Israeli minister May Golan boasts she is 'proud' of Gaza's destruction

An Israeli minister has boasted of being "proud" of the destruction unleashed on Gaza by Israeli forces, in the latest extremist and dehumanising remarks by Israeli senior officials about Palestinians.

Minister of Social Equality and Women's Advancement Likud MK May Golan said on Wednesday she was "personally proud of the ruins of Gaza" in a speech riddled with violent rhetoric.

"I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza, and that every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did," she said at a Knesset hearing about the motion to expel MK Ofer Cassif for his support of South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

Over half of Gaza's infrastructure has been destroyed in Israeli attacks, analysts believe, with an unprecedented 29,000 bombs dropped on the enclave in just over four months.

In the same speech, the politician went on to talk about "cutting off" the head of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas's leader in Gaza.

"We are not ashamed to say that we want to see the soldiers of the IDF, the holy heroes of ours, catching Sinwar and his terrorists by their ears and dragging them all the way across the Gaza Strip to the dungeons of the prison authority," she said.

It is not the first time the minister from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet has used alarming language.

She referred to refugees from Africa as "Muslim infiltrators", criminals, and rapists, according to a 2023 report in The Guardian, and reportedly said she was "proud to be a racist".

In 2023, she was appointed as Israel’s ambassador to New York, a move which was widely criticised at the time by former Israeli diplomats who said she was a polarising figure and unsuitable for the role.

She has also been an adamant backer of Netanyahu's controversial plans to reform the judicial system.

Since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in October, rights groups have documented repeated use of genocidal and dehumanising language about Palestinians among senior Israeli politicians, military officials and media figures.

Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, said Israel was fighting "human animals", while Netanyahu called Gaza a "city of evil".

A report published in January by Law for Palestine, a UK-based non-profit human rights organization, documented over 500 cases exposing the "proliferation of incitement to violence and genocidal intent" perpetrated by Israeli officials against Palestinians since October.