Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich dismissed nationwide protests as a failure, urging Prime Minister Netanyahu to ignore pressure and order the IDF to fully defeat Hamas in Gaza. Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionists) issued a video statement on Sunday in which he addressed the day of protests for the hostages in Gaza and said that it did not succeed in shutting down the country as the organizers had planned.
"Citizens of Israel, we are at the end of a day that began with bombastic declarations by left-wing organizations who wanted to organize a day of protests and stop the country. What happened in practice? Nothing. The State of Israel didn't stop for a minute," he stated.
Smotrich claimed that only a minority participated in the protests: "A few thousand out of ten million Israeli citizens blocked roads across the country." According to the minister, "The people of Israel express great solidarity with the hostages and their families, and are in no way willing to be a tool of the leftist protest which seeks to topple the right-wing government and cynically uses them."
In his remarks, he turned to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and asked him to lead an extensive military campaign: "It could be that lately you were a bit too spooked by the campaign against the war. You took the media and the feeling that the nation isn't with you too seriously. You too saw together with the entire people of Israel. The people of Israel are with you, the people are with us, behind us in our demand for victory until the end." (Read More)
