Defense Minister Benny Gantz criticized Prime Minister Yair Lapid's understanding of security issues.
"He understands what I tell him. We do the job very well. It was like that in other cases as well. He has understanding, he does his job properly. We work with proper cooperation," Gantz said at a conference of the Israel Hayom newspaper.
He added: "Our security challenges are at the forefront, they should not be political issues. We must not mix politics in this issue, but act in the name of security at the national security level and also for internal security which is important."
When asked about the government's response to the Lion's Den terrorist organization, Gantz responded: "I think it's a gang of terrorists that took a name for itself and let's not inflate it to the dimensions of an organization, it's about several dozen terrorists that we have to eventually strike. We arrested some of them, we got some of them, we will continue our pursuit of them."
When asked his opinion on Religious Zionism party leaders MKs Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, he replied: "From what I hear from Ben-Gvir, he is very radical and extreme."
"I really think there is a difference between them," he said. "One did not serve in the IDF at all (Ben-Gvir), the other served a little in the IDF (Smotrich). I am against Ben-Gvir's provocative conduct, which has nothing behind it - no courage, no experience, no knowledge. He always says 'I will take care of the IDF soldiers', so I really ask myself in the last decade, with all the events we have been through, how many times have soldiers been prosecuted? When there are mishaps we deal with them, back up the soldiers, are with the soldiers, we were there!"