Jewish Home chairman Naftali Bennett
Jewish Home chairman Naftali BennettBen Kelmer/Flash 90

Playwright Yehoshua Sobol attacked the Jewish Home party and its Chairman Naftali Bennett Monday in response to the criticism heaped on artist Yair Garbuz for his speech at a leftist rally Saturday night. 

Garbuz attacked the Right and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government, referring at one point to "the kissers of amulets [mezuzot], the idolaters," whom he alleges have become the majority in Israel

"Whoever kisses mezuzot, that's his and his family's problem," Sobol said in response during an interview with Reshet Bet. "It's not a right-wing or left-wing problem. There are stupid people in all kinds of sectors."

Sobol, who has a symbolic position on the far-left Meretz party's Knesset list and refuses to perform his plays in Ariel, then attacked Jewish Home, specifically for its campaign slogan "Stop Apologizing."

The playwright, best known for Ghetto, a play about the Jews of the Vilna Ghetto during the Holocaust, said the slogan was reminiscent of a specific law enacted in Germany in the 1930s during the rise of Nazism.

"Bennett announced that we must eliminate the guilt of the Israel's society," Sobol said. "He is not the first - in 1933, when the National Socialist Party came to power in Germany, one of the first laws enacted was the law to cancel German guilt."

The Jewish Home Chairman quickly responded to the attack, as well as Garbuz's initial comments, on his Facebook page. 

"My Left brothers - you have lost your bearing. This morning Yehoshua Sobol (Meretz) compared me to the Nazi party and 'mezuzot kissers' to fools." 

"Yehoshua Sobol and Yair Garbuz, I kiss the mezuzah stupidly and proudly. I am the 'handful' which has become the majority," he concluded sharply.