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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is angry at a meeting with Druze leaders on Thursday night when a well-known Druze activist and former IDF Brigadier General sharply criticized the controversial law pbaded last month by a US state government. nation.
The tense meeting, which included ministers Yariv Levin and Ayoub Kara, took place two days before a mbad demonstration scheduled in Tel Aviv organized by Druze activists and other opponents of state law. in its current version.
At the meeting held at the IDF headquarters complex in Tel Aviv, Brig. General (res) Amal As'ad told Netanyahu that the Druze were not interested in a new benefits program, but that they felt part of the nation.
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Netanyahu then raised, insisting that it would not leave a prime minister or state unrespectful, and suggested that the meeting continue in his office, before a smaller forum including the spiritual leader of the community, Sheikh Muafak Tarif, and the mayors of Druze towns. but without As & ad; and other former Druze officers who run the campaign against the law.
Brig. General Amal As'ad in Tel Aviv, August 2, 2018. (Screenshot of Hadashot TV screen)
According to As'ad, who spoke on the Hadashot TV news after the meeting, Tarif refused the smaller meeting and Netanyahu left the room.
The Druze leaders then walked from the Kirya compound to Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, where preparations for the Saturday night protests are already under way.
Netanyahu was apparently irritated by a recent Facebook message by As'ad, in which he accused the prime minister of leading Israel on the path of becoming an "apartheid state" and calling the law "criminal and racist".
Early reports from the prime minister's office had indicated that Asad had repeated the claim of apartheid during the meeting with Netanyahu, which had triggered the departure, but As-ad had said on Thursday night. that this information was false.
"The word" apartheid "was not used at all in the meeting with the prime minister," he said in a message posted on Facebook. "The solution to the crisis is in the hands of the Prime Minister and I am confident that he can solve it if he wishes."
As'ad, a former infantry commander and veteran of multiple wars who lost a brother during fighting in the Gaza Strip, previously voiced support for the Likud party. He has been actively involved in initiatives to commemorate the sacrifices of IDF Druze soldiers.
The leader of the Yesh Atid group, Yair Lapid, said in a tweet on Thursday that Netanyahu "has again shown that what he wants is not a law of a nation-state, but a fight against the law of a nation-state "to gain an apparent political gain.
Sheikh Muafak Tarif, spiritual leader of the Israeli Druze community, attends a conference of the Zionist Druze movement in Herzliya on July 16, 2018. (Flash90)
The meeting between the Druze leaders and the Prime Minister followed two weeks of anger and protests by the Druze community against the Knesset's refusal to include any mention of equality for minorities in the law on Nation-state, which attempts to consecrate the Israeli character as a Jewish state.
While Netanyahu was meeting with the Druze leaders, the original sponsor of the law, Likud MP Avi Dichter, faced the wrath of the community at a ceremony honoring Druze veterans at a college in Carmiel. in the north of the country.
"Dog, racist," shouted a man at Dichter, bursting into the auditorium. The man was later identified as Amir Khnifess, head of the new Forum Against State-Nation Law.
Activists and supporters of the Druze community in Israel hold a protest tent against the law pbaded by the Knesset in July 2018 in Tel Aviv on August 1, 2018 (Tomer Neuberg / Flash90).
Dichter's security guards attempted to intervene, but the legislator, a former Shin Bet security chief, pushed back the guards.
"Look at these children," Khnifess shouted at him, pointing to the young veterans. Khnifess told Dichter that he "should be ashamed" and "should not appear before the Druze".
Khnifess would have called Dichter "Nazi", pushing the legislator to shout: "I will not be called Nazi. I lost my family to the Nazis when they murdered my mother's family. I call Avraham Moshe for my grandfather murdered by the Nazis. "
The Dichter meeting was held during a scholarship ceremony for 80 Druze veterans of the Israeli army belonging to the International Movement of Christians and Jews at the technical college of Carmiel in Ort Braude. Academic scholarships are named after the late Salim Shufi, a former druid member of the Sayeret Matkal commando.
ילים בני העדה הדרוזית רצו ומו ח"כ ידר הענקת מלגו ימודים ודנטידנט םי העדה רמיאל. יכטר, יוזמי חוק הלאום, ר על הבמה. ילים קראו יכטר ייש ואמרו ודנטים יה יהם רב את המילגה @nitzanglusman pic.twitter.com/UZzEJIxDRk
– חדשות (@kann_news) August 2, 2018
Khnifess was arrested by the police after the incident.
In a statement to the Carmiel ceremony, the community said the meeting between Veterans Druze and Dichter would be "an opportunity for an open and honest dialogue with youth from [Druze] community on the law of nation-states and the controversy it sparked. "
Netanyahu tried to calm the Druze anger at the new law by offering them a set of benefits.
A concession plan is considering new legislation to legally anchor the status of Druze and Circbadian communities and offer benefits to members of minority groups serving in the security forces, said the PMO in a statement on Wednesday. Support for Druze religious, educational and cultural institutes would also be included in the legislation.
In addition, the recognition of the contribution of all minorities and communities involved in the defense of the state would be inscribed in the basic laws of the country, which, similar to a constitution, underpin the Israeli legal system and are more difficult to repeal than ordinary laws. .
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with representatives of the Druze community at his office in Jerusalem on August 1, 2018. (Office of the Prime Minister)
Unlike Arab Israelis, members of the Druze and Circbadian minorities are subject to Israel's mandatory order and serve in large numbers alongside Jewish soldiers in some of the most elite units of the Israeli army.
Since the beginning of the week, several Druze officers of the Israeli army have announced that they will resign from their commissions in protest of the law, which was adopted on July 19 as a basic law.
The Nation States Act – which for the first time consecrates Israel as the "national home of the Jewish people" and states that "the right to exercise national self-determination in the state Israel is unique to the Jewish people "- has sparked wide consensus critics at home, including from Israeli minorities and opposition political parties, as well as from the international community and groups Jews abroad. It also lowers the status of Arabic so that it is no longer an official language in Israel.
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