From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, July 30, 2024
Lapid calls for special Knesset session during recess after far-right protesters storm IDF bases
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid calls on Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana to convene a special plenum debate during the legislative recess after far-right mobs broke into two IDF bases on Monday.
“We are not on the brink of an abyss, we are in the abyss,” Lapid writes, arguing that “the participation of members of the Knesset and ministers in the invasion of violent militias into IDF bases constitutes a crossing of a red line that Israeli democracy has never known.”
“This is not another demonstration of one political camp or another; it is a sharp threat to Israel’s image as a Jewish and democratic state,” he continues. “I appeal to you, as speaker of the Knesset, the place that represents Israeli democracy above all else, to hold an urgent discussion in the Knesset plenum on the issue.”
After Military Police arrested nine soldiers suspected of abusing a security prisoner, members of Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party announced that they were setting out to Sde Teiman and called on others to join them. Politicians and activists broke in and demonstrated at the detention facility and later stormed the Beit Lid base, where the suspects are being held.
Among the lawmakers who participated in the protests were Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu of Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit Party, Religious Zionism MK Zvi Sukkot, and MKs Nissim Vaturi and Tally Gotliv of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party.
The Times of Israel Community.