Unite the Left, and topple the government
On the morning of October 7, after receiving a call from his sister that Hamas terrorists had begun to invade towns near the Gaza border, Maj.Gen. (res.) and former Meretz MK Yair Golan launched a heroic one-man rescue mission and drove in and out of the battle zones, rescuing a number of survivors.
Reflecting back on that fateful day, however, Golan remembers one feeling in particular: rage.
“I remember the moment,” Golan said in an interview at an office space he works out of in Tel Aviv. “I was west of Route 232 [near the Gaza border], and when I came back on the road with the third rescued person, I saw a car with a young Israeli woman’s dead body spilling out of it. The feeling that came up was terrible rage, terrible anger.
“Anger not just that we were disgraced as a state; and not just that the army that I care so much about, and served in for 38 years, was disgraced. Mostly terrible anger that I know how much we brought this onto ourselves.
“I am not angry at Hamas. Hamas hates us and is a murderous enemy, I did not expect anything else. I am angry at ourselves. How did we let a corrupt government crumble us from within? How did we let this happen? Why did we only set out on Saturday nights to protest [against the government’s judicial reforms]? Why? Why did we not have the courage, the fortitude, the determination, to bring down the government before the war?”
The rage is still there, and has led Golan to take action in order to bring about what he believes is Israel’s No. 1 goal at the moment: to bring down the government.
GOLAN, 61, joined the IDF in 1980, served as OC Northern Command and OC Home Front Command, and as deputy chief of staff.
He joined politics ahead of the September 2019 election, as part of the Israel Democratic Party led by Ehud Barak, and later joined Meretz. He served as deputy economy minister in the Lapid-Bennett
government. Ahead of the most recent national election, in November 2022, Golan faced off against Zehava Gal-On for the leadership of Meretz, but lost.
His tenure as Knesset member ended after the party failed to pass the electoral threshold and did not enter the Knesset.
Golan did not stay out of the public limelight for long, and in 2023 became a leading figure in the opposition to the government’s judicial reforms.
Throughout his military career Golan was known as a courageous field commander, but also as an independent-minded individual who spoke his mind and at times even disobeyed orders he believed to be mistaken.
As deputy chief of staff, he famously said, in a speech on Holocaust Remembrance Day, in 2016, that there were processes in Israeli society that bore traces of Germany in the 1930s. The statement drew widespread criticism, and Golan has argued that it also blocked his ascendancy to IDF chief of staff two years later.
While admitting that he should not have made the statement, Golan has reiterated that he believes what he said to be true – and that Israel’s current government, which includes two far-right parties, is further proof.
HIS AFOREMENTIONED rage is most obvious when talking about these far-right parties, and especially about a conference they held in January at the Jerusalem International Convention Center where they sang, danced, and called for the Jewish resettlement of Gaza.
“I look at the broad circles of bereaved families, families of hostages, families of the wounded... with severed limbs and intestines spilling out – their lives will never be the same. These broadening circles include hundreds of thousands of people, and you dance on their blood? On their suffering? On the disaster that happened to them? Have you lost your minds?!
“We must rehabilitate Israeli solidarity not around a messianic group or a corrupt group, but around the values of the Declaration of Independence – a state that is honest, liberal, democratic, free; that respects the humanity of every person, and calls on Israeli-Arab civilians to participate in building the land,” Golan said.
“That was written in a document [the Declaration of Independence] when five armies were threatening to invade Israel, in perhaps its hardest hour ever, harder than October 7. But there were then serious leaders who were capable of writing enlightened words in such a hard reality. I think for us, too, today that is the challenge, to see the light at the end of tunnel and talk about the light and not the darkness,” Golan said.
He made these remarks closer to the end of the interview. Earlier, he laid out his plan for how he intends to bring about the end of the current government, and what the next government must do differently.
Golan announced this week that he would compete for the head of the Labor Party. But he said the only reason he will do so is to eventually unite the left-wing camp behind one banner. He intends to bring together the Labor Party, Meretz, groups that oppose the government’s judicial reforms, and anyone else who believes, as he does, that the government must go.
Golan explained that there are three ways for the government to fall: a criminal conviction of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; a political move that would include a number of Likud Knesset members turning on Netanyahu and bringing forward a new government; or a series of mass protests that are so large that the government will have no choice but to step down.
A criminal conviction will not happen soon, and nearly five months into the war, politicians aren’t close to bringing down the government. The only option left, therefore, is for Israeli civilians to hit the streets en masse.
“The current Saturday nights are not enough. The country must be shut down, with a half million people in the streets... telling the prime minister to go home now. Not just because he failed on October 7, which made the failure on October 6, 1973 [at the outbreak of the Yom Kippur war], look small, but also for Israel’s future,” Golan said.
“In order for there to be an exit strategy [to the war against Hamas], for there to be achievable goals, for there to be a diplomatic initiative, the government must be replaced.
“In order to replace the government, we cannot wait until 2026 [the next scheduled election]. This must happen tomorrow morning.
“There is no political entity today that is fighting for this. I intend to form the political entity that will fight and struggle for this, and do everything necessary to bring elections now,” Golan said.
“I used to say this to my soldiers: Fear is not a work plan. We must stop fearing. The working, manufacturing public – the public that sees the State of Israel as a national home for the Jewish people, as a state that is free, democratic, and egalitarian – must stop fearing. It must make its voice heard, and must struggle for its right to set the future of the State of Israel.”
Many politicians on the Right are quoting left-wing voters who say that October 7 had made them “awaken” from the illusion of the possibility for peace. But, according to Golan, there were other “awakenings” as well – such as an awakening from the illusion of what he calls “identity politics,” where left-wing views, for example, are considered treasonous.
“The coalition today is made up of people who are corrupt, extreme nationalists, and religious fundamentalists. You do not build a state this way. There were many countries in the 20th century that were ruined for these reasons.
“Therefore, the state must be rebuilt on opposite values – honesty and fairness, democratic, liberal moderacy.
“And, yes, there needs to be an integration between the population groups, and not build an identity politics that only creates growing schisms between the parts of the people.
“This unification will come from a struggle for our values and principles. The Declaration of Independence is a foundational document, and there must be a fight to implement it. That is the message in my eyes,” Golan said.
He brushed aside the counterargument that an election in wartime could weaken the military effort.
“In December ’73 there were elections in the State of Israel, two months after the outbreak of the terrible Yom