Right-wingers in Israeli election cracked to three main parties. New Hope, led by Gideon Sa’ar, is the strongest after the old Likud and claims power to beat the 12-year PM.
When it came to diplomacy, Sa’ar, 54, was cerebral and polished, but when it came to the need to get rid of the prime minister he once respected, he was both sad and determined. It’s true that in the past, he felt Netanyahu was good for the country and backed him. He, nevertheless, emphasizes that if Netanyahu today were the same Netanyahu ten or eight years ago, he’d still back him. But today, he behaves without restraint in a way that harms the state’s interests.
Gideon Sa’ar, Netanyahu’s key challenger in the coming elections, claims that the Prime Minister “systematically” defames everyone who dares to challenge him, whether within or without the ruling Likud party.
Netanyahu and his allies, according to Sa’ar, have attempted to hurt him and his family by spreading baseless, malicious rumors.
On the 2009 Knesset slate, Sa’ar was ranked second behind Netanyahu, and he served as minister of education and interior before nominating for the Likud leadership in 2019, an attempt doomed to failure.
“I’m strong enough. It doesn’t get to me at all. I regard replacing Netanyahu today as a national priority. And attacks of this kind don’t affect me,” stressed sa’ar referring to the assault by his rival in Likud leadership and the march 23 election.
Sa’ar, who left Likud in early December, resigned his Knesset seat, and formed a new party named “New Hope” to challenge Netanyahu in the elections, also chastised the mainstream Hebrew media for being threatened and exploited by Netanyahu. He said that Netanyahu has achieved an unprecedented “critical mass” of support and media clout.
“There are media outlets who are completely behind him and are smearing everyone who opposes him. And he has people working for him in every studio and every mass media outlet… Simultaneously, he rails against the media, threatens it, delegitimizes it, and puts it on the defensive, forcing it to demonstrate that it is treating him equally. What’s happened here is truly incredible.”
Sa’ar said that he is Netanyahu’s only rival who is both capable and committed to defeating him, while another right-wing party leader and outspoken critic of the prime minister, Naftali Bennett, berates Netanyahu but, perplexingly, talks about collaborating with him.
He insisted that it is important to depose Netanyahu, who has been in office for a total of 15 years, including the last 12. He belives in this bec Because Netanyahu puts his personal well-being above the good of the country. A man in the midst of such a financial crisis who is coldly able to rob the state budget because it suits his individual ambitions, and to purposefully bring Israel to a fourth election in less than two years is a danger to the people.
Netanyahu’s attacks on Israel’s law enforcement agencies, he said, are very serious. He also asserted that the contrast between him and Netanyahu is that he wants to repair the mechanism, while Netanyahu wants to dismantle it.
In a 2018 interview, shortly before Israel was thrown into this debilitating and indecisive sequence of elections, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid shared a similar sentiment against Netanyahu. Sa’ar, like Lapid, speaks with the disillusionment of someone who worked closely with Netanyahu, but Sa’ar’s relationship lasted much longer and was based on a mutual philosophy. Sa’ar is a steadfast right-winger who believes that Likud’s ideological cause, as well as Israel’s well-being, is being jeopardized by the country’s corrupt-stricken leader.
