Rabbi Baruch Gazahi, who was set to enter the Knesset thanks to the Expanded Norwegian Law that passed on Monday night, was forced to resign from the Shas list on Tuesday after it was revealed he said in a Torah class four years ago that women miscarry and get breast cancer due to immodesty.
“A woman who was used to revealing her upper parts usually is reincarnated as a cow, whose upper parts are exposed,” Gazahi said in the class. “That is why women have to be covered up there. This is one of the reasons women suffer from breast cancer, because everyone looks at them and it causes the evil eye. It is also one of the reasons why women, God forbid, have miscarriages. They post pictures of themselves on Facebook showing their exposed bellies.”
“There is no such thing as a handsome Arab,” Gazahi said in a separate class, and he called Queen Elizabeth II “an impure gentile.”
Shas leader Arye Deri said he spoke to Gazahi, who told him his words were part of a two-hour lecture and were taken out of context. Deri said he told Gazahi his words were unacceptable and do not represent Shas.
Blue and White scored a political victory Monday night when it succeeded in passing the Expanded Norwegian Law into law in the Knesset plenum by a vote of 63-23. Party officials were angry that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not participate in the vote.
The law will enable five ministers or deputy ministers in Blue and White, three in Shas and two in other coalition parties to quit the Knesset and be replaced by the next candidates on their party’s list. The ministers and deputies could return to the Knesset if they quit their posts. Blue and White desperately wanted to pass the bill because 12 of its 15 MKs are ministers, and the party has not had enough MKs to do parliamentary work in the Knesset.
None of the ministers or deputies quit on Tuesday, but they are expected to start resigning on Wednesday.
New MKs in factions that have split would have 24 hours to decide which one to join after a minister quits. The bill could allow candidates of Yesh Atid and Telem, which are in the opposition, to instead join Blue and White in the coalition.
The next names on the united Blue and White list are former Yesh Atid MK Yorai Lahav-Hertzano, attorney Michal Cotler Wunsh, Einav Kabala, moderate religious-Zionist activist Tehila Friedman and Hilay Shay Vazan.
Wunsh received her law degree from McGill University in Montreal. She is a research fellow at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism at IDC Herzliya and is a member of the legal team advising the Goldin family’s efforts to bring about the return of deceased soldier Hadar Goldin and his comrade Oron Shaul.
Kabala is a lawyer from Ashkelon who served as Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn’s chief of staff when he headed the Histradrut labor federation.
Friedman worked under then-minister Natan Sharansky at the Diaspora Affairs Ministry and has served as the Israeli representative of Jewish Federations in New Jersey. She is a former chairwoman of Ne’emanei Torah Va’avoda, a moderate religious-Zionist organization.
Friedman said her first bill would be aimed at helping those who are prohibited from marrying in Israel for religious reasons.
“Whatever I do, the feminist perspective is part of it,” she said. “Obviously it will be a major issue I deal with. Most of the issues of religion and state today have to do with women.”
By contrast, Shay Vazan is a men’s rights advocate who wants to end affirmative action for women. She is a former city councilwoman of Modi’in-Maccabim-Reut.
In Likud, former MKs Ariel Kallner and Osnat Mark are set to return to the Knesset. In United Torah Judaism, former MK Yitzhak Pindrus will return.
Three Shas deputy ministers were expected to quit in favor of the next names on the party’s list: Uriel Busso, French immigrant Rabbi Yossi Taieb and Gazahi, who is an Ethiopian immigrant. But after Gazahi’s resignation, it was unclear whether two or three Shas deputies would quit.
Debates on the bill stretched on for more than four hours on Monday as opposition MKs filibustered.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid said the bill proved that all the party cared about was more political patronage positions. He said Blue and White should be ashamed.
“The captains of the Titanic are playing pickup sticks an hour before the ship is set to hit the iceberg,” Yamina leader Naftali Bennett said. “Our duo of two prime ministers are dealing with this nonsense instead of ensuring that there could be more coronavirus testing.”
But UTJ MK Yakov Asher, chairman of the Knesset Law, Constitution and Justice Committee, which legislated the bill, said he was sure the bill would make the Knesset function better and bring in terrific new MKs who will serve the public well.