A few weeks after the current Knesset was sworn in in March 2015, Meretz Party members recited at the plenum a selection of testimonies by soldiers, collected by the group Breaking the Silence, which was documenting testimonies from soldiers on Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) conduct in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In these testimonies, the soldiers described several wrongdoings committed against the Palestinian population in Gaza during the 2014 Operation Protective Edge. The atmosphere heated up quickly. A group of Knesset members from the right, headed by Oren Hazan of Likud and Sharon Gal of Yisrael Beitenu, lashed out with a fury, using incendiary language against their fellow Knesset members from Meretz.

Gal, a journalist, was recruited by Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman right before the election, and deemed his party’s rising new star. During that particular session, however, Gal disparaged the left relentlessly, as if he was possessed. He called the Meretz Knesset members “collaborators” and chastised them with comments like, “You’re criminals and should be ashamed of yourselves!” After three calls to order, he was removed from the chamber. He was still fuming.

In his brief political career, which ended with his resignation from the Knesset after about half a year, Gal was responsible in no small way for nudging the discourse between right and left to new extremes when that discourse was already on a collision course.

Gal provided his “statement of intent,” indicating what lies ahead in his Knesset career, when he used the first day of the session to submit a law calling for a death sentence for terrorists. Until his resignation from the Knesset in September 2015, Gal lashed out at the left whenever he had a chance — in Knesset committees, social networks and news shows. Sharp and eloquent, he had no reservations about saying exactly what he felt. Using that, he fostered his own image as a celebrity among the right, including the far right.