Israel Romania
Netanyahu and Ceaușescu‏. (photo credit:GERARD FOUET / AFP,REUTERS)

 

In a speech critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday Opposition leader Isaac Herzog compared his ruling style to that of the infamous Communist head of state of Romania Nicolae Ceaușescu.\Ceaușescu’s harsh and repressive regime ruled Romania between 1967 and 1989.

“The era of Ceaușescu has ended in Israeli politics. We cannot surrender to a culture of bending, distorting, and circumventing laws. When the prime minister and his ministers every morning wage war on culture, the legal system, the press, and freedom of expression, the Israeli citizen thinks – if the prime minister can distort the law than so can I,” Herzog said at a conference of the Israel Bar Association.

“I expect to hear the community of lawyers in a loud and forceful voice come out against the harm that is being done to the rule of law, and the ‘bulldozers,’ and the silencing of the judges and public servants which are symptoms of the serious disease that our society and state are suffering from.” he said.

Herzog’s reference to bulldozers may have been in reference to Bayit Yehudi MK Moti Yogev’s comment in July when he said that the High Court should be bulldozed following its ruling that a West Bank settler building should be demolished.

At the time Netanyahu rejected the MK’s statements.

As reported by The Jerusalem Post