Ex-Israeli defense chief: Netanyahu scaring the public

“Thus it is fitting that the country’s leadership stop scaring the citizenry and stop giving them the feeling that we are standing before a second Holocaust”.

Israel’s new Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman is to visit the United States this weekend for talks with his U.S. counterpart, his office said Thursday, after Washington raised concerns over the hardliner’s appointment.

Israel’s popular former defense minister, who was shoved aside last month by his boss, warned on Thursday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a fearmonger who hypes threats against Israel to scare the populace and to stay in power. Ya’alon said at the time he was resigning after having lost trust in the prime minister.

“It is intolerable that Israel’s leadership in 2016 tries to incite Jews against Arabs, right against left, and between different tribes, all in order to survive in the government and to get another month or another year” in office, he said.

Yaalon said he has received “thousands” of appeals to run for high office: “There is an aspiration that crosses party lines of the vast and sane majority of the country to see a stately leadership that will lead the country according to a compass of conscience and not according to polls or reactions on social media”. “We deserve a leadership that doesn’t choose (to rule through) the corrupt system of divide and rule”. “Responsible leadership has the job of connecting between parts of society”. “We could argue and disagree over judicial activism-but we must fight any attempt to hurt the rule of law”, he added. In his speech at the conference, Ehud Barak, who closed the event, said that we were seeing “harbingers of fascism” in Israel.

“We are now at a historical juncture in which we should each ask ourselves what kind of country do we want to live in, and what kind of country do we want our children and grandchildren to grow up in”, Ya’alon continued. Associates said he had already discussed a joint run with such other disappointed Likudniks as former Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar, current Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, and even Yair Lapid, who, like Ya’alon, emphasizes that he was raised in a family that supported Menachem Begin.

She criticised the right-wing government, saying that it does not have any solutions for the security challenges facing Israel.

Following Lieberman’s nomination, US State Department spokesman Mark Toner, in a rare comment on Israeli internal politics, said the Jewish state’s new ruling coalition raised “legitimate questions” over Israel’s commitment to a two-state solution in its conflict with the Palestinians.

“At this point, and in the foreseeable future, there is no existential threat facing Israel”.

He said Thursday that “it’s my money and I want to know what is being done with it”.

Despite these assessments, he said Israel should know how to defend itself, “In the Middle East, there is no knowing what is going to happen and who is going to decide to try and challenge us”.

In May 1993, the Belgian-American hairstylist Cristophe Schatteman gave President Bill Clinton a $200 haircut while Air Force One was sitting on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport.

Netanyahu released a statement is response, recalling that Ya’alon said just four months ago in Munich that Iran is an existential threat for Israel.

“It’s amusing to watch how quickly Ya’alon changes his spots”.