Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu engaged in a lengthy tit-for-tat on Monday during a special Knesset plenum session.
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The session was called by the opposition in response to the government's "socially insensitive budget proposal that would hurt the have-nots and raise taxes. "
During his speech, Bennett attacked the previous government headed by Netanyahu saying that he has "zero self-awareness" because the former premier had failed to pass a state budget for several years.
"My government is unshackled by the various interests that gripped your government, and we have already passed the budget through its first reading, the most socially conscious budget in years," Bennett said.
When Netanyahu got up to speak on behalf of the opposition, he said that "after three months in office as prime minister, Bennett has no clear mandate, and Israelis have said as much." Netanyahu said that "there has never been such a case in Israeli history where an incumbent prime minister was teetering on the electoral threshold in the polls, and there has never been a case where someone became prime minister by deceptively using his six Knesset seats."
Netanyahu went on to attack the prime minister for not properly assessing the threat posed by the Delta variant in the summer, saying that when he "handed over the keys" to Bennett there were virtually no cases in Israel.
"You sat idly by, all too complacent and arrogant, even as I prodded you to bring to Israel the vaccine doses that we had already paid for, but you did not do a thing," Netanyahu said regarding the surge in cases as the variant gripped Israel and the vaccine protection began to wane and booster shots were necessary.
Bennett later came back to the podium and said Netanyahu had called in a letter for a booster shot campaign to begin in August, but it started even earlier – at the end of July. Netanyahu responded by saying that he had written the letter in early July but Bennett's government took its time in heeding his warning even as cases spiked and even as he had repeatedly called to start the campaign earlier.
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