Opposition Leader Yair Lapid says in a speech that “the path to victory starts with our commitment to the hostages,” a day after Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that the hostages are “not the most important thing.”
“It is part of what separates us from our enemy,” Lapid told the Conference of Presidents annual mission.
“Hamas doesn’t care if its people are killed. But we will do almost anything to ensure that our children and parents come home.”
Lapid continues his oblique attack on Smotrich and others in the coalition, saying, “In the past few years, Israel’s democracy has been attacked from within, and weakened from within, including by people who sit in the government today.”
The former prime minister argues that these figures weakened Israel and thereby encouraged Hamas to attack: “They looked at us and said, ‘If Israel is not as democratic, it is also not as strong,’ and they attacked our homes and murdered our children.”
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