Feb. 17, 2009
Danny Ayalon, former Israeli ambassador to the US and a member of the Israeli parliament on the “Israel our Home” ticket, said he did not agree with the harsh policies against Christian volunteers living in the Holy Land.
“We should be ore open to our Christian brothers,” Ayalon told me in an interview. “Yisrael Beitenu (Israel our Home) will push for making relations between Christians and Jews and ISraelis much closer, much stronger.”
Many Christian volunteers are now subject to tighter visa rules which have required many to leave the country with just two-weeks notice. The sudden enforcement of an old rule on the books has slashed the staffs at Christian outreaches in Israel by one quarter to one half at various institutions in the past six months.
Ayalon said Israel should recognize Christian Zionists as some of the best friends of the Jewish state.
The right-wing party picked up momentum during the campaign with the addition of well known politicians like Ayalon and conservative Uzi Landau who defected from Likud.
“I want to zero in on what distinguishes us from the other parties and why we are becoming so popular,” Ayalon said at a debate with members of the four top parties prior to the election. “We believe Israel should be a normal country. (We want to) resume normalcy... and become a country like every other country.”
“Normalcy” would require a loyalty test to the State of Israel as a Jewish State. Ever since party leader Avigdor Lieberman proposed a “loyalty test” to determine the identity of citizens, presuming many Israeli Arabs and Arabs who don’t have citizenship in Israel would not side with the Jewish state, the party was labeled racist. Ayalon, however, compared the situation in Israel to Spain when the high court there ruled that parties opposed to Spain itself could not run in national elections
“We want the same yardstick here,” Ayalon said referring to the Arab parties who are represented in the Knesset yet oppose Israel and work with the Palestinian government.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment