Ex-IDF general Yair Golan calls to end Gaza War, claims US is fighting Israeli gov’t to free the hostages

A rising star in the polls who courts controversy with nearly every public statement he makes, Yair Golan, the ex-IDF Deputy Chief of Staff who now leads the far-left “The Democrats” Party, has long been calling on the government to end the war in Gaza while accusing it of prolonging the war for political reasons.

Speaking at the start of a faction meeting on Monday evening, Golan reiterated his criticism of the government’s war policy, alleging that even the Trump administration had now turned against it.

“The Trump administration is fighting Netanyahu to bring the war to an end and release the hostages. It is Trump’s team doing everything they can to bring the hostages back – not Netanyahu. The large-scale military maneuver currently being carried out under the instruction of the Netanyahu-Smotrich government is nothing but a transparent attempt to create a false impression: that it is military pressure, and not American pressure, that led to a deal.”

Golan’s central criticism is that the government is prolonging the war to stay in power, and should have agreed to a deal that would free the hostages long ago, even at the price of leaving Hamas in power and relinquishing all military achievements in Gaza.

The current operation would not serve to dismantle Hamas, he claimed, “because to dismantle Hamas, they could have concluded a deal long ago, ended the war, and through an American and regional agreement, build an alternative governing structure to Hamas and dismantle it completely.”

Golan was a career officer who rose to the rank of Maj.-Gen. and served as Deputy Chief of Staff in the IDF. However, he never became chief, later claiming that this was due to his controversial speech on Holocaust Day 2016, when he said that “horrific processes” that occurred in Nazi Germany were also noticeable in Israel.

The controversy made him widely known, and several years later, he was elected as a Knesset Member for the far-left Meretz party.

After a stint in the Knesset, he joined the anti-judicial reform protests, advocating civil disobedience and calling on soldiers to refuse service.

He returned to Israel’s public eye as a war hero on Oct. 7, 2023, when the retired general simply threw on his old uniform, grabbed a rifle, and joined security forces in battling invading Hamas terrorists while rescuing citizens without having re-enlisted.

Last year, he became the chairman of the newly created The Democrats Party, a merger of Labor and Meretz, which has since shot up the polls, even leading all opposition parties in some recent polls.

Golan is known for brandishing his security credentials while advocating a militant secularism, including support for LGBT issues and attacks on religious parties, while styling his party as the only option for democratic Zionism.

In his speech on Tuesday, Golan hit back at comments made by Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, who said that potential voters would soon find out how radical The Democrats Party truly is.

“Here are people who are determined to protect Israeli democracy, determined to defend the Zionist enterprise. These are the people whose slogan is simple: Israel as a homeland for all the Jewish people, including Reform Jews, Conservative Jews, and so on, while at the same time being a free, equal, and democratic state,” Golan said.

He stressed that the situation in Gaza “is a serious crisis, with tremendous destruction and real suffering – a reality that the Zionist, strong, and self-assured State of Israel cannot ignore. The primary responsibility for this lies with Hamas, but the Netanyahu government is also to blame for turning a just campaign into a prolonged, aimless political survival war.”

In addition to being a moral challenge for the state, Golan said, the humanitarian situation “directly harms Israel's legitimacy and its power as a democratic and secure state.”

“We must end the war, bring the hostages home, dismantle Hamas' governance, and reach regional agreements. This is the only way to transfer the responsibility for Gaza’s reconstruction to other countries.”