Having previously called Charedim a "parasitical population" in a radio interview last September, Yair Golan, new leader of the Labour-Meretz merger party The Democrats radically changed his position in an interview for Army Radio today (Monday).
When asked whether he'd be willing to sit with Charedi parties in the government, he responded: "I am a democrat in my soul, and Israel is a coalition-based democracy and therefore I try to rule out the minimum of the minimum of the minimum."
He said that "I will not sit with Netanyahu. Netanyahu in my view is destroying Israel, and I will not sit with radical Messianic nationalists. All the rest are entirely legitimate."
He clarified that "there is no logic and no point and it's also not correct publicly and I would say in human terms to rule out entire publics. I don't rule out the Arabs, I don't rule out Charedim."
