Title: 'Flatten' Gaza, Halt Aid: The Israeli Division Commander Overseeing Gaza's Brutal Netzarim Corridor - Israel News - Haaretz.com
I'm harshly critical of this Israeli Settler IDF Commander and his brothers, as well as the ideologues who promote the ideology that justifies his ethnic cleansing to be achieved by his objective to "Flatten Gaza." But in fairness to the National Conservatives and Trumpite Traditional Conservatives here, I share with you their ideological perspective for why Gaza must be flattened, and Greater Israel achieved, however expansive the Settler fascists call for. Vach is also from the Eli settlement, where I believe Hazony also spent time after leaving the U.S. Based on the volume and intensity of support expressed here for National Conservatism and post-Liberalism, such as for fellow NatCons, such as Patrick Deneen, Georgia Meloni, J.D. Vance, Ramaswamy, et al., and the Koch-funded media platforms Quincy Institute and The American Conservative magazine that support and promote the New Right of National Conservatism, is it correct to say here: "We're All National Conservatives Now?"
"We already had an independent Palestinian state in Gaza for 18 years, from 2005 to 2023. There cannot be an independent Palestinian state in Gaza."
Clip from my third interview with Steve Bannon’s War Room.
"Vach was born and grew up in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, studied at the Bnei David army prep school in Eli, and now lives in the religious Kibbutz Meirav on Mount Gilboa. He is 45, a father of six, and has held numerous posts in the army, after serving in the Givati Brigade and Maglan commando unit. His father, Shalom Vach, headed the Kiryat Arba council. Yehuda Vach has ten siblings, at least two of whom are officers. One is Golan Vach, a colonel in the reserves. The three brothers' paths have crossed in recent months.
Besides moving Palestinians from northern Gaza southward, or as a complementary operation, commanders say that Vach is seeking to "flatten" as much of Gaza as possible. In a talk with division field commanders, he said, "I brought my brothers; you bring yours." Some of the participants began to chuckle and it wasn't because they didn't understand what he was talking about or what he meant.
"Vach brought his brothers with him when he took up the post. They made sure to make it clear to everyone that they were the division commander's brothers," says a division HQ officer. "They told us they were VIPs." The meaning was clear, he says: Unlike everyone else, Vach's brothers should be allowed to enter the Netzarim corridor without too many questions. "There is no need for a military escort or logging entries and departures, which must be registered for the entry of soldiers into Gazan territory," says the officer. "Especially with respect to his brother Golan's force."
"Col. (res.) Golan Vach is commander of the Search and Rescue Brigade. But in the current war, 252nd Division officers and men say that it is being used for something else, something less official: it is the Gaza demolitions contractor. "Golan established a small force called Pladot Heavy Engineering Equipment," says a senior division HQ officer. "It was a team of soldiers and civilians who look like hilltop youths. The force's sole objective was to demolish Gaza, to flatten it." The commanders who spoke with Haaretz struggled to accurately state how many of the unit's personnel were soldiers and how many were civilians who entered Gaza for this specific task. They could say that there were around ten, maybe a few more. "One day, we saw an engineering force demolish buildings in our operations sector and no one knew anything about it," says the officer. "We decided to check what this force was. Even the division engineering officer didn't known them, and then we were told that it was Pladot Heavy Engineering Equipment. We had no idea what was going on at the time." When the officer tried to verify some details, find out what exactly this team's task was, and who established it, it was soon made clear to him that it was the division commander's brother, and that "I shouldn't make too much noise."
"At that time in August, the IDF was making a major effort to demolish buildings along the length and breadth of the Netzarim corridor. However, Haaretz has learned that this team operated as a kind of independent entity with its own objectives – in real time, almost no division or Southern Command staff could say who its members were or what their mandate was. Almost; Yehuda Vach knew, and he ran it. He gave the orders to operate in the Netzarim corridor and to expand it and carry out demolitions – even in places where there was no operational priority.
"The sole purpose of the Pladot Heavy Engineering Equipment was to flatten as much of Gaza as quickly as possible," said a reservist who protected the team's work. "That's what they did every day." The soldier was one of several men who were required to go out every day with the unit, to protect its men. They quite quickly realized that this was a mission operating under the radar of Southern Command and General Staff. They were exposed to its character and its men. "They were very toxic people, soldiers and civilians, mostly religious. They felt that they were on an insane mission and as if it were a great privilege for them."
"That soldier also testified before Breaking the Silence, an NGO of veteran IDF soldiers who expose the public to the reality of everyday life in the West Bank and Gaza. He said that the team's members shared their objective with him and the other guards. "We were told that the goal was to demolish 60 buildings a day," he says. "In practice, they were nowhere near that number. They maybe demolished six houses a day."
Brig. Gen. Yehuda VachCredit: Rami Shlush / AP, IDF Spokesperson's Unit. Illustration: Aharon Erlich
The reports on their deaths were laconic. They were eulogized, buried and joined the growing number of soldiers who fell in the Gaza Strip. But the deaths of these eight soldiers, some of them reservists, stood out even in the sea of bereavement and commemoration.
"It was a direct result of the divisional commander's conduct," said an officer who fought with them. "The lack of operational discipline, contempt for human life and disregard of orders has endangered soldiers' lives more than once. And in some cases, we paid the heaviest price of all for this."
That happened in August, when the commander of the 252nd division, Brig. Gen. Yehuda Vach, decided to enter Zeitoun, a southern neighborhood of Gaza City. According to several officers, he was constantly pushing to get as far north as possible.
"He sent the soldiers in there without the necessary preparations on the ground and without ensuring that there were no bombs there," one said. "A supply convoy either drove over a bomb or they were hit by an anti-tank missile." Other soldiers were killed in clashes with terrorists.
A Haaretz investigation found that all of these incidents, which occurred between August 17 and August 28, had one main common denominator – flawed, even negligent, preparation. "He drove the 16th Brigade crazy about reaching the northernmost road," said one commander who fought in the Netzarim corridor under Vach. "It was done without suitable tools, without engineering units, without other necessary troops."
Indeed, according to a senior officer in Southern Command, after the assault on Zeitoun ended, the army launched an inquiry into the high number of soldiers killed, who were all from the 16th Brigade. This officer confirmed that the preparations hadn't allowed the soldiers to enter the area with maximum security. Engineering troops hadn't gone over the roads first to destroy bombs, nor had dogs from the Oketz canine unit been deployed. Other necessary military specialists also weren't used, and there were no preliminary strikes by the air force. A long list of officers and soldiers said that Vach acted rashly on more than one occasion. "This behavior, that you're going and it doesn't matter how or why, cost us eight soldiers," one officer said. Their names are Maj. Yotam Itzhak Peled, Sgt. Maj. Mordechai Yosef Ben Shoam, Sgt. 1st Class Evyatar Atuar, Sgt. 1st Class Danil Pechenyuk, Sgt. 1st Class Nitai Metodi, Sgt. Maj. Yaniv Itzhak Oren, Master Sgt. Shlomo Yehonatan Hazut and Master Sgt. Yohay Hay Glam. The senior Southern Command officer said that after the inquiry into the incident concluded, the lessons were learned. But this promise didn't convince soldiers from the 5th Brigade, which replaced the 16th Brigade in the Netzarim corridor. When Vach decided on another operation in Zeitoun, some of the brigade's soldiers refused to take part in it, at least until they had seen with their own eyes that all the necessary preparatory steps had been taken.
As a result, Vach wanted to court-martial them. But after senior officers intervened, the trial was canceled. Instead, a conversation was held with the soldiers. In any event, they didn't enter Zeitoun.
The incursions into Zeitoun that did take place occurred shortly after Vach finished his stint as commander of the Bahad 1 training base, got promoted to brigadier general and was appointed commander of the 252nd Division, which was then doing its second stint in the Netzarim corridor. From this point on, according to senior officers, reservists and fighters who served in Gaza in recent months, the norms there changed.
Just two weeks ago, another Haaretz investigation revealed the arbitrariness and banality with which Gazans are killed in the Netzarim corridor and how every dead Palestinian is counted as a terrorist. Quite a few incidents described in that report happened after Vach took control of the corridor. But other accounts from soldiers reveal that the brigade's lack of discipline and the way it operates under an alternative set of laws went beyond that, with additional consequences.
In early December, Vach convened the division's top officers for a review of their four months of combat in the Netzarim corridor. "We didn't achieve our goal," he said at the start of his remarks, according to officers who attended. The goal, they said, was to forcibly displace some 250,000 Palestinian residents who are still living in northern Gaza. In fact, only a few hundred Palestinians crossed the Netzarim corridor into southern Gaza.
"Only by losing land will the Palestinians learn the necessary lesson from the massacre Hamas perpetrated in southern Israel on October 7," Vach told his officers, referring to Hamas' attack in 2023. Upon hearing that, at least some of them may have recalled what they heard him say when he first arrived in the corridor in midsummer.
"He spoke, with help from a PowerPoint presentation that had been prepared for him, about his worldview and what he expects of us," recalled an officer who was there. "At the end of the presentation was a slide about humanitarian aid and what our goals were."
At that moment, he said, something changed in Vach. "Suddenly he became fired up and explained that in his view, not one truck should enter," the officer said. "That we needed to make things hard on the convoys that entered and harass them. He also told his people to remove the slide on humanitarian aid from the presentation."
That was one remark; others followed. For instance, that in his view, "there are no innocents in Gaza." That wasn't said as a personal opinion, the officer stressed, but "as an operational doctrine – they're all terrorists. But his greatest insanity was the one about moving the Gazans southward and taking land, as much land as possible."
Gaza's demolitions contractor
Vach was born and grew up in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, studied at the Bnei David army prep school in Eli, and now lives in the religious Kibbutz Meirav on Mount Gilboa. He is 45, a father of six, and has held numerous posts in the army, after serving in the Givati Brigade and Maglan commando unit. His father, Shalom Vach, headed the Kiryat Arba council. Yehuda Vach has ten siblings, at least two of whom are officers. One is Golan Vach, a colonel in the reserves. The three brothers' paths have crossed in recent months.
Besides moving Palestinians from northern Gaza southward, or as a complementary operation, commanders say that Vach is seeking to "flatten" as much of Gaza as possible. In a talk with division field commanders, he said, "I brought my brothers; you bring yours." Some of the participants began to chuckle and it wasn't because they didn't understand what he was talking about or what he meant.
"Vach brought his brothers with him when he took up the post. They made sure to make it clear to everyone that they were the division commander's brothers," says a division HQ officer. "They told us they were VIPs." The meaning was clear, he says: Unlike everyone else, Vach's brothers should be allowed to enter the Netzarim corridor without too many questions. "There is no need for a military escort or logging entries and departures, which must be registered for the entry of soldiers into Gazan territory," says the officer. "Especially with respect to his brother Golan's force."
Col. (res.) Golan Vach is commander of the Search and Rescue Brigade. But in the current war, 252nd Division officers and men say that it is being used for something else, something less official: it is the Gaza demolitions contractor. "Golan established a small force called Pladot Heavy Engineering Equipment," says a senior division HQ officer. "It was a team of soldiers and civilians who look like hilltop youths. The force's sole objective was to demolish Gaza, to flatten it." The commanders who spoke with Haaretz struggled to accurately state how many of the unit's personnel were soldiers and how many were civilians who entered Gaza for this specific task. They could say that there were around ten, maybe a few more. "One day, we saw an engineering force demolish buildings in our operations sector and no one knew anything about it," says the officer. "We decided to check what this force was. Even the division engineering officer didn't known them, and then we were told that it was Pladot Heavy Engineering Equipment. We had no idea what was going on at the time." When the officer tried to verify some details, find out what exactly this team's task was, and who established it, it was soon made clear to him that it was the division commander's brother, and that "I shouldn't make too much noise."
At that time in August, the IDF was making a major effort to demolish buildings along the length and breadth of the Netzarim corridor. However, Haaretz has learned that this team operated as a kind of independent entity with its own objectives – in real time, almost no division or Southern Command staff could say who its members were or what their mandate was. Almost; Yehuda Vach knew, and he ran it. He gave the orders to operate in the Netzarim corridor and to expand it and carry out demolitions – even in places where there was no operational priority.
"The sole purpose of the Pladot Heavy Engineering Equipment was to flatten as much of Gaza as quickly as possible," said a reservist who protected the team's work. "That's what they did every day." The soldier was one of several men who were required to go out every day with the unit, to protect its men. They quite quickly realized that this was a mission operating under the radar of Southern Command and General Staff. They were exposed to its character and its men. "They were very toxic people, soldiers and civilians, mostly religious. They felt that they were on an insane mission and as if it were a great privilege for them."
That soldier also testified before Breaking the Silence, an NGO of veteran IDF soldiers who expose the public to the reality of everyday life in the West Bank and Gaza. He said that the team's members shared their objective with him and the other guards. "We were told that the goal was to demolish 60 buildings a day," he says. "In practice, they were nowhere near that number. They maybe demolished six houses a day."
Soldiers from the 16th Brigade who participated in some of the guarding say that the answer to the question of how it worked and what were the criteria for demolishing a building was simple: there weren't any. "They'd get a particular strip in the Netzarim corridor and flatten every building in it," said one soldier. "The mission was to go house-to-house and ensure that everything there was ready for flattening." He says, everyone saw that the objective was that no one would be able to return to live there. "We're simply told to flatten from this point to that point."
In practice, Pladot Heavy Engineering Equipment's operation lasted about a month. It began in August, when Yehuda Vach took up his post, and ended on September 10. On that day, the team went on a partisan action in the Netzarim corridor's northern sector near Gaza's Salah a-Din corridor. While demolishing houses, Golan Vach located a tunnel shaft and asked the soldiers to use the tractor's blade to lower him into it. He saw no need to carry out any of the accepted preparations to verify that there were no traps or risk of collapse.
Then, as he entered, the tunnel walls collapsed on him and he was buried beneath a pile of sand. He was out of contact for two hours and there was a real fear for his life. Although the IDF knew he was in Gaza, they didn't know exactly what he was doing there. When they couldn't make contact with him, the possibility that he had been abducted came up.
That didn't happen of course. He was finally rescued with moderate injuries. "Quite simply, he jeopardized himself and the soldiers with him," says an army source who was present at the scene during the incident. "Medical teams risked their lives for him and everyone. To this day, no one understands why he was there at all."
Following Golan Vach's discharge from the hospital, Southern Commander Maj.-Gen. Yaron Finkelman received an investigation report of the incident. "We were in shock," says a source in Southern Command. "Golan Vach personally carried out and wrote the investigation. He emerges from it as nothing less than a hero of Israel, even though everyone realizes that it was a disgrace and against all orders. If there had been hostages there, they would be long gone."
For his part, Finkelman wrote in the summary of the findings that Golan Vach acted against orders for entering tunnels and against practice. He also found that Vach's action was unnecessary, had no operational urgency and diverted resources for operations that were not required for the forces in that sector.
"It was simply an under-the-radar operation, with no operational plan and without anyone understanding what they were doing there," says a division officer knowledgeable of the details. "It is a fact that the moment Golan Vach was injured, Pladot Heavy Engineering Equipment was disbanded and never resumed operations."
Nonetheless, Finkelman opted to take no disciplinary action against any of the Vach brothers. "Ultimately, this was a serious incident that Vach jeopardized the soldiers, and not for the first time," adds the officer. "The IDF preferred to keep this quiet, because now everyone has everyone else by the balls after October 7, so they prefer not to make noise."
The civilian in the picture
Another issue that went unmentioned concerns the conduct of Yehuda Vach's younger brother in Gaza. "One day a military policewoman in Command Post 3 [the entry to Gaza from Be'eri] stopped a car with an officer and two civilians," said a division commander. "The driver was planning to enter Gaza without the appropriate authorizations." It turned out that the officer behind the wheel was the younger Vach sibling.
The military policewoman did not recognize him, which could not be said of the division's commanders and men. "This brother, who was based at the Paga outpost, was always moving around the sector and entering Gaza," says an officer. "People knew he was the division commander's brother and it was clear that, unlike everyone else, no questions should be asked upon his entering and leaving."
A month later, the officer pondered that thought. "When I hear about cases of right-wing activists and rabbis entering the Netzarim corridor without authorization, I don't know how to connect this to Vach or his brother, but I really wouldn't be surprised if it is connected," he says. The IDF was facing harsh criticism at the time after right-wing activists and prominent religious Zionist rabbis entered Gaza without authorization. "If that was done, it was against the law and procedures," said the IDF at the time, even as videos on social media documenting the visits multiplied. The affair probably influenced another plan of Yehuda Vach. Sources say that at the time he was quite concerned with an image of victory. Not Israel's – his own. He told commanders that if the division ended its tour with northern Gaza empty of its residents, that would be its image of victory. "He initially spoke about deporting the people southward. He had an idea that he would carry out the generals' plan on his own.
When he realized that that wouldn't happen, he began raising other absurd ideas," says a division commander. For example, to allow Israeli civilian vehicles free movement along the corridor. "Hamas would perceive that as conquest and there is no greater image of victory as far as we are concerned than occupying land," he said. But most division commanders objected to the idea, arguing that travel by commanders and men in civilian vehicles on the Netzarim corridor would jeopardize their lives twice over: once, because of Hamas' threats on the corridor at the time, and twice because of friendly fire by the IDF due to mistaken identity. There was also the broader context. After that idea was dropped, another one popped up. "Two days before the end of our tour in Gaza, the division commander wanted to carry out physical training for commanders, who would run without flak jackets from the Paga outpost in Israeli territory to the sea," says a commander. "Southern Commander Yaron Finkelman heard about it and torpedoed the plan the night before. Vach wanted to know one thing: who ratted on him."
Relations between Finkelman and Vach were not the warmest. The sense was that Vach "did not care for Finkelman either," says a veteran 252nd Division officer. "There were cases in which operational discipline was not really a fire under his feet, causing unnecessary risk to soldiers."
But this was expressed in other ways too. During the tour, Finkelman tended to hold situation assessments with all the division commanders, sometimes by video conference. "These were calls with very sensitive information and also discussed the issue of the captives and hostages," says a participant. "While Finkelman was speaking, we suddenly saw a yarmulke-wearing civilian on Yehuda Vach's screen." The source says that Vach was inside Gaza at the time and the civilian "stood there and appeared to be looking at the map of Gaza on the wall behind Yehuda Vach. Finkelman turned red with anger, and Vach realized that something was wrong and threw the man out of there."
Time passed, and at least on the surface everything was going smoothly, but a few weeks before the end of the reserve tour of duty, officers from the 252nd's fire component decided to demand explanations from Vach about his operational conduct. "This is the first war in which everyone does whatever they want in the sector for which they are responsible," says one of the officers present. "Operations leaving without any orders or orderly combat procedure because that's what Vach thinks was the right thing to do." No explanations were forthcoming for the officers.
The IDF Spokesperson's Office stated in response, "The division's soldiers operated and fought in a series of valuable and important operations with the objective expanding the security space for IDF forces in the corridor. These were a series of operations approved at all the echelons, pursuant to orders and an orderly combat procedure."
"The decisions taken by the division commander were professional and purposeful, in full coordination with all the commanders and were based on the wish and need to maintain contact and protect the lives and security of the division's soldiers. The claim that this needlessly jeopardized the division's soldiers as well as the value of the missions and disparaged the fallen IDF soldiers is incorrect."
The army added, "The Pladot Heavy Engineering Equipment under the command of Col. (res.) Golan Vach is an authorized military force of reservists who underwent appropriate training."
"The force is a taskforce, which was authorized and raised in accordance with procedures and operated in a number of sectors in the Gaza sector, in coordination with and subordinate to the sector force. The mission in which Col. (res.) Golan Vach participated was to find and destroy tunnels. The incident was thoroughly investigated by Southern Command and the necessary lessons were learned."
The army continued, "The claims described about the entry of civilians and civilian vehicles into the territory of the Gaza Strip by the 252nd Division commander are not true." It also claimed that Brig.-Gen. Vach did not make the statements attributed to him.