Moshe Gafni: ‘I Don’t Understand What We Are Fighting For In Gaza’

MK Moshe Gafni, who leads the Degel HaTorah faction within United Torah Judaism, stirred outrage from right-wing politicians on Wednesday morning after questioning the rationale behind Israel’s continued military campaign in Gaza.

As he opened a session of the Knesset Finance Committee, which he chairs, Gafni thanked both Hashem and President Donald Trump for bringing an end to the conflict with Iran. He also expressed sorrow over the loss of seven IDF soldiers the previous day. But he then voiced sharp skepticism over the war in Gaza. “But I don’t understand, even to this very moment, what we are fighting for there,” he added. “I don’t understand what the need is. What are we going to do there when soldiers are being killed all the time?… We need a Trump to come here and say, We are returning the hostages, stopping all these things, and returning to normal. But apparently we haven’t merited this yet.”

Backing Gafni’s concerns, Shas MK Yinon Azulai said the time had come to wrap up the operation. “We must do everything to end this war now when we are strong, not weak, and bring back the hostages,” he said.

Gafni’s remarks also found support outside the political arena. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum issued a statement praising his candor, posting on social media that he was “telling the truth as it is, without embellishment or spin.”

“The war in Gaza has exhausted itself, and is being waged without a clear purpose or real plan. It is time to show courage and say in a clear voice: Return the hostages, stop the fighting. This is the correct solution, this is the only way to complete an Israeli victory,” the organization declared.

Still, his comments triggered fierce backlash from the political right. The Otzma Yehudit party, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, accused Gafni of undermining the nation’s security by publicly casting doubt on the necessity of the war.

The party issued a statement denouncing Gafni, saying his remarks “recall similar statements by the extreme leftist Moshe Ya’alon, harms Israel’s security and the families of the fallen heroes,” referring to the former defense minister’s controversial claim that Israel was engaged in “ethnic cleansing” in northern Gaza.

The statement emphasized that Israeli forces were currently engaged in a critical battle against “the Nazi terrorist organization Hamas” and that their mission was to “restore security to the residents of the south in particular and to the residents of Israel in general, and to return all of our hostages, living and dead.” The party also asserted that the sacrifices made by Israeli soldiers obligate the country to continue fighting until Hamas is defeated.

Ben Gvir personally slammed Gafni’s words as a disgrace. “What are they fighting for there?” he asked rhetorically. “They are fighting a war of survival, so that there will be no more October 7s, no more rape, massacre and murder,” he told Army Radio, noting that his own son is currently serving in the IDF.

Yehuda Wald, who serves as the director general of the Religious Zionism party, also lashed out at Gafni, arguing that someone who doesn’t send his own children into combat has no place making such comments. The chareidi community, of which Gafni is a part, almost entirely avoids military service.

Likud MK Dan Illouz added his voice to the condemnation, pointing to the horrors of Hamas’s October 7 rampage. He said soldiers were in Gaza “so that babies will never again be burned alive inside their homes, as happened in Kfar Aza.”

He continued by referencing recent coalition threats: “It is not surprising that those who don’t understand this threatened only two weeks ago, when Israel was on the verge of attacking Iran, to overthrow a right-wing government in the middle of a war of survival only so as to not take part in that war,” he posted on X.

Gafni’s Degel HaTorah faction is one half of the United Torah Judaism bloc, which has recently threatened to break up the Knesset if efforts to draft chareidim into the army proceed.

Within both coalition and opposition ranks, there has been a renewed push for legislation that would close the decades-old exemption allowing full-time yeshiva students to avoid IDF service. The shortage of troops during wartime has only added urgency to the debate.

Gafni was also targeted by members of the center and left, although their criticisms focused more on his role in the coalition than the substance of his remarks.

Yesh Atid MK Merav Ben-Ari addressed the Knesset and pushed back on Gafni’s call for Trump to intervene. She argued that what was really needed was a prime minister who would “ignore messianic, delusional and mandate-less elements” and instead respond to the will of the Israeli public, which she said favors ending the war and retrieving the hostages.

MK Gilad Kariv of The Democrats party echoed that critique, highlighting Gafni’s own power in the ruling coalition. “You bear personal and direct responsibility for everything happening in the Strip. If you don’t understand why the war in Gaza is continuing, what the hell are you doing in the coalition?” he wrote on social media.