Oren Hazan: Forgive Trump for Yom Kippur

Asked about his own vices before entering politics, Hazan vigorously denied reports of supplying drugs and prostitutes to VIPs at a casino he ran in Bulgaria.

By GIL HOFFMAN
Updated: OCTOBER 9, 2016 22:09
MK Oren Hazan (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
MK Oren Hazan
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
The American public should forgive American Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for the lewd tapes in which he made vulgar statements about women and what he has done to them, Likud MK Oren Hazan said Sunday.
Hazan endorsed Trump when the Republican presidential primary still had more than a dozen candidates several months ago and boasted that their political styles were similar. Hazan distanced himself from Trump's behavior Sunday, but he still defended him.
Trump: I pledge to be a better man tomorrow (Reuters)
"I wouldn't speak like he did, and I dont agree with what he said or the way he said it," Hazan said. "But he said what he did more than a decade ago, long before he was a politician. I don't think it will hurt him politically. I think people will get over it." Hazan noted that Trump had apologized and said the time to forgive Trump was now, just ahead of the Yom Kippur holiday in which people ask for forgiveness.
Asked about his own vices before entering politics, Hazan vigorously denied reports of supplying drugs and prostitutes to VIPs at a casino he ran in Bulgaria. Contrasting himself with Trump, he said there were no tapes in which he admitted doing anything wrong.
Meretz MK Michal Rozin, a former executive director of the Association of Crisis Centers for Victims of Sexual Assault, expressed disgust at Trump's behavior and said there can be no excuses for it. She called him a "chauvenist, harasser, hater, shamer, and humiliator of women." Rozin said the American public was facing a test: Will they vote for women by electing Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, who would become America's first woman president, or vote against women by electing Trump.
"Will the world's greatest superpower, the leader of the free world, abandon its values when it comes to women?" Rozin asked. "This is a big test because Trump represents deep mockery for women and a long list of minorities. There is a tendency to accept his attitude to women, because men are naturally pigs who speak and act that way privately. But it's not true with most men and it must not be tolerated."