Hadash MK Ofer Cassif faces a complaint to the Knesset Ethics Committee after his inaugural Knesset speech on Tuesday, in which he claimed the late Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook had ideas that were rooted in “shameful racial theories.” The complaint was submitted by MK Itamar Ben-Gvir from Otzma Yehudit.
This is the first time an MK is being slammed with a complaint after his first speech in Knesset.
When speaking about the late Kook, Cassif said that he had placed “the Jewish collective as above all other nations,” and claimed that such a view must lead to a political program which destroys “human dignity.”
Cassif called for a political ideology that “places man at the center,” not nationalism or religion, and he claimed he had found such an ideology in socialism.
He also said that in his view, the real conflict in Israel is not between Arabs and Jews but between “oppressors and those who are oppressed.”
Ben-Gvir called Cassif “ignorant” and claimed he should have “opened a book by Kook before opening his mouth.”
He complained that Cassif offended a great Jewish rabbi and would not have done so when speaking of a Christian clergyman or a Muslim religious scholar.
He added that he wanted to remove Cassif from the Knesset but the High Court of Justice ”protected him and other haters of Israel in Knesset.”