Arab Knesset members expose Netanyahu’s double game
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outwardly incites against the Arab population while privately asking Arab Knesset members for help when he needs it.
A day after the Sept. 17 election, once most of the votes were counted and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu realized he did not have the 61-seat Knesset majority to form a government, he arrived at Likud headquarters in Tel Aviv and declared that “Israel needs a strong, stable, Zionist government” rather than one dependent on “anti-Zionist” parties. Netanyahu was saying that there was no room for the Joint List in Israel’s government — a message to his rival, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, lest he dare consider forming the country’s next government with Arab party backing.
Netanyahu ignored the fact that one of the partners in the right-wing religious bloc — the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Yisrael faction of Yahadut HaTorah — is far from Zionist. In fact, Agudat Yisrael was formed in the early 20th century to counter the emerging Zionist movement.
