Meanwhile, Likud and Blue and White continued fighting over the state budget on Sunday.
By GIL HOFFMANORLY LEVY-ABECASSIS and Amir Peretz at party headquarters on election night in Tel Aviv on March 2.(photo credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/FLASH90)
Labor Party chairman Amir Peretz sharply criticized his former political partner Orly Levy-Abecassis on Sunday at his party’s official memorial service for former prime minister and Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin.Peretz and Levy-Abecassis were running mates in two elections. When they ran together with Meretz in the third race, she declined to attend a Rabin memorial, telling her Meretz counterparts that Rabin was “theirs.”“The assassination of a prime minister is not a matter of Right and Left,” Peretz said. “The mourning and shock are not for them and not for me. Statements I heard that disturbed me are not fitting for a response. The shock and mourning for an assassinated prime minister belong to everyone, and no one can avoid soul searching.”Levy-Abecassis has responded to such criticism by saying that she was only referring to his diplomatic policies.“One can be revolted by his horrible assassination without adopting Rabin’s legacy and his diplomatic path,” she wrote on Twitter.Meanwhile, Likud and Blue and White continued fighting over the state budget on Sunday.During a briefing at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, where Blue and White leader Benny Gantz met with the first Israeli inoculated with the country’s vaccine candidate, Segev Harel, he said, “I would like to tell you in 22 seconds what the last words that Segev told me when he received the vaccine an hour ago. He told me: ‘Help us, I came here to tell you that you will help us financially. I changed jobs three times in the last few months before I got the vaccine. Get started with an economic plan.’“And I tell you, prime minister, we can not be satisfied with maintaining security, we can not be satisfied with worrying about health, we need to take care of the economy with the 2021 plan,” Gantz continued. “Every day that is lost puts an unjustified economic burden on the citizens of the State of Israel.I hope we find the way forward, and as we maintain security together, and as we fight the coronavirus together, we can also take care of the economy together. If we preserve all three things: security, the economy and health, we can also take care of preserving our all-too-precious society that is falling apart before our eyes.”
