Lapid: Government is putting forward bills ‘to annul democracy in Israel’

Opposition leader Yair Lapid warns Israel will take its first steps toward becoming an undemocratic state if the first part of the government’s radical legal overhaul program is approved later today.

“The government is bringing to a vote two laws to annul democracy in Israel. Every effort to bring about dialogue, that of the President [Isaac] Herzog, the opposition, civil society, even the Americans, has been met with total refusal,” continues Lapid, branding calls by government officials for dialogue “lies.”

Lapid, who speaks at a faction meeting of his Yesh Atid party, calls Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Religious Zionism MK Simcha Rothman — the architects of the legal reforms — “unparalleled extremists” who he says are leading the country to “economic calamity, security calamity, and a calamity for the unity of the Jewish people.”

Lapid says the popular protest movement will prevail, and that the government “cannot ignore it.”

“We will continue to work across all fronts, here in the Knesset, in the streets, in the courts… we are working for the future of our children, for the future of our country and we do not intend to give up,” he adds.