Search

Lapid: ‘I apologize to Ben-Gurion’ for new gov’t destroying Israel, ruining his dream

In blistering speech, outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid alleges that incoming right-wing government will destroy the founding principles of the state.

By World Israel News Staff

Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid continued his scathing criticism of the incoming right-wing government on Wednesday, charging that the next coalition would destroy the founding principles on which the State of Israel was built.

During a speech at a memorial ceremony for Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, Lapid said that the “extreme” new government would make Israel unrecognizable to the nation’s founders.

“I did not come today to eulogize Ben-Gurion, I came to apologize to him,” Lapid said, according to a transcript of his speech published by Hebrew-language Channel 14.

“What is happening today in the State of Israel is contrary to everything he believed in…in the Declaration of Independence, the most important moment in the history of the Jewish people in the last 2,000 years, Ben Gurion told us that Israel should be a country [with] complete social and political equality of rights for all its citizens, regardless of religion, race or gender.

“Now, a new government is being established in Israel, and it does not believe in [the founding principles of the state]. Not in equality for women, not in equality for LGBT people, not in political equality, not in social equality and certainly not in equality for non-Jews.”

Read  Shin Bet, police thwart Ben-Gvir assassination plot

Lapid did not provide concrete examples as to how the incoming government discriminates against women, Arabs, or the LGBT community.

Otzma Yehudit MK Itamar Ben Gvir, whose faction ran as part of the Religious Zionism party, has said that he does not take issue with law-abiding Arab Israelis, but believes that the state should clamp down on terrorists.

Similarly, other Religious Zionism MKs have expressed concerns over the IDF lowering physical fitness standards so that women can be recruited to elite combat units. They say that the integration of women into these units could pose issues for religiously observant male soldiers who are already serving in the battalions.

Those concerns have been construed as an opposition to women serving in the IDF by some left-wing commentators.

Lapid repeated his unfounded criticism that MKs from the new government are “inciting IDF soldiers against their commanders,” in a reference to lawmakers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Almog Cohen questioning a 10-day jail sentence for a soldier who was filmed arguing with a left-wing activist.