Gafni to MK Merav Michaeli: "Your place is in Degel HaTorah"

When MK Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism went up to the plenary podium to congratulate MK Merav Michaeli from Labor, he didn't really know what he was going to speak about.

By custom, a veteran MK welcomes a new MK after his maiden speech, and Michaeli asked Gafni to congratulate her.

He agreed, although he had taken into account as he expressed later, that probably, "I'm going to get a speech from her now, that I would move in my chair like a pendulum, about things I could not agree with, But I planned that I will talk about the status of the Knesset."

But then he surprised, and very much so: "I heard her speech," he said, "and there were few things I disagree with it, few things. It could be due to other things, it may be she comes to that from ideology. Merav comes to that from a different ideology than my ideology, but things were said in such a way that if I would close my eyes, take down one part here and one part there, not more than that, I would say: "your place is in Degel Hatorah."

"I'll tell you to Rav Steinman, be careful," called Minister Silvan Shalom.

How did someone who knows MK Merav Michaeli define it? "One who loves Haredim and Arabs".

In the spirit of these days, when each Labor MK becomes an object courted by Hareidi MKs, it is natural that Gafni agreed to congratulate MK Michaeli. After all, who knows where the one who will influence chairman of the party, Sheli Yachimovich to please go into the Netanyahu coalition.

You will not believe, but among her supporters at the party's internal primaries there were many Hassidim, Shtefenest Hassidim - but not only.

At the offset of the enormous differences between the hareidi party and a secular party, after all, the values of the Labor Party are best suited to the hareidi parties, those discussed in great longing in the days of 'Mapai'. Shelly was almost the only one did not turn the hareidim into the victim of her election campaign, who did not entire not before voter's day and not after, who succeeded to respect the religious values and concentrate on the real problems of the state of Israel: poverty, social gaps.

My grandfather's name is Kastner

And so MK Michaeli said in her first speech in the Knesset: "On Wednesday morning July 3, 1944, a Zionist Jew in a suit stood at the office of Adolf Eichmann in Budapest. "Your nerves seem loose," Eichmann said to the man in front of him, "I'll send you for a little vacation in Auschwitz." The Zionist Jew in front of him was not confused. With a gesture of an equal between equals, he pulled out a box from his pocket and lit a cigarette.

That man was Dr. Israel Kastner. In this way, through negotiations with Eichmann and other Nazi officers, Kastner saved tens of thousands of Jews and Jewesses from extermination. He then made Aliyah and was nominated for the Knesset on Mapai. Rajé Kastner was my grandfather. "

Perhaps with the tradition from her grandpa, maybe because of her being in the Labor Party, she vehemently attacked the lofty talk about equality of burden: "The speeches and discussions in this house have focused over the last month on the title of "equality of burden". But those who demand the equality of burden, amazingly, are not the disadvantaged minorities. They are not all those suffering from exclusion from the centers of power, money and justice. The poor are not standing here and demanding from capital owners to share with them the burden and resources, Women are not standing here and demanding equality of wages. No. The ones with power, who control Israeli society, are standing here and demanding of the minority an equal burden. Up side down world.

"No one demands an equal burden of income and poor conditions of men and women contract workers, no one demands an equal burden of racism of Ethiopians, no one volunteers to participate in the burden of unemployment of female Arab academicians. Only the most privileged in society demand participation in the burden of service, that which brings them to positions of power and the key positions in the government and economy.

The thing is that no one even in Israeli society today admits his position of power. No one takes responsibility for what that advantage position gives him. What should happen in Israeli society today is that owners of large companies will voluntarily raise the low wages in their companies and they themselves should guard the job security of their employees. What should happen is that a government with an economy that thrives and grows so much should absorb back the male and female workers it abandoned to the mercy of contractors. What should happen is that rich inheritors should contribute a large part of their patrimony to public funds to allow residents of non-rehabilitated neighborhoods to acquire higher education. That rich authorities would share resources with poorer neighboring authorities, on their own initiative. It's not enough to talk about social justice and equality: to take responsibility for the privileged position of talking about equality means understanding and willingness to give up part of what you have so that there will be for those who have less."

"My grandfather saved tens of thousands of Jews and Jewesses in the Holocaust, and he was murdered here, in Israel, before he became a Knesset member, because he saved them through negotiations conducted with the Nazis who wanted to destroy them. He was murdered even though he saved Jews, because he did it in a way that seemed to some an incorrect way, not Jewish enough, not enough Zionist. I come from a lineage of founders, but a lineage of not quite mainstream, not consensus. Of doing things differently. "

Gafni, in his words of congratulations, identified with her on many points.

"I've been in the Knesset for many years. I look at the legislation I've made as a representative - I do not talk about me personally - on the status of women, in which Merav Michaeli excels, about the fact that a woman in Israel is worth less than a man, period. A woman and a man working in a job with the same skills, with the same capabilities, the man earns a higher salary than a woman", he identified with the part of discrimination against women, a most important issue to her.

"I'll probably miss the days of the old Mapai, I'm going to talk about your lineage, both of Dr. Israel Kastner, who was very controversial, but was a significant Mapai man, as you said yourself, he was about to be elected to the Knesset. Or Grandfather Nehemiah Michaeli, 94 years old, bless him, who came with a core group of Hashomer Hatzair to a seed in Beit Zera, planted, paved, carved, was a Mapam center man and conference secretary, an executive committee member of the Histadrut, the Agricultural Center, a public representative in the Labor court - an avowed socialist .

"What is socialism today? The war of the Labor Party here on this topic of social struggle - the housing, the inequality of burden of a big bank CEO and an individual or a family living in the "boxes neighborhood" - equal burden. Did you not say that? I sign it. I had an argument with a big bank CEO because I said that with his salary he could support an entire slum neighborhood - where you were a coordinator in Sha'aria - with a salary of CEO of Bank in Israel. A country that should have been a welfare state and a socialist state. I sign on it one hundred percent.

"Now what, we are sitting here, and instead of talking about real issues - we had a very difficult term - we failed in the issue of housing, we succeeded in designing the economy, with around us is a storm - we were able to have a stable economy with growth, while we totally failed in the social issue.

"What should one do after such an election campaign, what should one negotiate on – one who wants to join the coalition? And I pray to Hashem that you join the coalition. Because you need someone to talk about the real equality of burden, not all day yapping with other things, when we get to the day-to –day life, when the government is formed and the first thing it would have to do is hit the budget. Some of us know who will suffer first, and what happened until now, will be a parable to what would be next.

"Instead, we need people who are sensitive to the poor, really sensitive to the middle class, not the upper middle class, there's no need to worry about the middle class. Do we raise the corporate tax? Are we not allowing the cut in budget to damage as much as it might cause? I know the plans of the Treasury, and the question is, who will sit in this coalition.

"So all day long we're discussing. They met in the morning and meet in the evening, met yesterday and will meet tomorrow and talk about something that would never come. That's what they speak about it all the time, on equality of burden.

"If I had a sense of humor, I would say that we don't have a woman who deteriorated to the Knesset, but I have no sense of humor. I don't have a sense of humor about it. We were looking for a woman who would want to go to the Knesset, she doesn't want. What should do I do? Not important. But this is another law. It's not the discussion of the congratulations to Merav Michaeli ".

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!