Ehud Barak: Netanyahu ‘has gone off the rails, must be removed’ from office

Former prime minister Ehud Barak says he is certain the protests will now spread, and that IDF reservists’ opposition to volunteering for active reserve duty under this government will swell.

“People who have risked their lives many times, and lost colleagues, in the service of a democracy are not prepared to do so in the service of a dictatorship or a dictator,” he says on Channel 12.

Gallant was fired “because he demanded that the security cabinet convene, after he recognized a clear and present danger to Israel, on the basis of the intelligence material he sees, and during this judicial revolution.”

Netanyahu’s refusal to convene the cabinet “shows that he has lost his judgment and his capacity to assess reality.”

Referring to the process in the US for the orderly removal of a serving president, Barak notes that “this has never happened in the history of the state. Netanyahu is not to fit continue for so much as another day as prime minister of Israel.”

Asked whether Netanyahu might now fire the IDF chief of staff, Barak says, “Anything is possible…. He’s gone off the rails, and must be removed.”

“This is civil disorder,” he says of the scenes of protests around the country, “a spontaneous protest that will not end until Netanyahu is gone from office.”