Israel Matzav

Two religious MK's try to retrace their steps

With the political situation looking more and more like elections sooner rather than later, two leftist religious MK's are trying to retrace their steps back to the right leaning religious community in the hope of maintaining their seats in the Knesset.

One is Michael Melchior, one of the founders of Meimad, a religious party that ran for the Knesset on a leftist platform (they wouldn't call it that, but I would) in the last couple of elections, and that has effectively become the religious wing of the Labor party. Melchior today said - get this - that he is going to 'demand' that Ehud K. Olmert present 'moderate' 'Palestinian President' Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen with the Palestinian Media Watch report that indicates that 'Palestinians' are being taught that the war against Israel is a religious war, that pursuing Israel's destruction is a religious duty, and that making peace with Israel is forbidden by Islam.

According to Melchior, the report's findings indicate a trend from "a conflict over land, which can be resolved by partition, to an existential religious conflict that cannot be resolved."

You don't say? And what does the cream puff think Abu Mazen can do about it if one assumes that the holocaust denying Abu Mazen wants to do anything about it (which he doesn't).

The other religious MK who is trying to find his way back into the religious mainstream is the traitorous Otniel Schneller, who went from being a member of the local council in Maaleh Michmash to being a member of Kadima Achora. Schneller popped up today to tell everyone about his last meeting with former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which took place just before Sharon's stroke in January 2006:

Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would have supported the decision by settlers to move into a large four-story apartment building along the main road that links the settlement of Kiryat Arba with the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Kadima MK Otniel Schneller told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

He is certain of this, Schneller said, because the two men met in the late afternoon of January 4, only hours before the former prime minister and the founder of the Kadima party suffered a massive stroke from which he has yet to regain consciousness.

The topic of the conversation was the future map of Israel, said Schneller, who himself is a centrist religious settler from Ma'aleh Michmash. He also acts as a liaison between the settlers and the Prime Minister's Office.

Schneller recalled how in that final short meeting, "we spoke about Hebron."

"He [Sharon] told me exactly what he would like to see in Hebron in the future." That vision included the settlement of Kiryat Arba and the area of Hebron around the ancient Biblical site, the Cave of the Patriarchs, now under Israeli control, said Schneller.

Sharon felt that the one-to-two kilometer area that links Kiryat Arba and the cave needed to be strengthened, recalled Schneller. Placing settlers in a large building overlooking the road between the two would do just that, he added.

Schneller also visited the revenants who moved into the building between Hebron and Kiryat Arba two nights ago - a building that was purchased for the revenants for $750,000.

I wonder if anyone recognized him. No worry. He won't be an MK too much longer. The polls have Achora dropping from 29 seats to somewhere between nine and eighteen.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:58 PM