Yesh Atid party chairman and former Finance Minister MK Yair Lapid accused Religious Zionist Party chairman and former Transportation Minister Bezalel Smotrich of being a ‘terror supporter’, according to recordings from a Yesh Atid event earlier this week.
Reshet Bet released the recordings Wednesday morning, which were made during a conference Lapid attended with party activists.
In the recordings, Lapid can be heard responding to the question of with whom he would be willing to form a government after next month’s election.
“[Gideon] Sa’ar and [Naftali] Bennett are staunchly right-wing people and tough, but they are also people who at the end of the day are positive, and we need to try to find common ground with them.”
“But there are some I won’t speak to, mainly [Itamar] Ben-Gvir and [Bezalel] Smotrich, because he’s simply a terror supporter.”
Sources close to Lapid confirmed that the ‘terror supporter’ jab was aimed at Smotrich.
Smotrich responded to the release of the recordings, blasting Lapid’s comments as “incitement”.
“Yair, you should be ashamed of yourself. There is a limit to hatred and incitement, there are limits to how much you can demonize your political opponents.”
“Naftali, Gideon, you can get nothing from Lapid, given all of the divisiveness and hatred that man spreads in Israeli society.”