care to Palestinian children, delivered humanitarian aid in enemy territory and maintained human dignity even while facing inhuman evil. Our soldiers are human beings first, fighters second, guided by one of the world’s most rigorous military ethical codes.
Golan knows exactly what happened. And yet, he chose to slander IDF soldiers. This isn’t criticism. This isn’t a minority opinion. This is a vile blood libel.
Some defend Golan by pointing to his service on Oct. 7, but heroic actions in the past cannot excuse such slander. There are moral red lines that, once crossed, demand accountability regardless of previous service. As Engel stated, “Even if he helped on Oct. 7, that does not erase this. It is not forgivable. There are red lines. And he crossed them.”
His words aren’t political. They’re human. They come from the deepest moral place, the kind of place that’s only forged from grief, horror and firsthand truth.
This controversy transcends typical political disagreements about policy or strategy. It reveals something deeper: whether we can still distinguish between those who protect innocent life and those who deliberately target it.
If former military leaders cannot maintain this most basic moral clarity, if they choose to echo enemy propaganda rather than defend the soldiers they once led, then we face a crisis that goes far beyond politics.
People should ask themselves: Can we trust leaders who cannot tell the difference between the IDF and Hamas? Can we support those who spread blood libels that endanger not just soldiers, but the entire nation’s standing in the world?
This is a moment that demands moral courage, not cheap slogans. Responsibility, not recklessness.
Israel faces genuine challenges that deserve serious debate. Legitimate criticism of military tactics or government policy serves democracy. But there remains an unbridgeable chasm between constructive criticism and malicious slander. Golan crossed that line. His party is standing with him and has chosen to make that crossing their political platform.
If there are those who cannot agree that the IDF is a force of good and not a force of cruelty, if they cannot stand united against those who spread the enemy’s lies while soldiers risk their lives, if they spread blood libels against soldiers that impacts the way the world perceives the Jewish state, then they have lost something greater than a political argument. They have disconnected themselves from the rest of us.
At a time when truth and moral clarity are more essential than ever, we cannot abide leaders who have completely lost their moral bearings. Some betrayals cut too deep for politics as usual. There must be accountability. The line must hold and not be crossed.
And Golan and the followers who stand by him have crossed it.
