Deputy Education Minister Meir Porush steps up the tone of recent attacks in Israel against the feminist prayer group Women of the Wall, saying it should be “thrown to the dogs.”
In a plenum speech addressing a government decision to set aside an area near Jerusalem’s Western Wall for non-Orthodox prayer, Porush also lashes out at the Reform movement.
“The Reform are responsible for the terrible intermarriage that we’ve been witnessing in the United States,” he says.
Referring to the location of the new prayer area, near the Old City’s Dung Gate, he says the place of the Women of the Wall is in an “out-of-the-way corner. That’s where you belong. [They] should be thrown to the dogs.”
United Torah Judaism MK Meir Porush handcuffs himself to the microphone on the lectern in the Knesset plenum, during a speech about efforts to draft Haredim, on Tuesday, July 23, 2013. (photo credit: Flash90)
Yizhar Hess, director of Israel’s Masorti movement – which is similar to the Conservative movement in the US – says Porush’s comments are redolent of Jew-hatred.
“Meir Porush – the deputy education minister, no less – expressing himself like a typical anti-Semite,” he is quoted by the NRG news site as saying. “Only in Israel can a deputy minister give voice to invective against other Jews and remain in office.
“If it were anywhere else in the world, we, the State of Israel, would have demanded his dismissal. I call on the prime minister to fire Porush and expect that the education minister renounce these despicable statements,” he adds.
File: Meretz MKs Tamar Zandberg and Michal Rozin attend a candle lighting ceremony organized by Women of the Wall on the 3rd night of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, at the Western Wall, in Jerusalem’s Old City, December 18, 2014. (Danielle Shitrit/Flash90)
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