Arab MK quotes Netanyahu’s grandfather at him

Knesset member Ahmad Tibi of the Joint (Arab) List surprised attendees of a Knesset discussion on poverty Wednesday by beginning his remarks with an excerpt from a work written by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s late grandfather, Rabbi Nathan Mileikowsky.

In a clip of the speech posted to his Facebook page, Tibi began: “Mr. Prime Minister, I would like to open with an outlook on this issue of poverty, and to bring in a quote.”

Tibi proceeded to read the excerpt, without revealing its source: “Everyone can work and earn [money]. But one must be careful that property not accumulate in the hands of one person. If someone is forced to take a loan from the wealthy and then cannot pay it back, he loses his land. And thus, with time, the land is concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, who become wealthier, just as the poor become poorer. Therefore, we should prevent the possibility of absolute wealth or absolute poverty.”

“Do you recognize the quote, Mr. Prime Minister?” Tibi asked upon finishing.

“[Zeev] Jabotinsky,” Netanyahu said, referring to the Zionist thinker and founder of the Revisionist movement.

Tibi corrected the prime minister: “Not at all, it is your grandfather, Nathan Mileikowsky Netanyahu…from the book ‘Nation and State,’ pages 76-77.”

Netanyahu, chuckling, gave Tibi a thumbs up.

The lighthearted exchange came in contrast to Tibi’s often bitter criticism and attacks on Netanyahu and Israeli policies in general. A trained physician, Tibi has been a member of Knesset since 1999 as a representative of Arab parties, prior to which he was an adviser to then-Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat.

Mileikowsky, Netanyahu’s grandfather, was born in 1879 in the Russian Empire, became a Zionist activist in his teens and gave traveling lectures promoting a return to the Land of Israel and the establishment of a Jewish state. A pen name Mileikowsky used on some of his articles was “Netanyahu,” later adopted as a surname by his sons.

Mileikowsky and his family came to British Mandatory Palestine in 1920. Throughout his life, he continued to advocate for Zionism, publishing a collection of his speeches in the 1928 book “Nation and State,” which Tibi quoted on Wednesday.

Continuing his speech on poverty in Israel, Tibi referred to Mileikowsky’s passage about inequality. “That last sentence is one that has been heard recently at every protest, every incident of resistance to the absolute wealth and absolute poverty [in Israel],” Tibi said.