Two More Ex-Defense Ministers Attack Netanyahu

Tel Aviv, 16 Ramadan 1437/17 June 2016 (MINA) – Three days after Israeli former defense ministers Moshe Ya’alon  and Ehud Barak issued scathing attacks on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Herzliya Conference, two more former defense ministers made their voices heard on Sunday.

Israeli Former defense minister Amir Peretz, speaking in radio interviews, blamed Netanyahu for much of the country’s ills and said there must be a serious effort to ensure he is replaced, Jerusalem Post reported.

“The prime minister is not the solution,” the Zionist Union MK said. “The prime minister is the problem. Everything must be done so that after the next election, he will no longer be prime minister.”

Israeli Former defense minister Shaul Mofaz, who has been on poor terms with Netanyahu since 2012, declined to speak negatively about him at the German Israel Congress in Frankfurt.

Previously, Ehud Barak launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Thursday at the Herzliya Conference and called for a “popular protest” – as well as the next elections – to bring Netanyahu down from power.

“A fanatical nucleus of radical ideology,” he said, “has taken over the Likud by taking advantages of loopholes in the party’s constitution regarding primaries, and ‘cleansed’ Likud’s leadership of all those who valued democratic values more than populism or a temporary accomplishment.”

“Implementing the government’s current policy will necessarily lead to an ‘apartheid state’ or a ‘binational’ state with a Jewish minority within a generation or two, with a high likelihood of being engaged in an ongoing civil war between its two parts,” he prophesied.

Meanwhile Ya’alon attacked his former boss Benjamin Netanyahu and announced that he plans to run against him in the next elections.

Moshe Ya’alon was pushed out of the government last month as part of a deal struck by Mr Netanyahu to bring a Right-wing nationalist party into his coalition.

Mr Ya’alon resigned from parliament in protest but on Thursday announced that he plans his own bid to become the next leader of Israel.

“My intent is to run for the leadership of Israel in the next elections,” he said in a speech at a security conference at the coastal city of Herzilya.

Mr Ya’alon attacked the prime minister for trying “scaring the citizens of Israel and giving them the sense that we are on the brink of a second Holocaust.” (T/R04/R03)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)