Al-Akhbar | August 21, 2013
A retired Israeli general said in a television interview on Tuesday that the Israeli Occupation Forces should crack down on the Gaza Strip, Israel National News reported.
“Today, I can’t tell the IDF what to do…But I’m sorry – we are not dealing with the Gaza Strip in the right way.” 100-year old Yitzhak Pundak told Israel’s Channel 2, shortly after receiving the rank of major general.
“What should be done? For every missile they fire, we reply with 20 artillery shells,” he said. “If we kill 500, they’ll calm down immediately. And believe me, I have a lot of experience with this. I dealt with the Arabs for five years.”
Pundak referred to his years as Israeli governor of the Gaza Strip in the early 1970s, in which he claimed that the Palestinian enclave “calmed down completely.”
In a radio interview in June for his 100th birthday, Pundak confirmed that he had led forces that destroyed several Palestinian villages in 1948, adding that he felt no regrets.
“My conscience is at ease with that,” he said, “because if we hadn’t done so, then there would be no [Israeli] state by now. There would be a million more Arabs.”
He also claimed that Israel was “in danger” and needed to “fight” – although he did not specify whom it needed to fight against and why.
“Just like in 1948, the country is in a state of danger – and if the Jews do not fight as we did in the [Arab-Israeli War], the state is in danger.”
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