Daniel Ben-Simon
Daniel Ben-Simonפלאש 90

Labor Knesset Member Daniel Ben-Simon, who was born in Morocco and moved to Israel at the age of 15, attacked “poisonous” Yisrael Beiteinu Russian MKs Tuesday night at a Jewish-Arab conference in Yafo (Jaffa).

“We have to drag them here ([to the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Yafo] and teach them what they did not learn in school in St. Petersburg,” according to a report on Israel’s Army Radio.

“The Yisrael Beiteinu party’s presence in the Knesset poisons and pollutes it,” he told the conference on advancing Arab-Jewish relations in the Knesset.

“We are speaking about the same people who sit in Yisrael Beiteinu, many of whom speak as if they have gravel between their teeth. They hardly know the language and judge others.”

MK Ben-Simon, who retired as a journalist from the Haaretz newspaper in order to enter politics, also had harsh words for the National Union party headed by Knesset Member Yaakov (Ketzaleh) Katz, calling it filled with “Kahanistim," referring to the slain Rabbi Meir Kahane.

Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau, a senior member of Yisrael Beiteinu, responded to MK Ben-Simon’s remarks as an “embarrassment to the public that sent him to the Knesset and to the Russian public. We must never forget their contribution of aliyah to the country.”