Attorney Aharon Papo criticized the government ministers in the nationalist camp for their silence over the case of Adam Verta, the teacher who called the IDF "immoral" and pushed a leftist-communist agenda in his classroom.
Verta was let off with a warning by the ORT educational network and sent back to work at his high school in Kiryat Tivon near Haifa. The teacher had reportedly said in class that "the state did not belong to the Jews at all but to the Arabs, and as far as he was concerned, the Jews had no business being in Israel at all."
"Verta gives extreme radical leftist propaganda in the classroom, says the land belongs to the Arabs and that we are intruders," remarked Papo. "That's terrible communist propaganda along the lines of the communist party that opposed Zionism over the course of 100 years."
Speaking to Arutz Sheva, the attorney remarked that most Israeli media sources supported Verta, and played a large role in the decision this week to leave him in the classroom.
"When someone gives voice to 'blue and white' nationalistic opinions, there's always an investigation in the newspaper about who he is and what he did and didn't do," notes Papo. "But when a leftist like Verta preaches in class and ridicules a student that opposed it, he's backed up by nearly all the papers."
According to Papo, Verta is not a teacher, but rather a "political person" manipulating his position in the classroom. "How did they let him teach Jewish thought in the Ort network? What does his anti-Zionist propaganda have to do with Jewish thought?"
'The nationalist camps are afraid of the media and kept silent'
The national religious and nationalist camps are afraid of the media claims Papo, and therefore refrained from speaking against Verta. "People are afraid of the media, what they will write about them in the newspaper Haaretz and what they'll say about them on TV and radio. The right is afraid because it never knew how to rule."
"How can it be that I didn't hear one response from any ministers in the right? Why didn't (Interior Minister) Gideon Sa'ar say something for the rights of the girl and against the teacher? That's the disease of the nationalist right, they aren't ready to take a side," argued Papo.
While no ministers condemned the Verta incident, MK Yoni Chetboun (Jewish Home) criticized Education Minister Shai Piron for not taking steps against the teacher, saying he wasn't expressing political opinions but rather incitement.
Meanwhile outside of the Knesset, former MK Dr. Michael Ben-Ari strongly condemned Verta on his Facebook page.
"Verta will continue to go to conferences of terrorists and continue to shout 'Viva Palestine,' and to tell stories to his students. And they will answer him: am Yisrael chai (the people of Israel lives)," declared Ben-Ari.
The accusations against the right bring to mind MK Moshe Feiglin's comments last December that "the right has disappeared." His comment came as all other nationalist camp MKs aside from him failed to appear for a vote on a bill making it more difficult to divide Jerusalem, a bill that was consequently blocked.