Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz fought and fought in the five election campaigns in the last four years to oust Benjamin Netanyahu and remove him from the Prime Minister’s Office. Now, Netanyahu has received the mandate to form the government. The international newspaper “The Economist” published an article yesterday (Thursday), in which he called on Lapid and Gantz to join the government under Netanyahu, in order not to lose liberal democracy in Israel.
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The newspaper presented Netanyahu’s return to the position of prime minister by winning a parliamentary majority “by supporting a vile variety of Jewish supremacists, homophobes and religious fanatics from the extreme right gathered under the umbrella of the religious Zionist bloc.” In addition, it was noted that “if he adopts them in a coalition government, as he said he would do in the election campaign on November 1, he could undermine Israel’s democracy and severely damage its judicial independence.” To prevent this, the newspaper calls on the centrist parties to do the “unthinkable”, and enter the government under Netanyahu.
The newspaper noted: “It seems that Netanyahu is ready to shatter the taboo that has long been maintained by the main parties in Israel, including his Likud, and prevented them from entering into ruling coalitions with the far-right parties, which clearly mock the basic principles of liberal democracy.” He presented that his electoral alliance with the religious Zionist bloc breaks the mold, and called the head of Otzma Yehudit, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a “rampant racist” who was known to admire Meir Kahane. In addition, it was noted that “Ben-Gvir is fiercely hostile to Arabs and suggests that those who have Israeli citizenship, about a fifth of the total population, will be expelled from the country if they are considered “disloyal”.
Bezalel Smotrich was also mentioned in an article in The Economist, and was presented as a “homophobe who wants to separate Arabs and Jews within Israel.” It is written that he plans to curb the power of the courts to overturn legislation that goes against Israel’s fundamental laws, which protect human rights. In addition, it was stated that he wants to delete from the statutes the offense of “breach of trust” with which Netanyahu was accused.
Although Lapid and Gantz rejected the possibility of entering a coalition government with the Likud chairman, the newspaper says: “They need to take a deep and patriotic breath. To protect the principles they represent – liberalism, democracy and the rule of law – they have to do whatever it takes to keep away those who would interfere with that.”