Democratic Union leader MK Nitzan Horowitz castigated leaders and ministers of the United Right Party for their participation in an event in Givat Shmuel that included a prize-giving ceremony honoring far-right religious leader Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg. The award for “creativity in Torah” was bestowed upon Ginsburg by the Chair for Torah and Wisdom – an organization that receives funding from the Education Ministry – at a day-long conference. Education Minister and senior United Right leader Rabbi Rafi Peretz gave an introductory address welcoming those attending the event, while Transportation Minister Bezalel Smotrich, also of United Right, gave an address during the conference. Ginsburg is infamous for having written a pamphlet called “Baruch Hagever,” praising and justifying the actions of Baruch Goldstein who massacred 29 Palestinians in the Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994. Ginsburg, who is the president of the Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement, was charged in 2003 with incitement to racism against Arabs in his book Order of the Day – Root Treatment, although the charges were dropped after he issued a letter of clarification. Activists for the Democratic Union Party staged a protest at the event, and described Ginsburg as “the ideologue” behind so-called “price tag” reprisal attacks against Palestinians, and someone who “determined that Arabs do not have any right to live in the State of Israel.” Horowitz spoke at the protest – attended by several dozen people – together with party electoral candidates Mossi Raz, Rabbi Gilad Kariv of the Reform movement and Yaya Fink. Horowitz described the award to Ginsburg as “madness” and given “with the sponsorship of the government, the United Right and Smotrich and the Education Ministry.” “It seems that for this extremist and wild government, an educator is someone who supports the murderer Baruch Goldstein,” he continued. “In Smotrich and Netanyahu's eyes, the person who taught the hilltop youth that Arabs have no place in Israel and trains the murderers of innocent children is worthy of a prize.” He said that the Democratic Union Party was created to put an end to such incidents, and that “homophobes and extremists” would not be part of a government they form, “and certainly not members of the cabinet who embrace such inciters.”
