From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Smotrich pans coalition ally Gafni: ‘He has no right to talk about the war’
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"
In a continuation of an ongoing public feud, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declares that ultra-Orthodox MK Moshe Gafni “has no right to talk about the war.”
Speaking with Jerusalem Radio, the far-right minister says that he has multiple family members currently serving and insists that if Gafni wants to discuss the conduct of the war in Gaza, he should first send his “children to fight.”
Gafni, the leader of the Degel Hatorah faction of the coalition’s United Torah Judaism party, had previously attacked Smotrich over his comment yesterday that “returning the hostages is not the most important thing.” He compared Smotrich to the Sicarii of the Second Temple period, a group of zealots for whom “the national issue was more important than human life.” Hitting back, Smotrich said that only someone who still holds a “diaspora mindset” and doesn’t believe that the State of Israel is the rightful “return to Zion” is capable of “comparing the current reality to the period of the destruction of the Second Temple.”
The Times of Israel Community.