From Yesh Atid MK accuses Likud’s Amsalem of racism over ‘I don’t understand your Hebrew’ remark
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. 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"
Yesh Atid MK Valdimir Beliak accuses Regional Cooperation Minister David Amsalem of racism, telling lawmakers in the plenum that the senior Likud politician had dismissed him by telling him, “I don’t understand your Hebrew.”
A native Russian speaker, Beliak was born in the Soviet Union and immigrated to Israel in his twenties.
“I represent the Mizrahi,” or Sephardic community, “much more than you do,” he says to Amsalem from the Knesset rostrum following the alleged incident. “I’m proud of my name and my mother tongue and my accent. I immigrated to Israel…without knowing a word of Hebrew. This racism is what, time after time, breaks Israeli society apart.”
“For 10 years, he’s been in the Knesset whining that they ‘discriminate’ against him because he’s Mizrahi. But when it comes to Russian-speaking immigrants — everything is permitted to him,” he adds in a subsequent tweet.
Amsalem has previously accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of racism and “humiliating” Sephardic party supporters after he did not receive the ministerial portfolios he had requested.
Yesh Atid MK Adi Ezuz also slams Amsalem, declaring that he “is a minister who is unworthy of being in his position for even a minute, and as a Mizrahi woman, I’m ashamed that he turns an entire community into a caricature.”
“What did I say to him? That I didn’t understand his Hebrew? World champions at making waves,” replies Amsalem.
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