24/07/2023
*Former Prime Minister and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid following today’s vote cancelling the reasonableness clause*
“It's a sad day. A day of destruction. A day of senseless hatred. I look at this coalition celebrating and ask, what are you celebrating? That you are dismantling our Jewish state? That people who have served together in the reserves for thirty years are cancelling their annual meeting because they know it will end badly?
This extreme government is hugging and posing to celebrate the moment they made it that we are no longer a brotherly people. Celebrating the moment when they managed to throw into the ash heap of history everything that connects us.
Today, we saw an unprecedented show of weakness by Netanyahu. There is no prime minister in Israel. Netanyahu has become a puppet on a string of messianic extremists.
I met a young doctor this week, she works in a children's emergency department, she has four children of her own. She spoke to me painfully about the fact that she is no longer sure that her future is here. Congratulations to the coalition - you defeated her.
In a democracy sometimes you lose and sometimes you win. We all get that. But what happened here today is not within the framework of democracy. It's something else. This is a complete violation of the rules of the game.
The rules are clear - or they were clear for seventy-five years. The government and the coalition are allowed to decide which direction the country is going, but they cannot cancel the nature of the country. It cannot decide that Israel is no longer a democracy, not with a majority of 64, nor with a majority of 80, nor with a majority of 119.
That is the meaning of the law that passed today. The abolition of checks and balances, the abolition of the separation of branches, the abolition of the gatekeepers, the abolition of the entire mechanism protecting Israeli democracy. This is not a victory for the coalition - this is the destruction of Israeli democracy.
We will not give up. We will not surrender. We will not let them turn Israel into a broken, undemocratic country, which is run according to hatred and extremism.
They will not decide when our struggle ends, we will. The extremists won’t unilaterally determine what the future of our children will look like. They are our children, and we will decide. They will not unilaterally determine what the State of Israel will look like, this is a decision we will make together - in the next government. In a government of the Israeli majority, which will leave out the extreme minority.
This government can win the battle, but not the war. Israel will not turn into Hungary or Poland. It won't.
Already tomorrow morning, we will petition the High Court against this legislation, against the unilateral cancellation of the democratic character of the State of Israel, and against the anti-democratic and detrimental way in which discussions in the Constitution Committee were conducted.
There has never been crooked, violent, strange and unprecedented procedure like the grotesque circus run by Rothman in the Constitution Committee. That's not how you hold a discussion on a changing a basic law that concerns our very system of our government. In fact, in a normal world, they would not allow a discussion about hot dogs in the health committee’s subcommittee on hot dogs.
I call on the heroes and heroines of the protest. Don't believe their fake cheers. Believe in yourselves. Believe in your clear, clear and strong voice. Believe that the future belongs to those who never give up.
I call on the reservists, fighters and pilots whose hearts were broken today. I was Prime Minister. I know your capabilities, your sacrifice, and your dedication to the State of Israel and its security.
Wait, let the High Court discuss the law and only then make the most difficult decision of all. Don't stop serving, don't harm the IDF's readiness so long as we don't know what the ruling will be.
We’re not giving up. This is what will determine the fate of our heartbroken country.
This is the biggest and most dangerous national crisis we have faced. It didn't happen because of our enemies, but because of an extreme government that doesn't care about the economy, not mortgages, not our relations with the world and not the rift among the people of Israel. There is no citizen who will not feel in his own pocket the economic damage from this day. There is no Israeli whose livelihood will not be harmed.
This crisis threatens to tear us apart because there is an extremist government here that wants to say it won, even if the price is that we all lose. But it did not win, because the fight is not over. It just started.”
