Radical leftist Meretz party chair MK Zehava Galon warned MK Yair Lapid, chair of Yesh Atid, that he could wind up bearing responsibility for physical attacks on activists from Breaking the Silence, a group that has been shown to spread lies about the IDF in Israel and abroad.
"Yair Lapid is the epitome of hypocrisy," she said, after Lapid held a news conference Sunday morning, flanked by IDF officers who oppose the activity of Breaking the Silence, and vowed to initiate a bill that would prevent Israeli NGOs that attack Israel from receiving funds from the BDS movement. Lapid called on Breaking the Silence to voice its criticism of the IDF inside Israel, not abroad.
Galon called Lapid "a black flag fluttering over his own party, and shaming his voters. A politician with no shame and no moral spine. With his inciting statement today, which is a complete lie from beginning to end, Lapid is taking part in collectively marking people as targets, and no one knows how this will end. The shameful competition that he insists on waging with Netanyahu's ugly incitement machine will not, of course, bring him voters, and likely will not lend one iota of assistance to solving Israel's real problems – poverty, the gas issue, terror run wild – problems that neither the government nor Yair Lapid care about.
"But it can certainly stain his hands with blood much more quickly than he thinks," she warned. "He will likely dissemble and dissociate himself from the results, but this will not help those who will pay with blood for his lowly populism."
She reiterated her conviction that the soldiers who gave testimony to Breaking the Silence are heroes. "They are the true lovers of Israel and I am proud of them with my entire heart," she declared, and those who oppose them want to turn the IDF into "a bloodthirsty militia, unbridled and without boundaries."
Citing the Book of Bereshit (Genesis), Galon said Lapid, Bennett and Netanyahu are "the darkness upon the face of the deep" and accused them of imitating Putin and Erdogan.