Bennett Fires Back at Nasty Pundit, Warns Leftist Elites - Gil Ronen

by Gil Ronen

Nahum Barne’a says Jewish Home voters are ‘xenophobes, benighted slaves to racist rabbis.’ Bennett says old elites are on their way out.

Naftali Bennett

Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash 90  

 

Economics Minister and Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennett fired back Saturday evening at veteran reporter Nahum Barne’a of Yediot Aharonot, after Barne’a used nasty language to describe Jewish Home’s religious-Zionist constituency.

Barne’a called Jewish Home “xenophobes, benighted slaves to rabbis tainted with racism, religious fanaticism and nationalism, who squeeze out money from the teats of the government.”

“Nahum Barne’a, you should be a ashamed of yourself,” Bennett wrote on Facebook. “Let’s say this clearly for once. Mr. Barne’a and all those who think like you do (and your numbers are dwindling): your time is over. The incitement without response is over. It will not continue.

“The country that you know — in which the media, legal and academic elites belong to one side of the political map, the ultra-radical left — this nation has sobered up. The time in which you could spit out words of incitement in the newspaper and no one will reply is over. We will not remain silent, we are not ashamed, we have no feelings of inferiority. On the contrary.”    

“We have decided to raise our head in pride over who we are: people who love the nation, the Torah, the land,” he added. “We’ve decided to lift up the heads of all of the people in the country: to stop being on the defensive, to stop grovelling before our enemies, to stop remaining silent in the foreign press or in conferences in the US, respectable as they may be.”

“What were you thinking when you wrote that hate article? How are we any less good than you, Mr. Barne’a? Have we not sacrificed enough people for defense of the state to be accepted into the club?”

“Are we less educated? Are we less Israeli? What were you thinking, for G-d’s sake, when you sat down and called my voters ‘benighted xenophobes’?…You must have fallen asleep at the keyboard, and that is what came out,” wrote Bennett. “Shame on you.”

Last week, Barne’a published a rare apology for ascribing to MK Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home) a statement according to which she intends to take over the justice minister and “destroy” its current heads. He admitted that the statement was never uttered by Shaked. 


Gil Ronen

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/188602#.VI2Tj3uzchR

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