Channel 2 reporter denounces anti-intermarriage group

Channel 2’s Roni Daniel, broadly considered a hard-line military correspondent, comes out with an unusual statement in advance of Mahmoud and Morel’s mixed Muslim-Jewish wedding on Sunday: “Let them get married and don’t get in the way,” he writes on Mako’s website. “And you are welcome, too, to wish them mazal tov.”

Daniel castigates “surreal organizations” such as Lehava, which is specifically opposed to Jewish women marrying Muslim men and has called for a mass protest outside the wedding hall.

Both the bride and the groom are from the mixed neighborhood of Jaffa. The bride, Morel, converted to Islam in advance of the wedding.

Daniel writes that he has decided to attend the wedding, “not for the hummus or the fish or the meat,” but “for the principle, the notion that no one has the right to interfere with two people who want to get married, just because he’s an Arab and she’s a Jew.”

— Mitch Ginsburg