Government criticized after ministers skip Yom Kippur War memorial

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is facing criticism after all the cabinet ministers were noticeably absent from the annual memorial for the Yom Kippur War earlier today.

Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and Zionist Union MK Hilik Bar was the sole lawmaker to attend the memorial at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. President Reuven Rivlin was also in attendance.

Opposition leader Avi Gabbay in a Facebook post calls the incident “embarrassing.”

“Each of the fallen soldiers has parents, brothers, sister and comrades, some of whom were there today, that are still carrying tremendous pain from that terrible war,” he writes. “And no minister thought it was important enough to come look them in the eye.”

Former prime minister Ehud Barak calls the absence of cabinet minsters at the event a “moral failure.”

“Shameful and enraging,” he posts on Twitter. “Disrespectful to the fallen soldiers.”

“Where are Bibi and his ministers? Busy with the jobs law? Or with the political ceremony in Gush Etzion? Destroying the Supreme Court? Time to go home.”