Eitan Davidi, head of Moshav Margaliot, sharply criticized the Israeli government in a Sunday interview with 103FM, warning of negative migration and economic collapse in Kiryat Shmona and the surrounding communities.
Davidi said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other ministers’ arrival at the cabinet meeting being held in northern Israel, more than two years after the war began, amounts to “a certificate of poverty” for the government.
According to him, the move is merely performative and lacks any real significance.
“How indifferent and blind can the government be to what is happening around it?” he asked during the interview, adding that the cabinet meeting was finally held after a significant delay and only following protests by Kiryat Shmona residents.
Davidi described the bleak reality in Kiryat Shmona, which he said serves as the central anchor of the eastern Galilee. “If you come to Kiryat Shmona, and I am there every day, you simply see a deserted city. The shops are closed, the factories that were supposed to reopen have shut their gates,” he said.
He added that he had met moving contractors who told him they are “busy with people who want to leave the city.”
Davidi stressed that the region cannot rely solely on tourism or settle for being “pet moshav residents” for people from central Israel.
Dairy farmers, supporters removed from site of cabinet meeting
Dairy farmers and their supporters protesting Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's milk reform near the cabinet meeting in Kiryat Shmona on Sunday were forcibly removed from the area by Israel Police.
The protesters were pushed hundreds of meters away from the meeting site so that the ministers would not be able to see them.