Culture Minister Miri Regev lashes out at opposition lawmakers amid reports Honduras’ president is reconsidering attending the torch lighting ceremony next week marking Israel’s 70th Independence Day.
“If the Honduran president decides not to arrive in light of the slander from members of the opposition — chief among them [Meretz] MK Tamar Zandberg — it is ugly and shows that the opposition has joined the BDS organizations against Israel,” she tells reporters.
Zandberg on Saturday called for Juan Orlando Hernandez’s invitation to the ceremony to be rescinded, calling Honduras a corrupt human rights violator and saying Hernandez’s presence would dishonor Israel.
The Ynet news site reported earlier today that a representative of Hernandez contacted the Foreign Ministry to say that the Honduran president was reconsidering participating in the ceremony due to the criticism directed at him and the atmosphere created around his arrival.
Other reports, however, said that Hernandez’s concern was not the criticism directed at him, but rather the local political controversy surrounding the ceremony.
Culture Minister Miri Regev at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl on April 9, 2018. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Discover Israel's most beloved poet
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From the Liveblog of
Monday, April 9, 2018
