The Times of Israel is liveblogging Sunday’s events as they happen.
Ex-defense min. Ya’alon says Katz admitting to war crimes by threatening to destroy Gaza City
Former defense minister and chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon charges that Defense Minister Israel Katz admitted to “committing a war crime” in the Gaza Strip when he threatened on Friday to turn Gaza City into “Rafah and Beit Hanoun” — two cities that have been largely turned to rubble by Israeli military activity — during the IDF’s planned takeover of the city.
Katz said on Friday that “the gates of hell will soon open over Hamas murderers and rapists in Gaza — unless they agree to Israel’s conditions for ending the war, primarily the release of all hostages and their disarmament.”
Now, Ya’alon asserts that these comments are “an admission to committing a war crime — the evacuation of the residents and the destruction of their homes.”
“The intention to carry this out in Gaza City is clearly an illegal order,” says the ex-defense official, calling for Israel’s legal authorities to intervene and prevent the Gaza City operation from going ahead, saying that only they will be able to prevent soldiers from having to obey “a clearly illegal order.”
“It is in your power to stop the moral and ethical deterioration of our country, which pledged ‘never again!'” implores Ya’alon.
“It is already clear to anyone with eyes in their heads that the Messianic, evasive and corrupt government does not serve the country, but rather its grip on power, while neglecting the hostages, sacrificing soldiers, and destroying the country and its future,” he adds.
Ya’alon, a former member of the ruling Likud party, has been a fierce critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since he was replaced as defense minister in 2016.
In November last year, he warned that Israel was heading down a path of ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip.
GOP firebrand accuses Israel of using US taxpayers’ money ‘to pay for genocide’ in Gaza
Far-right US congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene launches a scathing attack on Israel from her official X account, accusing it of using US military aid “to pay for genocide” in the Gaza Strip.
In a lengthy post, the Georgia congresswoman asks Americans to imagine themselves in the shoes of Gaza’s civilians, 22 months into Israel’s war against Hamas.
“If America was being bombed day and night because of something horrific our government did, and many innocent Americans and American children were being killed and traumatically injured, and we begged for mercy, but the rest of the world said, ‘Americans voted for their government so they deserve it, their government is bad so all Americans are bad, therefore this is what they get and must be done…’ how would you feel? What would you think? What would you do?” she writes.
“This is what is happening to Gaza where in spite of what we have all been told, many innocent people and children are being killed and they are not Hamas,” continues Greene.
“Does Hamas deserve it? Yes. Do innocent people and children deserve it? No,” she writes, asking why people can’t have the same “compassion for the masses of innocent people and children in Gaza” as they had for victims of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre.
“US taxpayers fund Israel  $3.8 billion annually for military aid. That means every US taxpayer is contributing to Israel’s military actions,” she asserts, adding that she doesn’t want “to pay for genocide in a foreign country against a foreign people for a foreign war that I had nothing to do with. And I will not be silent about it.”
Last month, Greene became the first Republican lawmaker to use the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s conduct in Gaza.