Former prime minister Ehud Olmert charged Tuesday that Israeli actions in Gaza were approaching the level of war crimes, speaking out hours after a former general and senior politician sparked a firestorm by accusing the country of killing babies “as a hobby.”

Olmert, who has been a frequent and vociferous critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and its handling of the war, was criticized over the comments by right-wing politicians, including a number of cabinet ministers.

Speaking to BBC News, Olmert said what Israel “is doing now in Gaza is very close to a war crime.”

He spoke as Israel began allowing a trickle of humanitarian aid into the beleaguered enclave this week following a freeze that lasted over two months, and as the military said it was stepping up its offensive against the Hamas terror group.

Officials say the Israel Defense Forces is pushing forward with plans to move the Strip’s approximately 2 million civilians, flatten the territory and take control of it, as it seeks to pressure Hamas into releasing 58 hostages still held in Gaza and relinquishing power.

Olmert, who served as prime minister from 2006 to 2009, described the ongoing conflict as “a war without a purpose — a war without a chance of achieving anything that can save the lives of the hostages.”

The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were slaughtered, mostly civilians, and 251 kidnapped. Israel has said it is pursuing the twin goals of removing Hamas from power and securing the release of the hostages, though some in the government say Israel will also pursue the emigration of the Palestinian populace to other countries.

Israel has strongly denied charges of war crimes and genocide raised at The Hague and has described arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant at the International Criminal Court as motivated by antisemitism.

On Monday, Netanyahu appeared to admit that hunger in the Strip was being perceived as approaching famine levels, defending his decision to allow “limited” aid into the Strip. Israel froze the entry of assistance into Gaza in early March, saying it was seeking to keep aid from being diverted by Hamas.

Olmert told the BBC the “obvious appearance” of the fighting in Gaza is that thousands of Palestinian civilians are being killed, along with a lot of Israeli troops.

“From every point of view, this is obnoxious and outrageous,” Olmert said.

According to Gazan health authorities in the Hamas-controlled Strip, over 53,000 people have been killed in the fighting, though the figures cannot be verified and do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel on October 7. Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and blames Hamas for fighting from densely populated urban areas.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 420.

“We are fighting the killers of Hamas, we are not fighting innocent civilians,” Olmert said. “And that has to be clear.”

His comments to the BBC largely echoed a claim he made in an May 14 interview with the British broadcaster in which he called the blockade on aid “totally intolerable, unacceptable, unbearable and unforgivable.”

“In the eyes of the international community maybe we are already considered to be committing war crimes,” he said then.

The new comments drew immediate backlash from Israel’s right wing, with many lumping his criticism together with that of Democrats party head Yair Golan, who told the Kan national broadcaster Tuesday that “a sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations.”

In a statement on X, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar accused Olmert and Golan of “taking an active part in a diplomatic campaign, in a propaganda war and in legal warfare against the State of Israel and the IDF.”

Education Minister Yoav Kisch, referring to Olmert by noting his felony graft conviction, charged that he and Golan had joined a “radical leftist chorus defaming Israel in the international arena.”

“While IDF troops are risking their lives against murderous terrorists seeking our annihilation, he decides to incite and stick a knife in their backs,” he said.

Minister David Amsalem aimed fire at the pair and other prominent government critics, including former prime minister Ehud Barak and former chief justice Aharon Barak, as “destroyers and those lay waste to you [who] come forth from your midst,” quoting from the Book of Isaiah.

Social Equality Minister May Golan charged that Olmert had “spit in the face of IDF soldiers.”

“To be exact, there are innocents in Gaza — 58 of them,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.