Netanyahu: Public will take revenge Blue and White

MARCH 7, 2020 19:44

The public will take revenge against those who break their campaign promises and trample democracy with retroactive legislation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday night in Petah Tikva in what he called an “emergency rally to stop the creation of a minority government.”

Netanyahu spoke to 15 Likud branches where crowds gathered instead of a mass rally in one site, due to the coronavirus. He protested a bill sponsored by Blue and White and supported by the Joint List that would prevent an indicted MK from forming a government,

He revealed that Otzma Yehudit offered to quit last Monday’s election in return for allowing Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount but he said no, because it would “set the Middle East on fire.”

Blue and White leader Benny Gantz accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday of dangerous incitement against him.

Gantz recalled the assassination of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, when Netanyahu was the leader of the opposition. Netanyahu was accused of incitement ahead of that murder,

“Bibi we saw what happened when the incitement was out of control and no one stopped it in 1995,” Gantz wrote on Twitter. “If you think that your threats will stop us, you are making a bad mistake. You are only showing how important it is to replace you.”

Gantz warned that “if we don’t wake up, the next political assassination is around the corner.”

Blue and White MK Moshe Ya’alon said it was wrong of Netanyahu to question the results of Monday’s election and call upon the public to protest them.

“You are calling on millions to to go out to the streets and not accept the results of the election?” Ya’alon said. “This is mutiny!”

Gantz and Ya’alon were responding to Netanyahu’s announcement of an emergency rally on Saturday night and the Likud announcing on Friday morning that it would petition the Supreme Court to force the Central Elections Committee to provide all of the protocols of the voting in Monday’s election.

The Likud complained that the Central Electons Committee was taking too long in providing the information. The members of the committee responded by condemning the Likud and saying that it already received 90% of the information it requested and would receive the rest on Saturday night.

“The representaitves of all the parties on the committee, including Likud, reject any statement hinting at politics on the part of the committee’s chairman, supreme court judge Neal Hendel,” the committee said. “Judge Hendel and the leadership of the committee and its workers worked hard and honestly to ensure that the election would be democratic and fair. Anonymous lying hints, questioning the integrity of the head of the committee, are unacceptable and harm the public’s trust.”

In Gantz’s message on Twitter, he vowed to form a government that will serve all sectors of the population. In a sign that it could be a minority government backed by the Joint List, Gantz mentioned Israeli Arab citizens. Responding to the Likud’s claims of victory, Gantz pointed out that Blue and White’s vote count went up from the September to March elections, as it rose from the April election to the September one.