Netanyahu's 'insane, corrupt' government has hurt Israel's military preparedness: Tom Friedman

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman on Sunday pointed the finger at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for stacking his government with right-wing ideologues that he said were harming the country's military preparedness.

During an appearance on CNN, Friedman argued that Netanyahu's polarizing moves to undermine the independence of Israel's judiciary have distracted the government from focusing on preparedness for an attack like the one Hamas militants executed this weekend.

"If I got to write indictment number one, it would go to Israel's Justice Minister Yariv Levin," he said. "He is the man who drove this insane, corrupt, dishonest effort to basically take over the power of the Supreme Court under the name of judiciary review and, when he did, with Netanyahu's help, he fractured Israel. He fractured Israeli society. He fractured the Israeli ministry, the military. He fractured the Israeli Air Force. Last week I quoted an Israeli former defense department official as saying, our preparation has been harmed by this whole fracture of our society."

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Friedman then said that, in order to maintain international solidarity in the coming months, Netanyahu would have to completely reform his cabinet.

"Netanyahu will have to break up this crazy, insane cabinet he has assembled," he said. "Netanyahu has to stop playing politics and start understanding he's a war of survival and he needs to clean up his act big time and build a cabinet of serious people, moderate people."

Watch the video below or at this link.

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