Left-wing coalition MK’s remarks calling settlers “subhuman” met with sharp rebuke by Prime Minister Bennett, who said insults border on “blood libel.”
By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News
A coalition MKs vituperative comments about settlers in Homesh, the site where yeshiva student Yehuda Dimentman was recently shot and killed by terrorists, sparked widespread backlash from both the opposition and his colleagues in the governing coalition – including Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
In an interview with the Knesset Channel on Thursday, Deputy Economy Minister and Meretz MK Yair Golan said that residents of the outpost “are not people, these are subhumans, they are despicable.”
Golan, who once served as the IDF’s deputy chief of staff, slammed settlers for refusing to evacuate from their homes in Homesh, saying they would not have been permitted to stay under his watch.
He slammed the settlers for opposing the forcible evacuation from their homes, and insinuated that they should not receive sympathy from the public because “those people who come to settle there [in Homesh] riot in the [Arab] village of Burka, smash tombstones, make a pogrom.”
The former military man doubled down on his remarks by suggesting that alleged vandalism by settlers was equivalent to the widespread rapes and mass murders that Jews suffered during pogroms in eastern Europe.
“We, the Jewish people who have suffered from pogroms throughout history, now enact pogroms against others,” Golan concluded.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the remarks were “shocking, insulting and border on blood libel.”
“Those who settle in Judea and Samaria are the pioneers of today,” Bennett said. “We have not taken a foreign land — we have reclaimed the land of our forefathers.”
“The term ‘subhuman’ in German means ‘untermensch…’ a notorious expression used by the Nazis to describe “inferior people” in Nazi ideology,” Religious Affairs Minister Matan Kahana said in response to Golan’s remarks.
“Yair,” he wrote, addressing the left-wing MK by his first name,, “you should be the last to speak like that.”
Gush Etzion Regional Council Head Shlomo Ne’eman said in a statement that Golan “has become hysterical” because of the “success of the communities in Judea and Samaria.”
Ne’eman said Golan “should remember the dark times when the terms coming out of his mouth were directed against the Jewish People. We will continue to succeed in working towards pioneering in the Land of Israel.”