Lapid: Knesset should be a model for civil debate, not just trading barbs

Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid tells members of the newly sworn-in 25th Knesset that they should strive to make the parliament a model for the civil exchange of ideas.

“We need the 25th Knesset to be a place of debate about opinions and thoughts, not a place whose whole essence is an exchange of insults,” Lapid tells lawmakers at the Knesset’s Chagall State Hall.

“We need it to be the place that the citizens of Israel look up to, not the place where the citizens of Israel are ashamed and ashamed of its representatives.”

Lapid’s outgoing coalition was locked in a bitter battle with the opposition, with the two blocs now poised to swap roles.

Rather than elaborating on the past 1.5 years of Israel’s 36th government, Lapid says he’ll put aside the remarks in light of a terror attack this morning that claimed three Israeli lives and cast a pallor over some of the Knesset’s opening day festivities.

“This morning we received a particularly painful reminder of the challenges and difficulties that the State of Israel faces every day anew. Instead of a holiday for Israeli democracy, it is a day of pain over the deaths of innocent people murdered by a despicable terrorist,” he says.