Lapid at government inauguration: ‘Israelis deserve better’

Yesh Atid-Telem chair and presumed opposition leader Yair Lapid attacks the new government in his speech at the Knesset following addresses from Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz.

“Today, this building has lost the trust of the Israeli public. People hate politicians, they hate politics. They don’t believe politics represents values. They definitely don’t believe that it’s relevant to their lives. They’re right. Politics takes their money and gives them nothing back. There is no connection between politics and the real lives of real people,” Lapid says.

Slamming the size of the government, the largest in Israel’s history, Lapid says, “Coronavirus is an excuse for a corrupt party at the expense of the taxpayer.”

“After all the empty talk of an ’emergency government,’ the government being formed today is the largest and most wasteful in the history of the country. 36 ministers, 16 deputy ministers. You call that an emergency government? 52 offices. There are fewer than 50 coronavirus patients on ventilators in Israel; we have more ministers and deputy ministers than patients on life support. We could put a minister or deputy minister next to each bed and still have two left over,” he mocks.

Lapid says that “Israelis deserve better.”

He promises that the opposition “will be here to remind them that it can be different. There is an alternative, a different leadership. Not a leadership that cares only about its own jobs and seats. A leadership committed to values, to the change we want to lead. To love Judaism but to fight religious coercion. To stand against racism. To fight corruption. To protect our democracy from those who seek to destroy it.”