I knew the great social heart of the late Ilan Gilon as soon as I arrived at the Knesset in 2013. This could not be missed.
In the Knesset corridors, everyone knew - anyone who wants to promote a social bill, certainly if it is a law that comes to improve the status of people with disabilities - Ilan is the first address for this.
It was a great honor to have his signature on such bills, and he in turn did so with great joy.
My friends and I had many ideological disagreements with the late Ilan, he had a worldview that he believed in and fought for with all his might. But at the same time, he never hated anyone who thought differently from him.
When it came to helping the weak, human beings wherever they were, the great heart of the late Ilan brought down all the partitions, camps and opinions. Right and left, religious and secular, Jews and Arabs - in all he saw a partner in advancing social goals. before everything.
More than once, as he spoke passionately about the rights of the weak, a dampness of excitement could be seen protruding from the lashes of his eyes.
In the previous Knesset, I had the privilege of passing on first reading a law that I worked with in previous Knessets, which came to change a distortion that took root in the Israeli lexicon and stipulate that a person facing a restrictive challenge should not be called a "disabled person" but "a person with a disability."
Ilan no longer served as an MK, but called me and was happy with me for promoting the proposal.
In these tumultuous days, when the political system has lost many of its ideological backbone, when the archive strikes every day at elected officials who have turned their backs on the path in which they were elected, and when the Knesset arena becomes a supermarket of opinion and camp - I long for Ilan, a man who knew what a public mission was.
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