Miri Regev apologizes for calling migrants ‘cancer'

MK reacts with outrage to picture of her in Nazi uniform.

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Miri Regev doing Nazi salute 370 (photo credit: Facebook)
Miri Regev doing Nazi salute 370
(photo credit: Facebook)
Likud MK Miri Regev apologized over the weekend for comparing African migrant workers to cancer, while still justifying the comparison.
She said that in her speech at a Tel Aviv rally last Wednesday she merely compared how quickly the migrant workers spread throughout the country to how fast cancer spreads and she did not intend to compare human beings to cancer.
“I am sorry my comments were taken out of context,” Regev wrote on Facebook. “If someone was offended, I apologize. The incitement against me and the attempt to paint my words in a way I did not intend is typical of what has been done to rightwing leaders. When [former prime minister] Yitzhak Rabin and the head of Peace Now called settlers cancer that apparently is OK.”
Politicians from across the political spectrum had blasted Regev’s remarks, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin. She also came under fire from groups of Holocaust survivors and cancer patients.
Regev filed a complaint with the police after a photo illustration of her in a Nazi uniform was posted on Facebook.
She called the photo “extreme incitement that crossed all red lines.”