The battle for the votes of the political right and the serving public is heating up: Yoaz Hendel, chairman of the Reservists and Economic Party, issued a statement this morning (Thursday) in which he addressed Ofer Winter directly. Hendel called on him to walk back his commitment to support a Netanyahu government with the charedi parties, and to join him in forming a "blocking bloc against non-Zionist governments".
Hendel opened his remarks with a reference to the three-year mark since the events of October 7, 2023: "Yesterday we marked three years since the worst disaster we have known since the founding of the state. The war we have been through since then was the hardest, and it changed all of us. It cannot be that after what we have been through, politics continues as if nothing happened."
In his statement, he attacked the existing political structure and warned against dependence on parties that are not Zionist: "They are forcing you to choose between two non-Zionist governments, either a government with the charedi parties that squeeze the government to encourage draft-dodging and harm the security of the state, or a government with the Arab parties that do not recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization. Governments that depend on non-Zionist parties are squeezed into making non-Zionist decisions. A very large part of the people understands that after what we have been through, the Zionist forces must cooperate and form a Zionist government."
