Lapid says Bnei Brak violence is ‘not an isolated phenomenon’

Addressing the Knesset ahead of a no-confidence vote in the government, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid asserts that yesterday’s mob attack on two IDF servicewomen in Bnei Brak was “not an isolated phenomenon.”

“What we saw yesterday in Bnei Brak is not an isolated phenomenon. It happens time and time again under this government. You are permitting [the shedding of] the blood of the IDF. You are against the IDF. This isn’t just happening in Bnei Brak,” he says, referencing settler attacks on the IDF in the West Bank.

“This government keeps saying that it’s completely right-wing. You’re not completely right-wing, you’re not right-wing at all. You’re a government that exists thanks to anti-Zionist parties, who are against conscription into the IDF, whose public is trying to lynch female soldiers and flips over police cars,” Lapid says.

Responding to the opposition’s no-confidence motions, Deputy Minister Yisrael Eichler (United Torah Judaism) slams “incitement” against his community, calling it “dangerous” and insisting that it “is intended to legitimize government violence.”

“The incitement during no-confidence motions on the Knesset stage regarding ‘Haredi draft evasion’ is dangerous and intended to legitimize state violence,” he says.

Eichler says opposition figures who call to “fight the Haredim just as we fight terrorists” are issuing a “license for bloodshed. Recently, two Haredi youths have already been killed by bus strikes during demonstrations.”

“If we do not fight against this incitement, it will continue to get worse, heaven forbid. This is how civil wars begin, and one can never know when or how they will end,” Eichler says.