MK Eitan Cabel
MK Eitan CabelFlash 90

An Ariel University professor was slammed from both left and right Sunday after he made racist remarks on an interview program earlier in the day. Professor Amir Hetzroni was thrown out of an interview he had been giving on Channel Two Sunday morning when, blaming voters of Middle Eastern descent for the victory of Binyamin Netanyahu in the elections, he told his interviewer that “nothing bad would have happened if your parents had stayed in Morocco and rotted there.

Saying that, Hetzroni added, “does not make me a racist or fascist..”

Indeed it does, said MK Eitan Cabel (Zionist Union/Labor). “I feel very bad for Ariel University, which is associated with this person,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “This man is disgusting, benighted, and primitive, and unfortunately the university cannot get rid of him. Before, Mr. Hetzroni, you discuss 'selections' for Middle Eastern Jews, you should think about how universities should make a 'selection' of their staff.”

The comments came in the course of a discussion on the elections, on the Channel Two morning news talk program hosted by Yoav Limor. After Hetzroni made the comment, Limor asked Hetsroni to leave, which the latter did only after some prompting. “Good for you, Yoav Limor,” wrote Cabel. “In a democracy, people are allowed to hate women and Sephardim, and anyone else they want to. But we as a society have no obligation to give him a platform. There are plenty of professors who would be happy to give their opinions, instead of this cheap pseudo-intellectual who keeps dirtying up our television screens. Let us hope that his dismissal from the Channel Two studios today is a harbinger of his dismissal from our public life.”

Hetzroni has been in trouble before, suspended from Ariel University last year when he posted insulting comments about a forum for female victims of sexual assault. Hetzroni claimed he was being “persecuted” by the “right wing university” for his left wing views, especially for his stance against IDF actions during last summer's Operation Protective Edge. The university fired Hetzroni last August, but a labor court ruled that the dismissal had violated procedural and union rules. The case is still pending.

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