Israel-Palestine war: Sara Netanyahu's adviser calls for torture of Gaza residents involved in killing Israelis
An adviser to the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shocked many on Saturday after posting a violent rant on social media in which she fantasised about torturing to death residents of Gaza she said were involved in last weekend's killings in southern Israel.
Tzipi Navon, a close adviser to and office manager for Netanyahu's wife, Sara, posted incendiary remarks on Facebook saying it was not enough to "flatten Gaza".
"It won't calm the storm of emotions, it won't dull the intensity of the rage and pain that can't find an outlet for them," Navon wrote.
Instead, she said the culprits should be captured and tortured "one-by-one" by pulling out their nails and skinning them alive.
Further detailing the type of torture she said they should endure, Navon said that male genitals should be cut off, fried and fed to the captured.
"Save their tongues for last, so we can enjoy his screams, his ears so he can hear his own screams, and his eyes so he can see us smiling," she said.
"Do you think I'm cruel? Tell that to the girls who were raped, the beheaded babies, the boys who were burned and our mutilated soldiers," Navon wrote, referencing unverified but widespread reports that Hamas "beheaded babies" during their attack - a claim the group denies.
'Traitors from the left'
Navon also posted a number of other inflammatory posts, including one in which she said left-wing Israelis needed to have their Facebook profiles reported en masse.
"We have not finished burying our dead yet, we are only at the beginning of a war, and the traitors from the left continue to incite," she wrote on her Facebook profile, which is currently locked.
"Let's close the page for them! Report en masse to Facebook! This time we fight back and protect our prime minister!"
Many institutions and governments have expressed concern at the spread of misinformation and hate speech across social media platforms over the past week.
During that time period, Israel has killed at least 2,215 people in Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Of those killed, 724 are children and 458 are women.
Over the same period, Israeli troops have killed 54 people in the occupied West Bank.
The latest fighting erupted on 7 October after Hamas launched a surprise multi-front assault on Israel, firing thousands of rockets and sending fighters into Israeli territory across land, air and sea.
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More than 1,300 Israelis were killed and scores of soldiers and civilians were taken captive back to Gaza during the attack, which Hamas says was launched in response to Israeli violence targeting Palestinians in the West Bank and incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Before Hamas's attack, 2023 was already shaping up to be the deadliest year for Palestinians in two decades, as hundreds of Palestinians across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem were killed by the Israeli military and settlers.
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