From the Liveblog of
Monday, February 26, 2024
Brother of hostage booted from Knesset meeting for wearing yellow star
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Chairman MK Yuli Edelstein of Likud kicks out the brother of one of the hostages from a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, after he refuses to take off a yellow star.
Danny Elgarat, whose brother Itzik is currently being held in Gaza, attends several committee meetings wearing the star — which the Nazis made Jews wear during the Holocaust — while petitioning lawmakers to free the hostages.
After Edelstein demands that he remove the star, Elgarat yells at the coalition lawmaker that he “won’t tell me what to wear,” prompting Edelstein to call on Knesset ushers to remove him from the room.
“As the son of Holocaust survivors, as someone who was imprisoned in a Soviet prison for being Jewish — I have zero tolerance for cheapening the Holocaust,” the Ynet news site quotes Edelstein as saying.
Speaking with the Knesset Channel following the incident, Elgarat declares that Edelstein “disgraces the Holocaust and disgraces the fact that he was a prisoner of Zion” — a reference to Edelstein’s time in a Soviet prison.
During a separate debate in the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, Elgarat declares that “you can define [what happened on October 7] as a holocaust.”
“Is there anything more important than saving a life? If there are Jews who think that the hostages are not the most important [thing], they are not Jews,” he says.
"הוא מבזה את השואה ומבזה את זה שהוא היה אסיר ציון" – כך אמר דני אלגרט על ח"כ יולי אדלשטיין, על רקע העימות ביניהם בעקבות הטלאי הצהוב אותו לובש דני. בתשובה לשאלה האם אדלשטיין התנצל אמר: "הוא מהזן של הפוליטיקאים הכי נחות"@YuliEdelstein @YuvalKarni @Segev_Yuval pic.twitter.com/u2Etn8nrGp
— ערוץ כנסת (@KnessetT) February 26, 2024
