From the Liveblog of
Monday, March 18, 2024
Bashing Smotrich, coalition MK lambasts government as ‘worst ever’
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Coalition MK Matan Kahana declares the current government “the worst and most terrible” in Israel’s history, accusing it of being “responsible for the most terrible tragedy that has befallen the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
The National Unity lawmaker’s remarks come in response to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s attacks on the leadership of the IDF, which the far-right cabinet member blames for failures surrounding the October 7 massacre.
Smotrich, Kahana says, “does not even begin to understand the meaning of responsibility.”
During a heated security cabinet meeting on Sunday evening, senior ministers attacked Smotrich, who declared that “the IDF and its head failed not only tactically and operationally, but conceptually.”
During his Religious Zionism party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset last week, Smotrich declared that IDF chief of staff Lt Gen. Herzi Halevi has no mandate to design a “new and reformed IDF” during wartime, following the announcement of a round of senior appointments.
National Unity joined the government following October 7 to have a hand in steering the war effort, but is generally opposed to the government’s other activities, especially those led by the far-right flank Smotrich hails from.
