The coalition's chairman, MK Idit Silman, delivered a speech in front of the Knesset channel's cameras this week in Talpiot, which was quoted and distributed on every possible channel, in which she attacked Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz's remarks regarding chametz tests at hospital entrances during Passover.
"Generations have given their lives for this matter," said MK Silman, "and precisely in this coalition, precisely in our shift, a health minister is about to harm the saint and visit us?
I will not give.
Not in such a coalition.
Not on my shift! "
As a matter of fact, the Minister of Health's statement is of course contrary to the worldview of most Jewish citizens of Israel, but it is certainly not the most serious thing Nitzan Horowitz has said since he was appointed, and if he is allowed - I also do not quite understand what the foam was about.
Hospitals in Israel are free of pickles, and that's a fact.
All hospitals in Israel operate in a kosher format.
The question is not whether the hospital will serve chametz to its patients or whether it will officially have chametz.
The only question is whether the guards will search the vehicles entering the hospital to find chametz there.
And in this matter - my opinion is the opinion of Minister Horowitz.
Do not, of course, look for tools that enter the hospital, even though it is a blanket ban even regarding the presence of chametz, and even though the rules of training for Passover are more severe by definition.
Yes, despite all this there is no need to search, and there is even a lack of taste and disrespect.
I do not believe I am saying this, but it is the full right of Minister Horowitz, as a secular leader, to say what he said.
But there was something very amusing in Silman's remarks, which demanded that Horowitz take into account the feelings of his coalition partners.
Surprising is the astonishment that fell on her, so to speak, from the fact that Horowitz forgot that he was actually sitting in a warm Jewish religious government, whose religious feelings were comfortable to be hurt.
This is, of course, MK Silman. Nitzan Horowitz knows exactly what he is doing. He does not think for a moment that he has religious partners in the coalition that he should consider their feelings. The secular and liberal part of Israel.
Minister Horowitz knows that this government also has some religious faces because of issues it had with certain people on the right and he, quite rightly, does not think for a moment that he should give up even some of the sweetness of his victory and fruits so that these useful MKs feel good.
Perhaps precisely because he knows them well and knows that they do not really care either, and that this sensitive speech, read from the reporter, tries to present a feigned and artificial conflict on a subject that is not really there, and is also - like other right-wing actions and statements - designed to allow this coalition to continue.
Let's say that for most of Silman's voters, the introduction of Nitzan Horowitz to the government is a little more serious than the introduction of a packet of chocolate containing rapeseed into the hospital's internal ward D.
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Fixed!
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