The last time MK Mai Golan opened her heart to me was 23 years ago. We were 12 years old, two girls who came from two opposite ends of Tel Aviv - she from the south of the city and I from the north - and amazed the surroundings by connecting us. A mutual friendship, and immediately a friendship ignited between us that lasted a year and was saturated with laughter and joy of life.
We both learned in our flesh how cruel children can be.
May suffered a boycott, and I was far from being the queen of the class, and we soon found each other the containing and comforting place we were looking for.
No wonder that when she entered the Knesset, Golan submitted a bill to prevent shame and social boycott in schools and on the Internet.
At the end of an unforgettable evening at a pajama party at my house, shortly before the lights went out, May said it was fun for me not to have "people with syringes" on the steps of the house in the L neighborhood, like she has in the building at Central Station.
I also well remember a girl who was never afraid to express her opinion out loud to correct injustices.
That's why I was not surprised for a moment when she became a Member of Knesset.
Contrary to the usual procedure in such interviews with MKs, who are surrounded by advisers and speakers whose purpose is to protect them from "media attacks" - Golan chooses to come to an interview with me without escorts.
"What's up, you crazy?"
She bursts into the lobby of Kfar HaMaccabiah where we have arranged to meet, wearing tights, sneakers at her feet and her hair gathered into a ponytail.
"Wow, look at us after 23 years, the politician and journalist. Bring a hug."
When she suddenly notices the chairman of the Likud faction, Yariv Levin, who happens to be sitting in the lobby at a meeting, she smiles from ear to ear:
Strive to arrive without an entourage.
"I can not change. I will not come to an interview with someone who will entertain or make me king, make me stately. If I am not who I am, my audience will absorb in a second. I am May Golan from the neighborhood, the daughter of a single mother, and I believe the good and the truth must win. "I have my style, and I will not be a politician of the kind that shapes me to be. If anything, I will be a politician of the new breed. Not fake and not pretentious. I am the mother of the non-politically correct, and I am proud of that."
If you've already opened up in your style, let's admit it's snatching on the head quite a bit, especially on the left.
"Beyond the synonyms I have from the despicable left on Twitter - flower, cheek, neighborhood, barbaric, miserable, etc. - wish me not to live? Wish me never to have children? Wish me to experience severe pain and illness?"
Indeed, difficult things.
"At first I would take screenshots, remind myself that it exists there, that I would not think I was imagining."
Have you considered closing your Twitter account?
"Great question, but I'm not willing to live only in the bubble of my support. I want to be exposed to evil too. Twitter is an arena of evil, arrogance, racism and filth at a level I did not know existed in the world. The insults and curses and threats and wishes I receive there The 74-year-old, to my congregation, to my supporters - it's like looking devilishly in the eyes.
"I thought of closing, and then I sat down with myself and made two decisions. The first, that I will in no way succumb to the evil of the left cursing, and if need be, I will be stuck like a bone in their throat. Whoever wants, will swallow, and whoever does not Apologize for this sentence.
"I'm never going to lower my head again in the face of this monstrous free hatred. All the wretched trolls who respond without a picture in the name of the enlightened and beautiful-minded left, who write these things to me.
"The second decision was that on my page they would not get on stage again. Whoever slanders the mouth - is blocked. They can criticize me in a matter-of-fact way and come out against me, but as soon as they swear or go down to personal resolution - they are blocked. Freedom of expression is not a right to slander."
A resident of Rishon LeZion recently called you a "junk Moroccan." Is the ethnic demon still here?
"Of course he's here. Anyone who tries to bury his head in the sand and say it does not exist is either contributing to the cause or a coward. And why? Because countless racist remarks cannot be ignored.
"There are three authorities in the country today: the legislature is the legal bureaucracy, the executive is the organizations of left-wing associations and parties, and the judiciary is the media.
"This is a detached junta, for whom everything can and should be done so that the masses of the second color do not multiply by mistake and take over the country here. The rules, and the rules will no longer be for their convenience. "
With MK Itamar Ben Gvir, visiting Kfar Qassem. "There is a government here without any public legitimacy, which has an army of left-wing media,"
• • •
Golan (35), a young Knesset member in the Mishkan, was elected at the age of 32 in the Likud primaries in the 32nd place, which is reserved for the youth box, and has since moved up to 29th place, due to departures and additional reservations made by the movement's chairman, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Throughout the last four election campaigns, Golan served as chairman of the Likud's youth headquarters. Does not deny that the appointment was Netanyahu's way of keeping it in the party.
A few months later, after the third election out of four, she returned to being a MK and was placed in 30th place on the list she received at the polls for 30 seats. Immigration and the Boycott Law, which provides a basket of tools for dealing with the issue.
"I experienced a lot in a short time. Because of the multiplicity of election campaigns, I feel like I'm been in politics for 30 years. If it takes a politician years to shape himself, I got it in a marathon. I want to empower what matters."
What is important? Make a noise that will impress Likud functionaries and serve you in the next primaries, where you will no longer be able to compete for the youth seat?
"I can not be said to be demagogic or populist. I work from the soul. God puts me here.
I do not see any privilege in sitting quietly.
I am not willing to play a fake, hypocritical, false and shabby state game of the left.
Let them say about me enthusiastic and loud.
I'm not going to change myself in a gram.
"I represent the weakest voice in Israeli society, and when I shout - I shout their voice. When I walk to the supermarket, or drive a car, older women stop and kiss me in tears, telling me that they kiss the TV when they see me, because 'you speak for us.' "So who will take this truth of theirs?"
Spending many hours recently in the plenum, in attempts to prevent the transfer of the state budget.
"I compare the Knesset plenum to a hotel in Las Vegas (laughs, DRA).
I was there once, at the age of 24. I had no money, so I slept in the cheapest hotel there, and got up in the morning with a herniated disc.
The hotel had so many stimuli - shows, food, noise, music and gambling.
I did not leave for three days, until I felt sick.
I was like a zombie, I forgot there was a world out there.
Unlike a thousand thousand differences, when I am in the Knesset plenum, and so invested in everything that happens there, I can also sit for four days in a row without feeling.
There are a lot of stimuli in this place. "
In voting on the budget you felt bad.
"I was dehydrated, and I had to go for a fluid infusion. I forgot that life goes on outside and that not everyone lives on the Knesset channel. I settled with the Speaker of the Knesset, Miki Levy, during a move he initiated.
"Every time I get the tone in the plenum, it's because I act from the heart, from the truth and from the feeling that I represent millions. I know, from the field, that I am everywhere. Even people who did not vote for Likud tell me I am their voice. I get hundreds of messages a day, not to mention Facebook likes and views on my YouTube channel. "
In the Knesset, you are called a girl.
"Girl girl, but in the legislature. Everyone who knows me knows that I am not a girl at all, after all I have been through in life. It does not diminish or insult me. On the contrary, it even flattered me that despite the appearance of the jeans and sneakers I am in an important and big place. "People who call me a girl have to take me seriously."
Miri Regev calls you "Little Miri Regev".
"If Miri calls me that, I should take it as a compliment, because she loves herself. I take everything my Likud friends say to me as a compliment, but the hypocritical, elitist and racist left took it to belittle or humiliate me, as if I was being dragged by something. That they hate.I'm not a little character of anyone.
"For me, all my Likud members are inspiring. They are all role models and figures that I value at the highest level. However, I come up with a very specific way of my own, unlike any other."
Are you consulted in the party?
"I know that the national camp is pleased with the truth I am leading. Of the many dictatorships in this delusional left-wing government, our party is the only democratic thing left. , Even if it is contrary to the position of the chairman.
Something that would not have passed in Lapid's regulations on behalf of Lapid. "
torch.
"There will be no Prime Minister", Photo: Eric Sultan
What do you think of MK Dudi Amsalem's recent remarks, which include the words "we will run over you" and "pens," and which led a citizen from the north to file a complaint with the police?
"Which one? The one they invented or the one they fabricated? My uncle Dudi Amsalem is a man of truth and justice, and he backs me up with every word that comes out of his mouth."
You and Amsalem are considered part of the shouting group. The riot does not give you, and the Knesset in general, a bad name?
"I do not accept the word shouting. I do not shout. If anything, I shout. And I say my things resolutely and not prayerfully. So it bothers all kinds of little activists, who want to categorize me as shouting to dissolve the truth I say.
"I wonder where those sweet statesmen were, when Miki Levy, the speaker of the Knesset, shouted in the plenum about Netanyahu, the Likud members and the ultra-Orthodox.
When Tamar Zandberg insulted and Michal Rosin went on a rampage like the last of the robbers, and when they called us shit, baboons, abnormal, stupid, herd of animals, amulets and mezuzahs, poor flatters.
"This whole bunch of liars, whom I call a bibiphobic cult, are a bunch of people who suffer from incurable phobias. I don't have to lower my voice so that the traumas do not rise from Netanyahu's rule. The trauma will soon return, before they notice, and this time it will return in form One that I do not know if they will be able to recover from.
"The audacity and audacity of the forehead to categorize us as belligerents, when there is not a word in the book that they did not write against the former and future prime minister, with the help of the name.
Who is "they"?
"The left, Lapid, Lieberman, Merav Michaeli and the Balfour protesters. The left should rinse their mouths with bleach before they speak our language.
"There is a government here without any public legitimacy, which has an army of left-wing media. They shouted at the Balfour protest, claimed that Netanyahu would be fortified there when he had to leave, and we saw how their gloomy and false predictions ended. The decision to keep demonstrations away.
"This is a government that says that 'containing the dead is okay' (Ayelet Shaked's statement about the corona, which she later apologized for; DRA), and that we should be thrown 'in the trash' (Avigdor Lieberman's statement about the ultra-Orthodox and Netanyahu; DRA). A bunch of hypocrites and poisonous wells, and they will not teach us how to talk.
"My hope is when we get back to power in a big way, the magnification craze they have now will cause them a much more painful defeat than they imagine. The higher they go up, the more painful the landing down."
You are very friendly with Yurah Lahav-Harznu Mish Atid.
"Yorai is a charming, kind-hearted, sociable guy who looks at me beyond image. Thanks to him, I discovered that in a super-political opinion of mine there are people with whom it is still possible to do good for Israeli society. We have personal conversations about everything, and he is stunning."
Our blade ran.
"Tov Lev", Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
• • •
When I ask her opinion on MK Yuli Edelstein's decision to run in the Likud leadership's primaries, she breathes and strives with demonstrable resentment.
Edelstein.
"His right to compete", Photo: Efrat Eshel
After recently calling the government a "morbid anti-babysitting cult that prevents hatred," it is confident that Netanyahu will return to the prime minister soon, "because Lapid will not be prime minister of Israel, because of his unnatural coalition partners, and I doubt Bennett will end his term as prime minister at all." .
For you, there is no aspect that Netanyahu erred in his conduct? All the criticism against him stems only from hatred towards him?
"Netanyahu was not wrong anywhere. The only thing he was wrong about, if anything, was the amount of hatred and jealousy and personal boycotts by the people he raised, helped and guided. People who turned their backs on him.
"What Naftali Bennett did will be remembered forever. It is the most humiliating, despicable and ugly act a politician can claim to be a right-wing man, and he will be remembered as the ugliest stain on the history of the national camp. Netanyahu led a country so successfully that he should be thanked. ".
Are you following his trial? Testimony of Nir Hefetz?
"I will conclude with a sentence, without a trace of populism and demagoguery, from the depths of my soul: This is one of the most dangerous and corrupt portfolios seen here in Israel. .
Do you know the Netanyahu family closely?
"I will start with Netanyahu. I watched this woman for many years, and I could easily fall for the media misinformation and think that she was a malicious and scary woman. For the past two years I have had the right to know her, and that is why today, more than ever, I still believe in the media. From what they described. "
What do you think about their son, Yair Netanyahu, and his controversial social media activity?
"When Iir started speaking on the networks, it was a spark of hope in the dark. For me, he is the boy who pointed to the king and said he was naked. The king is the media. He tells the truth, without any filter. The painful and hurtful truth I was thirsty to hear. As the prime minister's son he can "He used to sit quietly and be stately, but he chose not to, and he is brave. I hope he will continue like this."
There is a famous video where you are seen standing in front of Netanyahu and telling him that if he does not continue to lead the country, young couples will leave the country. it happened?
"My apprehension was real, and I received dozens of messages from people who said that in the current constellation, with the vicious taxes that Lieberman is passing, with the hidden fact that the actual prime minister is Mansour Abbas, and with terrorism keeping its head up when it takes over, they will temporarily relocate. Until Netanyahu returns to power. "
Do you know of Israelis who did this?
"There were people who made a temporary relocation because they were afraid. As mentioned, I received dozens of such."
She has two Facebook pages, one official and one from the period before she became a MK, and together they attract 61,000 followers. In addition, she has a YouTube channel run by her activists ("it has millions of views"), an Instagram page, a telegram account and an account. In the new right-hand app "Mikey".
And of course, she runs a Twitter page with 24,000 followers, most of them Americans, from the time she managed the account in English during her struggles with the infiltrators phenomenon in south Tel Aviv.
She hopes that on the day the Likud returns to power, it will receive the file assigned to it: the Ministry of Immigration, "so that we can finally establish immigration policy, and preserve the Jewish character in the country."
She says she responds to every message she receives, most of them inquiries from private citizens asking for her help.
So until the wee hours of the night - "when literally my fingers can no longer write, and the phone falls out of my hands."
Bennett.
"Diron Olam", Photo: Mark Israel Salem
• • •
In the case of the prisoner's pimp at Gilboa Prison, which made headlines last month, MK Golan spoke sharply about "turning a security body into an escort institute." A warden, and any woman on a public mission, will be sexually harassed in a disgraceful manner.
This is a sign of disgrace that must not be allowed to happen.
I will not leave this story. "
Have you ever been sexually harassed as part of your job?
"Sure. Do you have a doubt? I was harassed, more than once or twice. By senior members of the public system, in times when I was not who I am today and did not even have the ability to resist. But I did resist, with my personal abilities.
"This is an ugly phenomenon, that ugly people allow themselves to do. I call on everyone who goes through this not to break down. The types of reactions are different and not suitable for everyone. There are those who have to file a complaint with the police, there are those who can resist, and there are those who have to go to the media. Okay, the main thing is not to let it beat you.
"Because they want to harass not only your body, but who you are, and the more you dare to raise your head and be a strong woman - the more challenging it is for them to be harassed. The real struggle is to prove to them that if we are strong women - it does not mean we are allowed to be harassed."
Have you developed a mechanism of "masculine" behavior?
"It's been like this for a long time. In my immediate environment I was asked how it is that on the one hand I am so feminine and delicate and soft, and on the other hand so masculine. This question is delusional to me, because why should I justify my power? "Over the years, as I went into the depths of the political world, I realized that there is no room for weakness of any kind. It was made clear to me that sometimes being too much of a woman is a weakness. So I promised myself that I would be the best woman there is, always."
Were you also harassed by Knesset members?
"Not when I was a Knesset member, and we'll end with that."
"Why is my power perceived as masculine?".
Golan, Photography: Kfir Ziv, Dress: GAMLA Boutique, Rings: Pandora
• • •
Her full name is Flora Mai Badra Golan.
"Four names, like Minimum Monaco Princess, only born in Central Station," she laughs.
Already at the age of 9 she was exposed to the spotlight.
It happened in the mythological circle of Dan Shilon on Channel 2, the TV tribal bonfire of those days, when she came with her mother, Rimonah, to be interviewed about the poverty report in Israel, which came out that day.
"They wanted my mother to talk about what it was like to be a single mother living below the poverty line. But she was ashamed, so her social worker suggested that I represent the poor children in south Tel Aviv. I sat alone in a chair, live at night, with all the older guests, Dedi Zucker, the late Menachem Golan, Hani Nachmias, Gila Almagor.
I almost fell asleep there.
"I remember being told to write a song about my situation, and I quote you from memory: 'People enjoy and suffer, some are also poor. Want to enjoy life a little more. Want to travel to see the world like everyone else, but it's not in their ability. Try and try and fail, and in the end Life is over '.
"What a horrible song for a 9-year-old girl. Today I live alone in an entire village, and I'm on crates, because at the end of the month I'm moving to a few buildings nearby."
In your position you were able to live elsewhere.
"It is important for me to stay in South Tel Aviv. This is my home, and I believe we will correct the injustice done to this area, from the infiltrators to the evacuation of an entire village. I stay there for ideological reasons, and I see it as a settlement for everything. I hope to live with my future husband and grow My children in south Tel Aviv. "
Lifting for a discount - where is the future husband?
"On this issue, my answer is laconic: 'With the help of the name, be blessed.' With emotion, heart and desires.
Whoever really sees me, will love everything.
And with the help of the name, when I establish a home in Israel, the home will be faithful to both the people of Israel and our marital truth.
But I do not go out to bars or clubs, nor am I in apps.
So what is left is men with courage. "
DanielleR@IsraelHayom.co.il
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