An Israeli colonel helping to form Itamar Ben-Gvir’s ‘national guard’ called for killing ‘enemy’ civilians ‘between the eyes’ by Jonathan Ofir

Since Monday a video has been circulating in the Israeli media of a lecture by Col. (ret.) Efraim Laor, one of about 15 steering committee members for forming a “national guard” that would be directly subordinate to the National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.

“Whoever doesn’t want to be involved is not involved. Whoever is in a line of conflict is there because he chose it, or it was chosen for them. There should be no distinction between gender, sex or age. Whoever is in a line of conflict has one right — either to win or to die. An enemy needs to be killed, you don’t shoot at [terror] cells, you shoot between the eyes – whoever can’t do that, 15 cm lower. Including those who are there and are not attacking. But you see an enemy – you do not find out with it whether he is involved or not — he’s involved — he needs to be eliminated.”

Laor’s genocidal advocacy also calls for Israelis to become civil combatants — creating civilian militias who would be given license to kill. The immediate threat inherent in this becomes evident in the context of the national guard… At the heart of Laor’s claims is an intentional erasure of the distinction between combatants and civilians, deeming any Palestinian as a legitimate target: “the wars that occur around us are not between organizations, but between peoples, and the fighting is a total devotion of one people against another people.”