Ex-Likud minister slams PM in private correspondence: A great anger toward Netanyahu

Former public diplomacy minister Galit Distel Atbaryan lashes out at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying she had a burning anger toward him and that the days of his government’s days were numbered.

Distel Atbaryan made the comments in a private WhatsApp conversation with an anti-government activist that was later published on social media.

“I have a great anger toward Netanyahu, fury that is burning me from inside,” she writes. “The days of this government are numbered, that’s completely clear.”

Distel Atbaryan, a firebrand who was seen as a Netanyahu loyalist, quit her post five days after the start of the war brought on by the deadly Hamas assault on southern Israel that killed some 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians, and saw some 240 hostage taken to Gaza.

She said then that she resigned because the government was sideling her powers

The Likud politician had faced significant criticism since entering the post, in particular over her use of the office to heavily promote the government’s judicial overhaul as well as her history of incendiary remarks. She was also the subject of sharp censure over her ministry’s seeming lack of activity as Israel faced its worst attack in decades.

However, in her conversation, Distel Atbaryan cast her resignation as a protest over Netanyahu’s security policy that allowed Hamas to flourish, alongside the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon.

“You don’t know how [Netanyahu] broke me and I’m keeping my mouth shut. the minute after this war ends I will spill it all, but now it’s time to hold it in,” she writes. I have been holding in my personal fury with Netanyahu for several months. the fury over the monsters that grew under his governments in the south and the north is what broke me and led me to resign.”

“Until that dark Shabbat, I was sure he was Mr. Security. Netanyahu is a large and complex figure, he is not the devil you describe and it turns out he is not the angel I once believed. With all his flaws, he is the only one at the moment who can withstand this crazy pressure without collapsing and he has international abilities that no one else in the political field has and this is critical now,” she says.