Litzman: Some of my critics didn’t like seeing me wearing a shtreimel on national TV

Yaakov Litzman dismisses much of the criticism of his conduct as health minister during the pandemic in an interview with the Kan public broadcaster.

“Not a very small part of the public didn’t like that I wore a shtreimel in the press conferences,” Lizman says, referring to the massive fur hat he wore during one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s evening virus-related addresses to the nation.

Litzman blasted as anti-Semitic the Haaretz reporter who published a story claiming that he had ordered the premature opening of IKEA because the chain’s owner is close to the minister’s Gur Hasidic sect.

Litzman insists that he is happy to receive criticism, but that much of what he’s been called out for in the media has been out of line.

The health minister-turned housing minister stands by his assertion that Netanyahu and former Health Ministry director Moshe Bar Siman-Tov had overreacted in their response to the coronavirus, which Litzman himself contracted, possibly after participating in an illegal prayer service which he is accused of having attended.

ליצמן: “יש אנטישמים שראו אותי עם שטריימל, וזה מה שהפריע להם”https://t.co/OIqDTDtMF6 pic.twitter.com/a5x5Dgu7bf

— חרדים10 (@charedim10) April 30, 2020