Israel's democracy was "attacked and weakened from within" over the past few years by people who sit in the government today, opposition leader MK Yair Lapid said in a speech to the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations (COP) in Tel Aviv's ANU Museum on Wednesday.
"It is not a uniquely Israeli experience," Lapid said. "Across the world, democracies are fighting destructive populism, which promises easy victories and simple solutions to complicated problems. But Israel is not like the rest of the world. We are surrounded by enemies who just waited for a moment of weakness. They looked at us and said, 'If Israel is not as democratic, it is also not as strong,' and they attacked our homes and murdered our children."
"It happened once. We cannot let it happen ever again," Lapid said.
A day after Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in an interview on KAN radio that freeing 134 Israeli hostages held by Hamas was not the most important goal of the war, Lapid said in his speech that "the path to victory starts with our commitment to the hostages."
"It is part of what separates us from our enemy. Hamas doesn't care if its people are killed. But we will do almost anything to ensure that our children and parents come home," Lapid said.
According to Lapid, Israel's commitment to the lives of its citizens in captivity was a symbol of strength and a Jewish value, and he stressed the importance of staying loyal to this and other values during wartime.
"Too many people are saying now, 'in order to beat them, we need to be like them. For them to get the message, we need to speak their language, the language of the Middle East.' It sounds tough, it sounds strong, but it is the voice of fear. It is the voice of people who have lost faith in the path we have taken, who have lost faith in the power of Jewish morality and the strength of democratic values," Lapid said.
"If we start to speak their language, it will become our language. If we don't protect our moral strength, it will be a second victory for Hamas. If because of them, we don't abide by the rules we ourselves wrote, they will win again," he said.
"These days do charge a high price from us. We have to meet it."
The leader of the opposition stressed that this did not mean that Israel could not use force – but that the country must respect human dignity even when doing so.
"We will beat them on the battlefield, because a democracy has the right to use force to defend itself. We will also beat them by rebuilding our homes and our country – stronger, smarter, more united, more democratic and more Jewish.
"Democracy starts with human dignity. Judaism starts with the sanctity of life. Those two combine with one another in the understanding that each of us is a unique creation by God and must be protected. That concept kept us as one nation for thousands of years in the diaspora. That concept created a strong and smart country, built our network of international alliances, first and foremost with the United States. That concept will lead us to victory," he said.
"Those who attacked us in the name of distorted religious extremism, will encounter the full force of the only democracy in the Middle East," Lapid concluded.
Lapid's comments seemed an attempt to differentiate himself from Smotrich and others, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who at times have seemed more committed to the "complete defeat of Hamas" than to save the lives of the hostages.
Smotrich said in the aforementioned interview that destroying Hamas was the most important facet of the war – and that he believed this was the only way to ensure that the hostages will be released. But his curt answer of "no" to a question of whether freeing the hostages was the most important goal drew widespread criticism, including from Lapid, who on Tuesday evening called it a "moral disgrace." The opposition leader charged in a later interview that Netanyahu and Smotrich's concept of "total victory" was twisted – as there could be no victory without returning the hostages.