Knesset member: Jewish-Arab romance is a feminist issue

Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely and her crazy sidekicks hijack the Women’s Advancement Committee

When Meir Martin Kahane was elected to the Knesset some 27 years ago, he had the popularity of a leper. President Chaim Herzog, summoning party leaders for the ritual consultation before appointing a prime minister, pointedly refused to invite him. When he would rise to the podium, the plenum would empty. Channel 1, the sole TV channel at the time and then as now politically controlled by the governing coalition, refused to cover him – until it was forced to do so by the Supreme Court. MK Michael Eitan of the Likud made a long, painstaking comparison between one of Kahane’s bills and the Nuremberg Laws. When the elections of 1988 rolled by, Kahane was disqualified from running. Everyone thought it was over.

As if. Instead of one Kahane, we have several. And not just in the Knesset: Kahane used to say that “Inside every Israeli is a small Kahane,” and, well, it’s not all that small anymore. Yesterday, Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely held a hearing in the Women’s Advancement Committee on Jewish assimilation in Israel. How did this mythical beast (Hotovely claims there 100,000 “mixed families” of Jews and non-Jews in Israel; I doubt there are more than a thousand, unless she counts in immigrants from the Former Soviet Union) rear its ugly head specifically in the Women’s Advancement Committee? Easy: “One of the important goals of the Women’s Advancement Committee is [the advancement of, presumably – YG] Jewish identity. Unfortunately, the phenomenon of mixed marriages happens particularly on the female side, when Jewish women marry Muslims,” said Hotovely (Hebrew). So, in the name feminism, the Knesset now promotes Judaeo-Nazism.

Hotovely invited the leaders of the LHVH organization to the hearings – you remember them, the guys who provide the “no Arab workers” kosher certificates, and who are involved in inciting some of the anti-Arab riots of recent months. As can be seen from the Facebook page of their leader, Benzi Gufstein, and from the fact they took part in the Kahane memorial a few months back, this is a Kahanist front organization. Given that the whole “the Arabs are out to get our daughters” schtick was one of Kahane’s bestsellers, their presence is understandable.

Hotovely also summoned Dr. Zvi Zameret, the director of the Pedagogical Center of the Ministry of Education; the good doctor, considered to be the brains behind minister Gideon Sa’ar, informed (Hebrew) the committee that his office takes a front position in the battle to save the virtue of the Jewish girl from the black-haired boy laying in ambush, by “increasing Jewish identity” lessons and “family education” during Educator’s Classes – the latter being an Israeli institute, a couple of hours a week in which the main teacher of a class attempts to lecture them on the mores of society and the way of becoming a good citizen and Jew. So, if you wish to find the poisoned spring from which the youth of Israel draw their racism, you may look at the Ministry of Education, too.

The Likud’s founding father, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, wrote once an article considering assimilation to be a good thing – that is, Arab assimilation. He assumed Jews would the majority of the people in Palestine, and he knew the minority assimilates in the majority (Hebrew). It didn’t intimidate him; on the contrary, he objected to the Jewish barriers to assimilation. Not by accident, he was one the most determined fighters against the Jewish superstition, and not by accident did his son, Ari Jabotinsky, become one of the founders of the Israeli Association Against Religious Coercion.

So how come one of Jabotinsky’s ideological heirs now stands in the Knesset, and demands – in the name of feminism, no less – to find out which woman sleeps with whom, and by whose permission? The answer is simple: Hotovely is one of the Trojan horses of the “Jewish Leadership” faction in Likud, led by Moshe Feiglin. The Feiglinists, as they are called, are Kahanists hiding under another name. Their purpose is a hostile takeover of Likud – which still has some liberal remnants – and turning it into a “faithful” (Emuni) organization.

Another person appearing before the committee was Uri Sa’met, the representative of the Zohar Rabbis, an organization trying to put a human face on Orthodox Judaism. Sa’met was tormented by the difficult question of “how can a school teacher educate the pupils to respect the non-Jews, explain the fact they are part of society – and yet one may not marry them?” A difficult question indeed: How do you explain that someone is human, but not really.

Sa’met is a gentle soul, unwilling to look directly at the results of his own policy. He discriminates, but he weeps as he does. Hotovely and her herd of Kahanists have no such qualms. Yesterday was a shameful day for the Knesset.