
Yamina’s Kahana says Silman could still return after defection
Religious Affairs Minister Matan Kahana said Saturday he believed fellow party member Idit Silman could still return to the coalition after her surprise defection last week deprived the government of its parliamentary majority.
“With God’s help, Idit could still return,” Kahana told Channel 12 news.
“You know, the world of politics is pretty crazy… Nothing has happened that truly justifies her departure… I think that once the government returns [from the Knesset recess] and starts getting things done on the basis of its founding principles, Idit will see that we are doing good things, protecting right-wing values, without provoking each other,” he said.
Still, he added, the coalition “is certainly not in good shape; it’s not a minor hiccup.”
Silman’s Wednesday announcement, which she said was due to the “harming” of Jewish identity in Israel, means that the coalition no longer has a majority.
Yamina’s Religious Affairs Minister Matan Kahana says he is “praying for the continued existence of this important government and doing my best to ensure this happens.”

Idit Silman, then-head of the Arrangements Committee, leads a Committee meeting at the Knesset, on November 8, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
In a Facebook post, Kahana says the act of forming the government was “courageous,” with ideologically divergent parties coming together for the good of the country.
“We all knew we could not fulfill our deepest ideological wishes” within it, he notes, but moved ahead with it “in order to save Israel from the place it was careening toward.”
He assails the Benjamin Netanyahu-led opposition for “disseminating lies and fake news” and for doing “anything to intensify polarization and deepen the divide within the people.”
But he also warns left-wing members of the coalition to avoid scoring political points with their base at the expense of the right, and says the government must keep its commitments to its right flank, including settlement construction in the West Bank.
“We need to get back to the basic understandings with which we set out,” he says.