Lapid: Netanyahu bases his politics on hate and division, Israel can unite around liberal values
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"
Once again slamming Benjamin Netanyahu’s press conference last night — in which the prime minister made clear he would not agree to Israel leaving the Philadelphi Corridor, even for the first 42-day phase of a hostage-ceasefire agreement — Opposition Leader Yair Lapid alleges that the “only thing that concerns [the prime minister] is how to continue the war, so that the government does not fall apart.”
“Instead of the government protecting the lives of citizens and soldiers, the lives of citizens and soldiers are safeguarding the government,” Lapid declares during a speech at the Israel Bar Association’s annual conference.
“In the last week, six hostages were murdered. Five soldiers were killed. Three policemen were murdered. One of them is the father of a young policewoman who was murdered in Sderot on October 7. It was not an unusual week. This is the life this government offers us,” Lapid says, arguing that under Netanyahu’s leadership “we have become a frightened nation” that sticks close to fortified rooms for protection.
“The government offers us [the possibility] to be a country where the only glue that holds it together is hatred. We have a government that deals all day with the question of who it hates. It hates Arabs, hates leftists, hates the LGBT, hates the media, hates the gatekeepers, hates Einav Zangauker for having her son taken hostage,” he continues. He slams the government over issues ranging from settler violence to the Temple Mount and the judicial overhaul.
“Who wants to live in such a country?” he asks. “This is the disaster government, and after every disaster they preach to us that we need to unite and that ‘together we will win.’ Do you want to unite the people? Me too, very much so. I have only one question: around what? Around what values do you want to unite the people?”
“Do you want to unite the people around Ben Gvir? Around the ceremonies of Miri Regev? If Israel is not a decent, law-abiding, responsible, life-sanctifying country, what are we uniting around?”
“I want to remind you — there is another option,” he says. “An open, liberal democracy, national, Zionist, optimistic, sophisticated, innovative, with a strong civil society. With a functioning government that knows how to run things. With a welcoming and tolerant Judaism that is the thing that connects us, not the thing that causes us to fight.”
