Ahead of elections, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid calls up Chabad-Lubavitch leader to issue serious threat to movement.

Journalist Nahum Barnea of Yediot Aharonot reported that Yesh Atid’s chairman, MK Yair Lapid, called one of the leaders of Chabad-Lubavitch in Israel to speak with him about the upcoming elections.

According to him, the integration between the more haredi-like Religious Zionists and the right-wing nationalists is something which the Chabad community sees as fitting. In 1996, they funded Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s campaign, which took, “Netanyahu is good for Jews” as its slogan.

The next step, Barnea said, is, “Ben Gvir is good for Jews.”

Itamar Ben-Gvir is the leader of the Otzma Yehudit party, which is currently running in a joint list with MK Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party.

According to Barnea, in a phone call earlier this week, Lapid told the Chabad leader he spoke to: “If you support Smotrich and Ben Gvir’s party, I will persecute you.”

“It will be the end of Hanukkah menorahs on every corner during Hanukkah, and Chabad houses around the entire world. It will be the end of your story on loving every Jew.”

(Arutz 7).