Former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett hits Bibi from 'right' in interview with ALL ISRAEL NEWS, blasts Netanyahu for giving Hamas ‘suitcases of cash’ from Qatar

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL – Last Thursday night on my weekly prime time TV show in the U.S., former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced that he is officially running to replace Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu as Israel’s next prime minister.

On Sunday night, Bennett then made a huge splash by holding a primetime news conference in Hebrew.

The right-wing leader surprised many by announcing that he is creating a new political alliance with the centrist former Prime Minister Yair Lapid.

By forming a new political party with Lapid called “B’yachad” – Hebrew for “Together” – Bennett is trying to shore up the support of every centrist, center-left voter, and every far left Israeli voter.

Bennett’s message: When you go to the polls in October, if you truly want anyone other than Bibi to lead the country, I’m your best and only viable choice.

Simultaneously, Bennett began blasting Bibi from the right, accusing him of allowing extremely dangerous threats to grow on Israel’s northern and southern borders.

“The Israeli public wants to open a new page – there were so many mistakes that Netanyahu made “that led to this war” on October 7th, Bennett told me.

Like what? I asked.

“Like, accepting Hezbollah and Hamas on our borders.”

You can read Part One of our exclusive interview with Bennett here.

Part Two will air on THE ROSENBERG REPORT at 9 p.m. EDT tonight on TBN, the most-watched Christian television network in the United States.

NETANYAHU LET 'MONSTERS' GROW ON ISRAEL’S BORDERS, BENNETT SAYS

“You can’t build peace” by letting “monsters” get stronger, he says.

“You can’t have a tree of peace grow on soil of terror.”

“In Gaza, we have to defeat Hamas. And it's doable.”

“This is going to be my problem in a few months, and we’re going to have to use a mix of tools. But we can no longer let these monsters grow and grow on our borders.”

NETANYAHU ALLOWED QATAR TO SEND MORE THAN $1.1 BILLION IN CASH TO HAMAS IN GAZA

Bennett is especially critical of Netanyahu’s past willingness to allow Qatar – the tiny Gulf country whose Al Jazeera satellite network is the biggest source of anti-American, anti-Israel propaganda in the region – to send “suitcases full of cash” through Israel, into Gaza, into the hands of the terrorists running Hamas.

Between 2012 and 2018, Qatar transferred more than $1.1 billion in cash through Israel to Hamas leaders in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s goal was to ensure that government employees and their families in Gaza received monthly payments to help them stay afloat.

But Bennett says the policy was a disaster and led directly to strengthening Hamas and the horrific invasion on Oct. 7, 2023, in which Hamas terrorists butchered 1,200 Israelis and took 251 Israelis, Americans, and others hostage.

Back in October 2019, Bennett – then a member of Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet but not yet defense minister – publicly criticized the cash transfers from Qatar.

“You might buy short-term quiet, but you accustom the other side to applying violence as a way of advancing its interests,” Bennett said during a radio interview.

“The way it was done, it’s protection money,” Bennett added during that interview. “I called it out as early as July for what it is.”

Netanyahu defended his policy at the time, saying, “I’m doing what I can, in coordination with the security establishment, to return quiet to the southern communities, but also to prevent a humanitarian crisis.”

BENNETT SAYS HE STOPPED QATAR FROM SENDING CASH TO HAMAS

Bennett says he changed the policy when Netanyahu appointed him as defense minister in November 2019.

“I inherited a system where every month they brought in $30 million in cash in suitcases.”

“I stopped that,” he told me. “I said, ‘No more suitcases of cash going to Hamas.’”

“I said, ‘I am willing that the Gaza population – for families – will get $100 prepaid cards,’” but he refused to put so much cash in the hands of terrorists.

“We converted that money into prepaid cards, which we could monitor, and which went to buying food. I'm okay with that.”

“But I stopped the cash transfers to Hamas.”

Up until then, Bennett said, the cash “was used for building weapons, for building tunnels. Just an unbelievable policy.”

Bennett also said that when he became prime minister, he did not allow $30 million a month in Qatari cash to go to Hamas as Netanyahu had.

ISRAELIS WANT CHANGE, BENNETT SAYS, VOWS TO CREATE STRONGER MILITARY, STRONGER ECONOMY & HIGH-TECH SECTOR

While Bennett gives Netanyahu credit for finally attacking the Iranian nuclear and missile threat – and the regime – he argues that Netanyahu should never have allowed Iran’s most dangerous terror proxies to become so strong on Israel’s borders.

What’s more, he vows that he will be far tougher and far more vigilant, the way a true right-wing leader should be.

“The days of writing off our enemies as weak, those days are over,” Bennett vowed.

“I take every threat seriously,” he said, adding that the threats posed by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran have been diminished but not destroyed.

“We’ve got Hezbollah, who is rearming and producing missiles,” he noted. “We’ve got Iran, who obviously is going to rebuild.”

“I don’t want to say by any way that the threats are over.”

“People are fed up” with internal weakness and internal fighting, Bennett told me.

“They want a better Israel, better education, a stronger economy, strong high-tech, stop all the internal fighting and recruit the haredim and bring them into the military, the ultra-religious who are avoiding military service.”