Israel’s outgoing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has relied upon sophistry, bluster, fearmongering and the big lie, the magic may have worn out on his increasing desperate act. Today’s address at the opening session of the Knesset seems to have escalated the resolve to quickly remove him from public office and, possibly, charge of collaborating with Hamas prior to the Oct. 7 massacre.

The man selected by the voters and by the Israeli president to replace Netanyahu, Gadi Eisenkot, announced an escalation of his effort to put in place a “national emergency government.” In response to Netanyahu’s performance in his race-baiting address to the Knesset, Eisenkot posted: “I sat and listened to the delusional, divisive, hate-filled and shameful speech of the outgoing prime minister, in which he exploited a state occasion at the swearing-in of the 26th Knesset. I became even more convinced that he is unfit to remain in office for even one minute more.” He repeated his pledge to establish a “national emergency government,” saying Netanyahu’s “rule is dividing Israel and endangering its security.”

Eisenkot’s Yashar party subsequently announced that it had cancelled a planned meeting with Likud representatives, citing Netanyahu’s speech and what it described as his contempt for the Knesset swearing-in ceremony.

Since Saturday, when Israeli President Isaac Herzog told Netanyahu that it was Eisenkot who is to form the next Israeli government, Netanyahu’s disassociation has been on full public display, as he presents himself as if he is the one who was chosen. In today’s harangue, he demanded that there be a “unity government"—that is, one including himself—lest Iran and Israel’s Arab-party lawmakers destroy Israel. He accused the Arab-led Joint List and Ra’am of agreeing on “that the Jewish state must be destroyed.” Further: “Iran is working to revive the nuclear threat. The only way to permanently eliminate this existential threat is to overthrow the ayatollahs’ regime. In the face of these threats, we must do one thing in this house: put aside every other consideration and establish a national unity government.”

Then, without blinking, he attacked Eisenkot and his allies for trying to form a national unity government, but with the support of Arab lawmakers, whom he branded as “supporters of terrorism who hate Israel.” He posed: “Are you prepared to depend on people whose goal is the destruction of the Jewish state?” He accused both the Joint List and Ra’am of scheming to establish a new state “here on the ruins of the Jewish state.”

His reckless accusations of using terror to bring down Israel provoked United Arab List leader Mansour Abbas to address Netanyahu’s own collaboration with Hamas. (It has been known by anyone who cared to look that Netanyahu chose Hamas over the PLO, including for flows of finances, preferring the more radical over the more moderate opposition to his own radical positions.) On Israel’s Channel 12 today, Abbas related that Netanyahu once told him that he and Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ former leader in Gaza, “understand each other.” He said that Netanyahu was referring to a message of collaboration that he had received from Sinwar in 2018

Abbas said: “I was stunned. He said to me, ‘Didn’t you see what he [Sinwar] sent me?’ Until then, I didn’t know there was a letter from Yahya Sinwar... Every time I thought about a State Commission of Inquiry [to examine the Oct 7th massacre], I said to myself, ‘I must stand before the commission and tell them these things.”

Abbas went on to reject Netanyahu’s wild allegations and explained: “We do not want to establish an Islamist state or an Arab state or anything else here. The State of Israel was established, and we defined ourselves as citizens of the State of Israel. We support peace and an end to the conflict based on a two-state solution... What is dangerous about what Netanyahu said is this blood libel—the accusation that we support terrorism, that we want to undermine the existence of the State of Israel and endanger its security. We condemn and reject terror, and we are also victims of terror.