Newly sacked finance minister and Yesh Atid Chairman MK Yair Lapid said that he was “ashamed” for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu after hearing his speech earlier Monday morning.
"Mister Netanyahu has a very clear perception about the elections,” Lapid said at a conference hosted by Globes. “His basic assumption is that the Israeli voter, the Israeli citizen, is a four-year-old child. And four-year-old children are swayed by only two things; sweets and fear. So in every election, he promises them sweets that they will not receive, in the end, and at the same time he scares them and tells them that the enemies are on the way and that only he can save them.
"Mister prime minister, we are not four-year-olds. We are grown up people and we deserve to be treated with respect and not as if we are stupid.”
Netanyahu did not provide security, Lapid went on. “Instead of personal security, citizens are afraid to walk down the street in Jerusalem. Instead of quiet along the borders, we found ourselves, last summer, in the longest military campaign in over 20 years. At the end of this campaign, an opportunity to take away Hamas's weapons was missed, and no diplomatic process for demilitarizing Gaza was initiated.
“The IDF and security forces do their jobs above and beyond the call of duty, with devotion and sacrifice, but the role of the leadership is to decide – where do we go from here? What is the goal?”
Lapid said that being a clever man, Netanyahu understands that Israel has got to separate from the Palestinians diplomatically, but the “he fears the members of the Likud Central Committee and the votes that will 'escape' to the Jewish Home.”