Lapid says young Israelis told him 'even babies' in Gaza should be killed

Submitted by Nadav Rapaport on Fri, 10/02/2026 - 15:22 Former Israeli prime minister says failure to challenge calls for killing and starving Palestinians has eroded Israel’s moral standards

Israelis protest outside the defence ministry in Tel Aviv, calling for action to secure the release of captives held in Gaza, 17 May 2025 (Jack Guez/AFP) Off

There are "no innocent people" in Gaza and Israel should "also kill two-week-old babies" in the Palestinian enclave, Israel's former prime minister Yair Lapid has recounted young Israelis telling him.

"I heard all the rhetoric of: 'they all need to be killed,' 'there are no innocent people'," Lapid said in an interview on Wednesday, describing "a furious and painful meeting with a group of really young people" he had recently met.

The former prime minister, who is now part of the centrist-right wing alliance of the Together party, added that he asked them, "What about babies?""They said: 'babies too, because eventually they'll grow up and become terrorists'," Lapid recounted, adding that they said it applies even to two-week-old babies.

"So, Hamas won," Lapid said, adding that "those are Hamas's standards. That's what it wanted. For us to become like them."

The government's failure to act against Israeli ministers and officials who called for the starvation of children caused, Lapid said, an "internal damage where you fail to define value-based standards for being different from Hamas."

Lapid, who served as prime minister for five months before Benjamin Netanyahu regained power in late 2022, accused the government's conduct of leading to a sharp decline in Israel's international standing in the past three years.

Lapid said he was equally worried about how young Israelis see the Palestinians after three years of genocide, adding that Israel is conducting a "just" war in Gaza.

The centrist leader stated that the accusations levelled at Israel that it carried out a genocide in Gaza are "nonsense" but "children shouldn't die in grown-ups' wars, period," he said.

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Lapid's comments on Wednesday come amid a growing body of literature and opinion polls that indicate that young Israelis are more right-wing than their parents, with last month serving as an indicator of this right-wing shift.

Israeli outlet Channel 12 News reported that, according to a new poll, 74 percent of Jewish Israelis between the ages of 18 and 22 hold right-wing or centre-right views.

According to the poll, 15 percent of young Jewish Israelis support far-right parties such as Itamar Ben Gvir's Otzma Yehudit Party and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party, which advocate for the expulsion of Palestinians from the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank.

Last month's mock election in a high school in Ramat Gan showed similar results for the Israeli far right, as Otzma Yehudit, the Religious Zionist party and the new far-right Amcha Yisrael party received almost 15 percent of the votes.

This marks a 10 percent increase in support for the far-right in the school compared with 2022.

Additionally, last month, Lior Schleien, a left-leaning comedian travelling around Israel to speak with young Israelis about politics, was asked to delete from his social media accounts a conversation he had with a young Jewish Israeli who said he wanted to kill all Arabs.

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In the now-deleted video, the young man told Schleien: "Give me a knife, I'll murder them. Every Arab."

When Schleien questioned the feasibility of such an act, the young man said every Israeli Jew should get a weapon to kill as many Arabs as possible.

In a post on X, the Israeli comedian said the young man's parents asked him to delete the video, stating they were shocked by their son's comments.

While the young man's comments caused a stir online, the position that there are no innocent people in Gaza is a very common opinion in Israel, with a poll last year showing that 64 percent of all Israelis agree with the statement.

According to a 2024 study, young Israelis "have increasingly displayed more hawkish attitudes than older generations, coupled with a stronger inclination towards right-wing identification", with the research stating that young Israelis are also more religious than older generations.

Israel's genocide in Gaza Tel Aviv, Israel News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0