Habayit Hayehudi accuses Yedioth Ahronoth writer of bigotry

Yedioth Ahronoth columnist Nahum Barnea came under heavy fire over the weekend following his depiction of Habayit Hayehudi as an extremist party that was misleading voters.

"Nahum Barnea, you should be ashamed of yourself," Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday night, lambasting Barnea's latest column. He then reassured his supporters that "you are going to hear a lot of name calling against us [Habayit Hayehudi] in the run-up to the elections."

"Let us make ourselves clear once and for all: To Mr. Barnea and other like-minded individuals -- your time is up -- you are no longer going to get a free pass on incitement. This shall end," Bennett said, before calling Barnea's comments "unfit for print."

"The Israel you know -- the Israel that is controlled by an ultra-leftist elite in the media, the judiciary and in the academia -- has sobered up; you can no longer spew incitement in the paper and expect total silence. We are no longer silent, we are no longer ashamed, and we have no inferiority complexes," Bennett wrote, adding that Barnea's effort "to silence, insult and besmirch most Israelis by using derogatory language is very tempting ... [but] Israelis have come to their senses, whereas you have fallen asleep on your keyboard. And now we have to deal with the consequences."

Barnea's analysis column regularly appears in Yedioth Ahronoth's weekend political supplement. On Friday, he used this platform to urge Israelis to take a closer look at Bennett and his party. "Bennett's excitement is real ... but when this boyish simplicity attracts tens of thousands of young voters, when it paves the way for the appointment of unenlightened nationalist-ultra-Orthodox ministers who serve as proxies for rabbis who are tainted with racism, xenophobia, and nationalist-religious zealotry (all the while calling all these traits 'Jewish values'), when it milks hundreds of millions of shekels from the state coffers to fund unworthy endeavors, the charm becomes deception. One day, we may discover that Bennett is the Pied Piper of Hamelin, a virtuoso who led the town's kids to the river and drowned them."