It started on Tuesday with the cabaret show the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties put on.
During a joint Shas and United Torah Judaism news conference, party leaders and senior members of Knesset slammed the incoming cabinet and especially its leader, Yamina head Naftali Bennett.
“The name of the evil shall rot,” UTJ leader Moshe Gafni intoned, referring to the incoming prime minister.
“The Jewish state is in danger,” said Shas leader Arye Deri, and “the government headed by Bennett will destroy and ruin everything that we have preserved of the Jewish character and identity of the country, which enables life together over the last 73 years.”
Housing and Construction Minister Ya’acov Litzman called the incoming coalition “an extremist, left-wing government without values or a moral compass,” and repeated the absurd notion that “everything Jewish is being wiped out.”
He then summed it up for Bennett, calling on him to “take off his kippah.”
The slander festival continued in the Knesset, where Likud members chose the harshest words to fiercely attack the new government.
Cyber and National Digital Matters Minister David Amsalem continued with the divisive approach, saying the new government would consist of “Ashkenazi snobs” and be “a government of hate.”
MK Galit Distal Atbaryan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal appointment in a top spot on the Likud list, said in a committee meeting that Bennett and New Hope leader Gideon Sa’ar are like “parasites on an organism.”
But above all were the utterly disgraceful remarks made by Likud MK May Golan on the Knesset Channel on Sunday: “Naftali Bennett and Gideon Sa’ar have nowhere else to go. I compare them to suicide bombers. The Shin Bet [Israel Security Agency] head can continue saying whatever he wants. They are like terrorists who don’t believe in anything anymore. They go out to their suicide mission, and even if they know they have a death sentence, they don’t care.”
All of the remarks above are testimony of an ill and exhausted leadership, whose time has already passed. They are a sign of how Likud is disconnected from the people and from themselves. Politicians are meant to serve as role models for society. For too long now, the members of Netanyahu’s Likud Party have undermined Israel’s values and moral conscience.
The Netanyahu era should have ended when he couldn’t form a government in May 2019. Since then, all we have seen are desperate efforts to sabotage all attempts to create an alternative for this outdated government.
Naturally, the harmful language used by politicians is also dominating the streets. In the past week we have witnessed violent words used against those who are seen as weak links in the incoming government.
As of today, almost the entire Yamina faction, except rebel Amichai Chikli, who said that he will not support the new coalition, are protected by armed security guards due to threats on their lives. Sa’ar is under armed protection as well.
And this is the time to say enough.
The “change government” could actually bring about a real change. It could heal the ill public discourse with new, clean language. A government with a National-Religious leader, with ministers from the entire social and political spectrum – religious, secular, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Jewish, Arab, Sabras, and immigrants – all under one coalition could show the public that this country can be different and that we can talk to one another in a respectful way.
Remarks by the Likud and its allies reflect a dangerous belief that the country’s leadership belongs to a certain group of people, and that there is only one person who is able to lead the country and without him, the nation will not survive.
It is time for a restart.
The main task of the new leadership is to show the country this new way.
We wish the government luck and success.