Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett appealed for more open support from what he described as Israel’s silent majority on Friday as he marked a year in office with his governing coalition tenuously controlling half the seats in parliament.

In a 27-page pamphlet circulated over social media, Bennett sought to play up his achievements and fend off his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Casting attacks on him as offset by the “silent Zionist majority”, Bennett urged his supporters: “Raise your voice. Spread our message that decent people with different views who love the country can sit together and work for its betterment.”

“About a year ago, the State of Israel reached one of the most difficult moments the country had ever known,” Bennett wrote, as quoted by Ynet.

“Chaos, endless rounds of elections, government paralysis, the cities of Lod and Acre ablaze in riots,” Bennett said referring to Last May’s riots in mixed Jewish-Arab cities.

“Israel was led by one man who enslaved the country in the service of his legal problems, while in the face of murderous enemies, the country displayed a terrible weakness,” the prime minister said in reference to his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We were just a few days away from a fifth election campaign that would have torn this country apart, and then I made the hardest and most important decision of my life: To form a government that will save Israel from this exact chaos and will restore it to proper function, and to join in with people with different opinions of my own in order to save the country,” Bennett wrote.

Bennett ended Netanyahu’s record 12-year reign in June 2021 at the head of a rare cross-partisan alliance.

Source: Israeli media