In response to an interview Monday in which an advertising director for Kulanu’s election campaign, Udi Pridan, called Binyamin Netanyahu “Satan,” Likud said Tuesday that “Pridan’s hate-filled statements are a direct continuation of the words uttered in recent weeks by Yair Garbuz, Alona Kimhi and Anat Waxman, against the Right’s voters.

“These leftists cannot fathom the possibility that the fact that about a million people voted Likud is due to a sober perception of security, diplomacy and social matters. Likud voters appreciate the huge surge in development of the Galilee and Negev – a flourishing that the Left denies – including Udi Pridan, who says of himself that he “never left and is not leaving the state of Tel Aviv.”

“This is hypocrisy,” a party communique said. “When controversial statements are made by the Right, that is incitement. When they are said by leftists – that is freedom of expression.”

“In my mind, Bibi is the devil, an evil man, dishonest, a troublemaker, and a schismatic,” Pridan stated. He blamed the fact that Mizrahi supporters voted for Netanyahu on what he termed Mizrahim’s “inferiority complex,” in charged comments not likely to go down well with many of the people he insists are potential Kulanu voters.

Pridan is the latest in a slew of leftists who have pulled all stops in recent remarks about Netanyahu and Likud, in what appears to be a collective post-traumatic reaction to the election results. 

Anat Waxman, a successful stage and television actress, insulted many fellow Israelis with her derisive description of Likud voters on Channel 2 last week. “You can’t talk to them,” she said, and mimicked the way Netanyahu supporters supposedly speak. “These are laborers,” she added. “These are two different nations.”

Writer Alona Kimhi called right-wing voters “neanderthals” and told them to “drink cyanide” after the election results were known. Artist Yair Garbuz ranted about the “amulet-kissers” who have taken over the country, in a pre-election speech that brought many Israelis to vote Likud out of spite for Garbuz.