Knesset Honors Extremist Gaza Settlers With Statue
Image by Getty Images
The Knesset dedicated a statue commemorating the Jewish communities evacuated from Gush Katif in Gaza in 2005.
The statue, which is more than a foot high, and Monday evening’s ceremony were protested by Peace Now.
Some 8,000 Israelis were evacuated from 21 settlements in Gush Katif, and from four West Bank settlements under the unilateral disengagement.
“I believe that with all due respect to the pain of the evacuees, placing a permanent memorial to mark one specific political and controversial event (which included no loss of life) is not appropriate, and raises suspicions that Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein is treating the legislative house as his own house,” Yariv Oppenheimer, the head of Peace Now, wrote in a letter to the Knesset.
Oppenheimer pointed out that there are no memorials in the same part of the Knesset for the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the Yom Kippur War, the evacuation of Yamit in the Sinai Peninsula or the massacre at Kafr Kassem.
The statue is not permanent and thus does not violate any Knesset rules, the Knesset’s legal adviser, Eyal Yinon, said in response.
Edelstein opted for a small, removable memorial to avoid any installation difficulties.
“I had no political intentions in putting up the piece, and as long as I am Knesset speaker, it will remain here,” Edelstein said.
Edelstein opposed the disengagement and is a resident of the Neve Daniel settlement in the Etzion bloc in the West Bank.
The statue, a model of a sculpture that was located in the Nitzan settlement, features a six-pointed star split open by a palm tree and includes the names of evacuated settlements.
SPONSORED: Search 155+ camps to find your perfect Jewish camp, and you may be eligible for $1000 off! Visit OneHappyCamper.org today!
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
