Bennett criticizing PM like an ‘internet commenter,’ Netanyahu source says

Sources close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Education Minister Naftali Bennett on Wednesday, a day after Bennett’s stinging rebuke of the government’s strategy in the face of terror attacks and threats from outside Israel’s borders.

“It seems there are those who still don’t understand the difference between being a minister in the cabinet and an internet commenter in the opposition,” an official quipped.

“While the IDF, police and Shin Bet are battling terror every day and in every place, cabinet members are expected to take responsibility and contribute to the shared effort — instead of begging for votes by floating slogans and populistic attacks against a government they themselves sit in,” the source added.

In a thinly veiled attack on political and defense leaders from coalition partner Likud, Bennett, who heads the Jewish Home party, told a security conference Tuesday in Tel Aviv that a “deadlock” in creative thinking on security threatens Israel far more than the diplomatic impasse with the Palestinians.

“The main threat to Israel’s security comes not from the north or south, not from the rockets of Hamas and Hezbollah, and not even from Iran,” he told a conference of the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “Nor is diplomatic deadlock our main threat, but a deadlock in our thinking.”

Perceptual barriers were more perilous than the concrete barriers erected in the heart of Jerusalem to protect citizens from terror attacks, he went on. “Instead of shaping our futures ourselves, Israel is being dragged along by the existing reality,” he said. “In my view, this is the greatest danger to our security.”

The comments were seen as critical of decisions made by Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon in managing a series of crises over the last several years.

Ya’alon also criticized Bennett’s comments, telling the conference on Tuesday, “This is a bad culture of governance, irresponsible, childish, and it’s best if it stops. It has to stop. Leadership is responsibility, not chasing after a few more ‘likes’ on Facebook.”

Opposition leader MK Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) also responded to Bennett’s comments, though more positively than Netanyahu or Ya’alon: “Even the chairman of Jewish Home,” he told the conference Tuesday, “agrees with me today and says himself that the government and Netanyahu have no solutions and don’t bring security.”

He nevertheless criticized Bennett for “not offering any real solution.” Given his criticism of Netanyahu, Herzog added, “I’d expect Bennett to fulfill his civic responsibility: after his words this morning he should have resigned” from the government.

Sources close to Bennett told Israel Radio, among other outlets, that “Bennett will continue to say what he believes, even if there are those who don’t like what he has to say.”