Lapid slams incoming ‘government of madness,’ warns of ‘looting of democracy’

Prime Minister Yair Lapid says policies being pushed by members of the incoming government constitute a “looting of democratic values.”

“I ask myself who was most fearful yesterday to live in this country,” he says at the start of his Yesh Atid party’s faction meeting in the Knesset. “LGBTQs who heard from Simcha Rothman that they will be barred from hotels? Arabs who heard from Orit Strock that doctors can refuse to treat them? Activists in women’s organizations who discovered they are on Avi Maoz’s blacklists. Reform and Conservative Jews who heard from [MK Meir] Porush that they will be barred from the Western Wall? Or senior members of the state prosecution and the police who heard from Yair Netanyahu that they should be prosecuted for treason, for which the penalty is death?”

Lapid is referring in part to a coalition demand touted yesterday by Religious Zionism MKs that would allow business owners and even doctors to refuse service if it interferes with their religious sensibilities — something Netanyahu had to twice clarify he does not support.

Lapid continues: “This is no longer a political struggle. It is a battle for the soul of the state of Israel as a Jewish state, as a democratic state, as a sane state.”

“If anyone thinks that this will stop with the formation of the government, they are completely mistaken,” Lapid says.

“It never stops. There has never been –- anywhere in the world, at any moment in history – religious and nationalist extremism that one day and on its own initiative says, ‘that’s it, enough for me, I’m stopping,'” Lapid adds.

“This attack will not stop on its own. They will not suddenly fall in love with democracy. They will not see the light and come to the conclusion that they believe in the liberal values of [Israel’s] Declaration of Independence,” Lapid continues. “They won’t stop. If we don’t stop them, it will get much worse.”

“We’ve seen governments being formed in Israel. What’s happening here is not a normal process,” he adds. “What we’re seeing is the weakest prime minister ever and a government of disorder. This is not a ‘full right’ government. This is a full-on government of madness.”

Lapid concludes: “We do not intend to sit quietly at a time when they are taking the state of Israel apart from within.”