Israeli legislator Yitzhak Kroizer of Ben-Gvir’s far-right party made the remarks in the Knesset after a Palestinian family was gunned down in the West Bank; MK Ayman Odeh filed an ethics complaint, saying ‘everywhere there are innocent people, Israelis and Palestinians’
Reposted from Haaretz, March 26, 2026
A lawmaker from the far-right Otzma Yehudit party told the Knesset on Wednesday that “there are no innocent civilians, no innocent children in Jenin.”
MK Yitzhak Kroizer’s comments came after a Palestinian family with two children was gunned down by Israeli forces in the West Bank earlier this month.
Defending the soldiers involved in the incident, Kroizer said, “I stand behind IDF soldiers in every situation. Even if the collateral damage includes children or women, it doesn’t matter to me.”
“I have no sense of compassion for my enemies,” he said, referring to the children, adding that Palestinians born in 2006 when Israel dismantled Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, “are the same ones” who later became Nukhba fighters, referring to elite Hamas terrorists who massacred Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.
Speaking to the Knesset Channel last week, the lawmaker called to expand Israel’s borders, to occupy southern Lebanon up to the Litani River and to “clean it of Lebanese civilians.”
“The enemy understands that only when you take land from it does it pay a price,” he said. “Only sovereignty and settlement.” Asked about the location of Israel’s final borders, the lawmaker suggested they should be “up to the Euphrates and the Tigris,” referring to the biblical Greater Israel.
He also suggested establishing Israeli settlements in Syria. “The buffer zone in Syria also proves that the IDF alone, without Jewish settlement, will not succeed.”
In 2024, the IDF dismissed Kroizer from active reserve duty after he was photographed in a house in southern Lebanon with graffiti behind him reading “Office of MK Kroizer.”
MK Ayman Odeh, head of the Arab-majority Hadash-Ta’al faction, responded to Kroizer’s remarks on Thursday. “Everywhere there are innocent people – Israelis and Palestinians alike. Everywhere there are children who want to play, sing, draw, dance, dream, who simply want to live,” he wrote on X.
This is MK Itzhak Kroizer from the “Jewish Power” party, head of the Knesset’s Internal Affairs Committee.
Yesterday, speaking in parliament, he explicitly called for the extermination of the Palestinian people (including children and women) claiming that “there are no innocent… pic.twitter.com/ez3tp5bFCI
— איימן עודה أيمن عودة Ayman Odeh (@AyOdeh) March 26, 2026
Odeh said he had filed a complaint against Kroizer with the Knesset Ethics Committee, though he doubts they will take action, saying “if any ‘ethics’ remain in that institution, it must sanction him severely.”
“Kahanism and fascism must be returned to the dustbin of history. Anyone who agrees with this Kahanist agrees with absolute evil,” the Arab party leader concluded.
MK Gilad Kariv, of the center-left Democrats party, blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “the normalization of Kahanism and his political partnership with admirers of the terrorist Baruch Goldstein,” referring to an Israeli extremist who in 1994 shot up the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, killing 29 people. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the head of Kroizer’s party and a member of Netanyahu’s cabinet, had a framed photo of Goldstein in his living room.
“Our response is not only to condemn these statements, which desecrate both the image of God and our shared humanity, but to insist on striving for peace, on living together, and on uprooting racism and nationalism. We will defeat Kahanism,” he wrote on X.
The Democrats party wrote on X: “The processes we warned about are already here,” alluding to a controversial speech given by party head Yair Golan a decade ago as deputy IDF chief in which he likened trends in Israeli society to “revolting processes” that took place in pre-war Nazi Germany.
“Those who justify harming children or innocents do not represent the IDF, Zionism, or Jewish morals,” the party statement said.
Haaretz is an Israeli daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel.
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