Following the decision to appoint MK Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi as Israel’s Consul General in Shanghai, the next candidate on the Meretz slate will be sworn in as a member of the Knesset.
That person is Kati Piasecki, who was placed in the tenth spot on the Meretz party slate and who serves as a city councilor in her hometown of Bat Yam.
When one reads her Facebook account, one can get the impression that she holds classic views associated with the Meretz party. But she also has not been shy of making controversial statements over the years.
For example, in February 2015, she compared Naftali Bennett to the leader of a Nazi regime. "I do not understand why the left is so impassioned against Bennett who is not a disaster for Israeli society. After all, someone needs to teach Israeli students about Nazism and racism," she wrote on her Facebook account at the time.
In August 2014 she shared a post comparing a sign waved by a right-wing demonstrator with the caption "One people, one country, one leader" alongside the same caption in German from the period of the reign of Adolf Hitler. Along with sharing the comparison with the picture of the Nazi tyrant, Piasecki wrote, "Is it still forbidden to compare?"
Beyond the comparisons to the Nazis, she sees Benjamin Netanyahu as a dictator and a lunatic. In March 2015 she wrote, "To this moment I hope one idiot controls a lot of lunatics. Do not make me understand that one lunatic controls a lot of idiots. Go out and vote. There is no revolution without Meretz." On another occasion she wrote: "Bibi asked that [journalist] Ben Caspit be removed from the studio during a telephone interview. Anyone who acts like a dictator should not complain that the people want to throw him out of the palace."
In January 2014, she shared a post in which then-MK Naftali Bennett wrote, "Why should Palestinians not be allowed to control Jews? Because they will kill them." In response, she wrote, "If someone who was not a Jew would write 'Why are Jews not allowed to control X? Because they will kill them', everyone would shout that this is antisemitism. Racism is racism, no matter who it is directed at it, it is also incitement."
On one occasion, she hinted to a number of female MKs who voted against a law promoted by women's organizations that they belong is in hell.
On Yom Kippur 2019, she expressed displeasure that the television channel "Baby", which airs programming for toddlers, stops its broadcasts for one day every year – that day being Yom Kippur. She shared a screenshot of the graphic which appeared on the channel during Yom Kippur and wrote: "The world has gone crazy."
Piasecki on Tuesday evening spoke to Channel 12 News following the publication of some of her old posts and softened her tone.
“A lot of things have changed. Bennett has since formed a government that saved Israel from political chaos and freed us from Netanyahu who dragged us into this mess. It's not fair to pull out tweets from seven years ago,” she argued. "The political reality has changed, Bennett has changed, the political system has changed."
"I would expect you to call and ask me about the good things I did, the fight against corruption, the things for the benefit of women, really important things and not tweets from years ago," said the future MK, who added that she is not bothered by the ideological disagreements with the coalition members.
"If everyone thought the same thing, then why bother to get together? So there are disagreements, and I really believe that the best things can come from places where there is disagreement," she said.