Yamina Indignant Over Lapid Slur Against Rabbi Peretz

The Yamina party on Thursday demanded an apology from Blue and White MK Yair Lapid, who compared Rabbi Rafi Peretz to a supporter of terrorism.

Speaking on possible coalition scenarios, Lapid said that “even if they constitute the 61th [Knesset seat required for a government], we will not [be part of a coalition] with Rabbi Peretz or Hiba Yazbak.” Joint Arab List MK Yazbak narrowly survived a legal challenge to her eligibility to run in the March 2 elections after she was accused of making statements supporting terrorists.

In an interview, Lapid explained, “I think some of Rabbi Peretz’s statements and the party agreement he made with Itamar Ben-Gvir [head of the far-right Otzma Yehudit] removed him from the spectrum of Israeli legitimacy.”

In a letter to Blue and White, Yamina charged: “In his blatant vulgarity, MK Yair Lapid compared Rabbi Rafi Peretz, a helicopter pilot, IDF fighter, and brigadier general, who has educated dozens of generations of soldiers in the IDF preparatory program, and established a settlement on the Egyptian border in the Negev following his expulsion from his home in Gush Katif, to a sickening terrorist supporter,” according to Arutz Sheva.

“We demand your condemnation of the criminal comparison and an apology to Rabbi Peretz,” the letter concluded.