Knesset panel due to vote on declaring Yamina rebel Chikli a 'defector'

The Knesset House Committee has reconvened to vote on a request by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s Yamina party to declare rebel MK Amichai Chikli a “defector.”

In a speech before the panel, Chikli rails at Bennett and Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, Yamina’s No. 2, accusing them of violating their campaign promises to voters.

“The damage they caused Israeli democracy will take a long time to fix,” he says.

During a heated hearing earlier today, members of opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party tore into Blue and White MK Eitan Ginzburg, who was filling in as chair for Yamina’s Nir Orbach, whose mother died.

Likud MK Miri Regev called Ginzburg a “colonialist pig,” while Keren Barak denounced him as a “wretched dictator.”