Bitan insulted in market for comments to bereaved parents
Visiting the Ramla market with a mayoral candidate, the coalition chairman is set upon by an alleged ‘Likud activist’ who scolds the MK.
Likud MKs’ harsh remarks about bereaved parents during a meeting of the State Control Committee continued to stir up a storm a week later, with Coalition Chairman MK David Bitan having received insults from a passer-by who identified himself as a Likud activist during a visit to the Ramla market on Friday.
Bitan was touring the open-air market with the mayoral candidate Michael Vidal. “I’ve been a Likud man from the day I was born. You’re a disgrace to Likud! You’re a disgrace to the state,” the protestor was heard saying in the video.
“Go to the military cemetery—it’s not far from here—and ask for forgiveness. You’re a disgrace to the country. Go home. Shame on you.”
In the video, it seems that Bitan refrains from responding to the insults and is attempting to continue the tour. In a statement issued later, he commented, “The shouting and the filming were planned; I had been informed ahead of time that this man was coming. Those who mock the bereaved and the memory of the fallen are all the cynics who are trying to exploit the sacred Memorial Day for political purposes.”
He added, “I do not expect that you’ll see the support I received there, but don’t distort the picture. This is one person who timed and planned the video, and you are simply helping this disgusting show. This is no Likud activist. Likud activists actually kept the provocateur away from me, but why should the truth interfere with good directing?”
“You are a disgrace to the country,” one of them says to Bitan in the video of the event posted online. “Go to the military cemetery and ask for forgiveness.”Bitan said in response that “the shouts were planned in advance, taking advantage of Memorial Day for political purposes.”
The Knesset State Control Committee discussion last week on the state comptroller's recent report on the 2014 war in Gaza quickly dissolved into a shouting match between members of the prime minister's Likud party and bereaved family members, as well as between coalition and opposition MKs.
(Translated and edited by J. Herzog)
