MK Yehuda Glick (Likud) made clear on Thursday that he is not angry with Interior Minister Aryeh Deri (Shas), who tried to bring him to the Knesset to vote on the Supermarket Law on the day of the funeral of Glick’s wife, Yaffa.
The vote on the bill was ultimately postponed and took place earlier this week instead, with the bill ultimately being approved with a majority of just one vote.
"It’s very hard to upset me," Glick said in an interview with Hahadashot (formerly Channel 2 News) regarding the incident with Deri. "It was irrelevant, so I was not in a place to get hurt or angry. The moment they told me that Deri had apologized, I asked my rabbi to tell him I was not angry with him, that he can be completely calm, that if I met him I would give him a hug."
"If there was something that would have made Yaffi happy, it was that I did not pick up my phone the entire shiva," he continued. "My son Shahar would tell me every night at 10:00 p.m. what was on the news, and when he told me that Aryeh had published a letter of apology, I asked: 'What for?' And only then did I remember.”
Glick said that "the day I returned to the Knesset, I sent a message to [coalition chairman] David Amsalem and told him that I had just learned that MK Yossi Yona [of the Zionist Union] was sitting shiva, and I suggest we issue a message that we are pairing with him. I myself was willing to pair with him.”
In parliamentary practice, "pairing" is an informal arrangement between government and opposition parties whereby a parliament member agrees or is designated to abstain from voting while a member of the opposing party needs to be absent due to pressing commitments, illness, travel problems, etc. The member abstaining from voting is referred to as a "pair". In Israel, the Hebrew term used is kizuz, which literally means "reduction" or "offset."
"When I was sitting shiva, MK Eyal Ben Reuven [of the Zionist Union] came and told me that if someone had turned to him, he would have agreed to pair with me immediately. There are many good people in all the parties: I received condolences from two MKs from the Joint List. MK Esawi Frej [of Meretz] came to me at the funeral and hugged me. Moshe Gafni tried to come but was unable to, so he informed me that he had done a mitzvah in memory of Yaffi,” said Glick.
"There is a lot of good, and sometimes there is a lack of sensitivity. If, thanks to Yaffi, we learn how to love and give attention and basic human sensitivity - it will bring her a lot of satisfaction," he concluded.