Storm in the plenum: Remarks by MK Shevach Stern (Likud), who presented the serious allegations in which he was accused Israel Kasztner The late grandfather of an MK Merav Michaeli, According to which he collaborated with the Nazi regime in Hungary during World War II and sent Hungarian Jews to extermination. Stern noted that his family members were also among those killed in Hungary.
He said: “Kasztner was partially cleared of guilt, the judges ruled that history should judge him and not the court. Kasztner’s granddaughter MK Merav Michaeli is not to blame for her grandfather’s behavior but in her attempts to clear his name spat in the faces of many murdered. This is the face of the 2021 Labor Party, this is what is left of the Mapai party.
MK Shevach Stern (Photo: Danny Shem Tov, Knesset Spokeswoman)Opposition Knesset members present in the plenum were outraged. MK Nitzan Horowitz said: “You are blaming the Jews and not the Germans, you are denying the Holocaust.”
MK Merav Michaeli came up later and responded to the following: “I did not hear most of the insults, hatred and incitement that were said here. Dr. Israel Kasztner, my grandfather, was a political lawyer, a journalist who was a Zionist activist in Budapest, Hungary during the Holocaust. He was a member of a committee that rescued Jewish refugees from other countries “Under Nazi rule, they did so for years together with the underground and youth movements and engaged in a huge rescue operation.”
Israel Kasztner, organizer of “Rachat Kasztner” and grandfather of Merav Michaeli (Photo: Shauli Baskind, PR)Michaeli added: “The incitement that led to the assassination of Kasztner is the same incitement that led to the assassination of Rabin and it is the same incitement that threatens and gnaws at the foundations of Israeli democracy here and now.”