Right, Left and Center Slam Netanyahu Over Rocket Attack

YERUSHALAYIM
Israeli security forces inspect the scene of a house that was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in moshav Mishmeret, Monday. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)

Politicians on the right, left and center slammed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu over the rocket attack on a town in central Israel Monday morning – although not all suggested specific solutions to the ongoing rocket fire, rioting, and balloon terror attacks coming from Gaza.

Netanyahu’s chief rival, Blue and White Party head Benny Gantz, said that “the situation is that Hamas has turned Israel into its hostage, an unprecedented thing. This is a complete bankruptcy of Netanyahu’s defense policy. Netanyahu must return to Israel immediately and deal with this, or will he again accept the Hamas excuse that this was another mistake?”

Gantz’s party mate, former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon, said “those who turned Israelis into Hamas hostages, those who paid millions of dollars in “protection money” to terrorists, those who ignore the tens of thousands rioting daily, those who for a year have ignored the balloon terror, the firebombs along the Gaza border fence, the fires in our fields because of the balloon terror, the rockets on southern Israel, or believe that the rocket fire at central Israel was a “mistake” – should not be surprised that Sharon residents now have to run to bomb shelters.”

New Right party head Naftali Bennett, speaking at the site of the attack in the town of Mishmeret in central Israel, said that “Hamas is not afraid to attack us. If they were they would not be firing rockets. The time has come to hand over the keys to the Defense Ministry to me. The current policies are not working, but I have the solutions.”

Helping out her husband was Gilat Bennett, who slammed Netanyahu in a social media post and said that if Netanyahu was corrupt, it wasn’t due to the questionable investigations he has been subjected to; the “corruption” is in his failure to defend Israel from the Hamas threat. “This enemy has been killing us for years, and all that Netanyahu has done is to ignore its existence. It is he who is responsible, because he appoints the defense ministers and the IDF’s chiefs of staff,” she said.

Labor MK Omer Bar-Lev, who is deputy head of the Knesset Committee for the Readiness of the IDF, said “the current government has no strategy in Gaza. When Hamas fires at us, we should respond with full force, and I trust the army to do this. But the government has surrendered to Hamas, paying it protection money and ignoring the recommendations of the security establishment to improve the quality of life in Gaza in order to prevent a slide toward war.”

Also criticizing Netanyahu – along with Blue and White candidates Gantz and Yaalon – was Moshe Feiglin, head of the Zehut Party. All three “were leaders of the country in 2014, and led Israel to a major loss in Operation Protective Edge, ignoring the 500 missiles that were fired at Beersheva and the south. It is these three who are quarreling over who will lead the country that have turned Israeli children in the Sharon into hostages of Gaza.”

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