Yehuda Vach

Yehuda Vach (military officer)
"Every Palestinian is a terrorist"

Yehuda Vach is a Brigadier General in the Israel Defence Force and commands the 252nd Division. He is a settler from Kiryat Arba, possibly the most extreme of all Israel’s West Bank settlements. For many years, Vach headed the IDF officers training school, passing on his extreme views to a new generation of officers, presumably some of whom are now making decisions in Gaza.

Immediate suspension

On 2 January 2025, Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz:

"If the military police don't immediately open an investigation into the conduct of Brig. Gen. Yehuda Vach, if Vach isn't immediately suspended from his post as commander of the 252nd Division and detained for questioning, if the army doesn't immediately renounce his actions and the government doesn't do the same, then Israelis, the International Criminal Court and the world will all know that the Israel Defense Forces has a division commander suspected of committing war crimes on a massive scale, yet he remains in his job and continues living his life as if nothing had happened."

Wanton destruction

On 1 January 2025, Mustafa Barghouti posted on X:

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that an Israeli army brigade under Yehuda Fach acted as a free lance gang in Gaza destroying hundreds of houses for no reason and aiming at the ethnic cleansing of 250 thousand civilian Palestinians.

Haaretz also reported that officer Fach brought his brothers who share his extreme fanatic religious beliefs illegally to Gaza to participate in the destruction of Palestinian houses.

Genocidal views

On 18 December 2024, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported that soldiers in Division 252 had been engaged in arbitrary killings and rampant lawlessness in Gaza's Netzarim Corridor. One of Vach's officers recounted how, after Hamas’ military leader Yahya Sinwar was killed in October, Vach held an official meeting to determine what to do with his body. He wanted to strip Sinwar’s corpse naked, put it in a public square, dismember it and pour sewage over the remains.

In an address to soldiers, Vach is reported to have echoed a genocidal view widely shared in Israel, that "there are no innocents in Gaza”. Even Israel’s supposedly liberal President Isaac Herzog has said as much.

But according to one officer, Vach has made this view an “operational doctrine”. Vach’s view of Palestinians is that “everyone's a terrorist". And that means, given Israel’s current, explicit aims in Gaza, everyone must be killed.

Commander kills kids

On 24 December 2024, Francesca Albanese posted on X:

"Stories like the Israeli commander breaking the bones of a 4-year-old Palestinian child with bare hands, are a confirmation that not only the Israeli army is ROTTEN to the core, but so are all governments that allow these sickening crimes to be normalized."

"The encounter with such dangerous attitudes, which has become more normal in our society, was traumatic for me ... I discharged myself from reserve duty with a psychiatrist's help," said a female reservist who served at the Sde Teiman detention facility.

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Another expert report finds Israel is committing genocide. The West yawns	Article	24 December 2024	Jonathan Cook	Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Medecins Sans Frontieres are all agreed. But the Gaza genocide is now just another routine news item, buried on the inside pages.

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.