President Isaac Herzog spoke with the head of Public Health Services Prof. Sharon Alroy-Preis on Tuesday, condemning the offensive slur used towards her during a Knesset committee meeting on Monday.
On Monday, Prof. Alroy-Preis was called a "w**re" by an anonymous participant of a zoom call, during the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee headed by Labor MK Gilad Kariv.
President Herzog spoke with Prof. Alroy-Preis over the phone, thanking her for her hard work and dedication to the health of all Israelis.
"The slur used is offensive, intolerable, and has no place in Israeli society or the Knesset," said Herzog in the phone call. "We must condemn and uproot such demeaning discourse," he added.
האמירה שנזרקה במהלך דבריה היא פוגענית ובלתי נסבלת ואין לה מקום בשיח החברה הישראלית, בכנסת ובוודאי שלא כלפי עובדי ציבור שעושים את עבודתם נאמנה לילות כימים עבור כולנו. אנו מוכרחים לגנות ולעקור מהשורש שיח מבזה שכזה.
— יצחק הרצוג Isaac Herzog (@Isaac_Herzog) August 10, 2021
The zoom call, in which the return of the green pass system was discussed, was muted by MK Kariv after the slur was said, with the head of the committee later requesting Knesset Officer Yoav Griff and Knesset Director-General Gil Segal to locate and identify the man who infiltrated the call.Herzog himself was caught up in another controversy regarding a woman being addressed inappropriately in the public corruption trial of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May, when it was revealed that he had referred to former Labor rival Shelly Yacimovich as a “bitch” in texts with former Walla CEO Ilan Yeshua.After Herzog defeated Yacimovich in an internal Labor primary, he wrote Yeshua, “I would appreciate it if the headline will be ‘major victory for Herzog despite the attacks on him,’” and then added, “I need to demonstrate control and exclude the bitch.”
Herzog responded to the disclosure saying that “words which I said in the middle of a hot political struggle in 2013 – with Shelly Yacimovich in the primaries at the time – were published this morning. Between political rivals, there are periods that are more and less fiery. “Shelly and I have talked many times since that rocky period and we have moved on. But I still take this opportunity to apologize to her and to the public about these unnecessary statements which were inappropriate,” he said.Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.