Racist and settler Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich published a post on social media on Friday, March 13, thanking the doctors at the Galilee Medical Center for saving his son’s life after he was injured in a recent Hezbollah rocket attack. The post includes photos of Smotrich with some of the hospital staff, including its director, Professor Massad Barhoum.
Prof. Massad Barhoum (left) and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (right) at the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya (Photo: Smotrich’s X page)
The post exposes him to accusations of hypocrisy from critics who recall that he has spoken out in favor of having separate maternity wards for Jewish mothers, so they don’t have to deliver babies in the same rooms as Arabs.
“Smotrich has been inciting against Arabs for years,” writes Hadash-Ta’al chair MK Ayman Odeh in an X post. |He built an entire career on our dime because all he has to offer is racism and supremacy and nothing else, Smotrich demanded time and again that his wife not sit next to an Arab woman while giving birth and that Arab doctors, such as my wife, not touch his babies,” Odeh continues.
“But these are the Arab doctors who saved his son. Maybe Smotrich the racist will take this Shabbat to learn what it means to be a human being — like the Arab doctors, who are part of the groups of people he incites against every day and who, despite his hatred, saved his son,” he adds.
Ten years ago, on April 2016, MK Smotrich took to Twitter Tuesday to support the separation of Arab and Jewish mothers in maternity wards in Israeli hospitals. The tweet followed a report on Israeli Radio saying that hospitals have been separating Arab and Jewish mothers in maternity wards when the mothers request it. After his tweet received negative replies,
Smotrich went a step further, writing: “It’s natural that my wife wouldn’t want to lie down in a bed] next to a woman who just gave birth to a baby who may want to murder her baby twenty years from now.” He then added that “Arabs are my enemies and that’s why I don’t enjoy being next to them.” Smotrich’s wife, Revital, later told journalists that she had “kicked an Arab obstetrician out of the delivery room. I want Jewish hands to touch my baby, and I wasn’t comfortable lying in the same room with an Arab woman.” She continued: “I refuse to have an Arab midwife, because for me giving birth is a Jewish and pure moment.”
A heated debate took place also on November 14, 2016, during a meeting of the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality, after lawmaker Smotrich spoke out against interreligious marriages and defended an Orthodox organization that had reportedly acted against mixed marriages between Jewish women and Muslim men. The committee chairwoman, MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Hadash), ordered security to remove Smotrich, because he was inciting against Arabs.
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=7528
