Controversy was spurred by the annual memorial for Rehavam Ze’evi, an Israeli cabinet minister assassinated by Palestinian terrorists in 2001.
By World Israel News Staff
Former MK Aryeh Eldad, a right-wing politician, who served in Israel’s parliament from 2003 to 2013, is charging that the “true roots of fascism” are on the Israeli Left.
He says those roots were exposed by the Left’s opposition to the policies of the late Israeli Cabinet Minister and IDF General Rehavam Ze’evi, who was being remembered with a special plenary session in the Knesset on Tuesday, marking the 18th anniversary of his assassination by Palestinian terrorists in Jerusalem.
In an interview on Israel’s 103fm radio, Eldad reacted to the call by leading left-wing MK Tamar Zandberg to boycott the Ze’evi memorial session.
The controversy surrounding the slain cabinet minister has grown since the killing, due to accusations of sexual harassment, which had been previously rumored, but emerged publicly after his death, in particular on a Channel 12 TV investigative program.
However, Eldad says the “extremist left” objected to memorializing the former minister even before the harassment allegations came to the fore.
In Tuesday’s radio interview, he also accused the left of “purposely” distorting Ze’evi’s legacy.
Zandberg says that Ze’evi was a racist because of his “transfer” platform.
However, Eldad says that Ze’evi spoke of Palestinian “transfer with consent” and envisaged different scenarios of population transfer due to war, “encouragement of emigration,” or an agreement between states.
Ze’evi did not envision “trucks across the Jordan River” transporting Palestinians against their will, Eldad told 103fm.
On the other hand, he insisted, the left is “proposing transfer by force of Jews” from Judea and Samaria.
Eldad said that Ze’evi’s true legacy is of a “love of the Land of Israel” alongside an “uncompromising war on terror.”