Yamina chairman MK Naftali Bennett on Friday accused Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of opposing his ideas for personal reasons. Speaking in an interview on the Ofira & Berkovic program on Channel 12 , Bennett said, “Netanyahu did not implement my plan for the coronavirus because he is afraid of me. I submitted the plan to eradicate the virus to the Prime Minister on March 29 this year. He did not implement the plan, which he knew was good, because he is afraid of me and afraid that I will succeed." "Because they did not implement this plan, hundreds of thousands of people are suffering from anxiety and were fired from their jobs. This is because our leadership, Netanyahu, [Benny] Gantz and this entire government, put politics and personal issues at the top of their priorities. It's unforgivable," he charged. "Bibi has something personal against me," the former Defense Minister claimed. "I have always refrained from talking about it. I want to say first of all that I very much respect Prime Minister Netanyahu, I think the State of Israel has been lucky that he has been our Prime Minister for many years.” "I have been asked many times how is it that he constantly attacks me, my parents and my late father and my wife and yet I support him? The answer is that it is personal for me too. I got into politics for personal reasons. After the Second Lebanon War, in which I lost my friends because of a leadership that did not plan accordingly, was disconnected and did not know how to win, I swore to enter politics so that it would not happen that my brothers and sisters would die or suffer because of detached leadership. When I encountered such a situation again during Operation Protective Edge, when we all knew about 30 terrorist tunnels through which hundreds of Hamas commandos could come out, abduct civilians and kill them, I fought to destroy the tunnels even though they did not want to do it because it was personal." Asked if he would run for Prime Minister in the next election, Bennett replied. "There is a time for everything. In the next election I will come to this studio and say very clearly who should lead the State of Israel. I will be the clearest in the world. Right now there is no election, there is a crazy crisis that mainly affects the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Israelis." Bennett also took a shot at opposition leader Yair Lapid and said, "Unlike Lapid, I am not programmed with hatred. The issue of the State of Israel is not Bibi or no Bibi but rather the Israeli public and how we begin to take care of it. Lapid has been getting up every morning for ten years looking to find another wound against the haredim, to lie about it and incite. I am neither part of this game nor a part of the game of the other side of only Bibi. When the moment comes, everyone will know who should be the next leader of the State of Israel, but the issue at the moment is the coronavirus." Asked whether he would side with Netanyahu or join an opposing bloc with Lapid and Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman, Bennett replied, "Neither this nor that. I'm tired of the entire discourse being a cult of only Bibi against the cult of anyone but Bibi. I have another cult – the people of Israel, the public, Jews, Arabs, haredim, religious and secular. That's what I do, I meet people all day and hear their pain. I feel that people are in terrible uncertainty, no one explains to them where the country should go. People feel that if they fall no one will help them, they have lost faith in politicians." The Likud party said in response to the comments, "As long as Bennett and [Bezalel] Smotrich got the job they wanted, they explained why Netanyahu is an excellent Prime Minister. Once they did not get the job they wanted, Bennett and Smotrich have attacked Netanyahu every day from the stands. Writing books is easy, implementing is a lot harder. Instead of tweeting, Bennett and Smotrich are invited to join the government and implement everything they preach." (Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)
