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.”