Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Tuesday in a radio interview on 103FM that forming a government with Mansour Abbas, head of the United Arab List, would be more serious than the October 7 attack, framing the comparison as one between failure and deliberate political action. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe October 7 massacre is a horrific and terrible failure, but it is a tactical failure,\u201d Smotrich said. He added that including an Abbas in the government would be \u201ca thousand times worse than the most terrible failure,\u201d describing it as an intentional decision. <\/p>\n
Smotrich did not withdraw the remarks during the interview, which referenced 1,200 people killed and 251 taken captive. \u201cDo you want to make a competition in disasters?\u201d he said. \u201cYou asked me as a politician what is more severe in my view. A politician who lied, betrayed his values, and carried out a targeted strike against democracy\u2013that is far more severe.\u201d <\/p>\n
Addressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Smotrich said he continues to assign responsibility for past developments. \u201cI have had criticism of Netanyahu for years, and I do not remove responsibility from him,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Smotrich also outlined his position on the conflict, saying it should conclude with Hamas no longer present in Gaza. He expressed support for expanding Israel\u2019s borders in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Judea and Samaria. <\/p>\n
Opposition figures responded with criticism. Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot accused Smotrich of using October 7 as a \u201ctool in the shameless campaign\u201d to diminish failures tied to the attack. \u201cThe biggest failure in our history is an indelible stain,\u201d Eisenkot said. <\/p>\n
Yair Golan said Smotrich\u2019s comments indicate that \u201ca massacre of Israelis is better than a government that doesn\u2019t include him.\u201d <\/p>\n
In a follow-up statement, Smotrich said his remarks were \u201cdistorted,\u201d arguing the issue was identifying the \u201cworse political act.\u201d He added that the massacre was \u201cone of the most terrible we have known since the Holocaust.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Tuesday in a radio interview on 103FM that forming a government with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-426190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}