Netanyahu must resign as Israel has ‘lost confidence’ in him
As we reported earlier, Netanyahu intends to force out the head of the internal security agency, Shin Bet, causing another political firestorm.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid said it is Netanyahu who must resign.
“If a loss of confidence is a reason for dismissal, then the first person to be dismissed is Netanyahu. Israel has lost confidence in him,” he told the Israeli broadcasting authority.
Yair Golan, another opposition politician, said he has been warning for years that Israel is “sliding towards dictatorship”.
“The government wants to give itself the right to do whatever it wants based on the orders of a corrupt person,” he said, according to Israeli media. “Netanyahu thinks he is a supreme ruler who can do whatever he wants.”
Shin Bet chief should have been fired a long time ago: Smotrich
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has sided with PM Netanyahu in his efforts to dismiss the head of the internal security agency Shin Bet.
He said Ronen Bar should have been fired a long time ago, adding he “was supposed to return home on October 8” – the day after the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel.
The Shin Bet chief is “personally responsible for a terrible mistake that led to the greatest disaster in Israel’s history” as he guarded “an imaginary political threshold” instead of the barriers with Gaza, Smotrich said.
The comments come as Israeli opposition politicians push back against Bar’s dismissal, and Israeli media report several organisations opposed to the government are planning a protest on Wednesday to reject the move.
Israel’s UN ambassador slams report on military’s gender-based violence
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, has penned an opinion piece in opposition to an independent UN commission report documenting disproportionate violence against Palestinian women by Israeli troops throughout the Gaza war.
The report, presented to the UN Human Rights Council last week, documented the outsized impacts of Israel’s military campaigns and blockage of aid to Gaza on women, as well as “sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence” used by Israel throughout the invasion.
In a piece published by the Jerusalem Post, Danon called the UN Human Rights Council “not a serious institution” and an “incubator for Jew hatred”.
Critics have regularly accused Israel’s officials of claiming anti-Semitism to silence criticism of its military actions.
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