"Right wing zealot" Yehudah Glick is more liberal than all of his leftist detractors

Yehudah Glick is routinely referred to in Western media as a "zealot" for his efforts to allow Jews to have equal rights on the Temple Mount. His entrance to Knesset earlier this month brought a wave of tweets and articles calling him every name in the book and using him as further evidence that the current Israeli government is the most "right-wing extremist" government in history.

Today he showed that his critics are all idiots.

Knesset members from nearly every political party were set to propose a new law on Wednesday to halt arms sales to “gross human rights violators” around the world.

Meretz MK Tamar Zandberg has been leading the charge on that front, with help from activist attorney Eitay Mack and Professor Yair Auron of Israel’s Open University. Their proposals, however, have rarely gained traction, as Zandberg’s left-wing party is in the opposition, putting a majority out of reach.

To help raise this issue out of the mire of partisan politics, freshman MK Yehudah Glick of the Likud party stepped into the fray, bringing with him another 16 members of Knesset.

The proposal was written by Mack, but is based on a similar American law, Zandberg told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. It is an amendment to the existing law that would require the Defense Ministry to reject export licenses for Israeli companies selling technology or services to human rights violators.

Though the legislation is originally hers, Zandberg allowed Glick to take charge — and credit — for the renewed initiative. His name deliberately appears above hers on the proposal. “It’s not just alphabetical,” she said.

Glick, a polarizing figure in Israeli politics due to his campaign for the right to Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, also tried to distance the topic from partisan politics.

“I try to deal with things not based on the people, but based on the issue,” Glick told The Times of Israel over the phone on Tuesday. “This is an issue of the Jewish people. We have to be sure that nothing coming from Israel has anything to do with breaking basic human rights on a very severe level.

“There is no reason we should be arming people who are killing women and children.”

Yes, brand-new Knesset member Glick worked with the ultra-left Meretz party to rescue a proposal that is purely liberal and help it gain bipartisan support, something that no one else had done.

This should not be surprising. After all, Glick has campaigned for rights to the Temple Mount based on liberal concepts. But since he was supporting Jewish rights, his critics showed their own antisemitic tendencies by calling him names and tacitly condoning the Arab who tried to assassinate him.

In just a few weeks, Glick has already proven himself to be the most liberal member of Likud. But his critics will never admit that they were wrong about him because to admit that would also be to admit that perhaps Jews should have equal rights to the Temple Mount - and what self-respecting leftist would ever admit that?

Apparently, Yehudah Glick is more liberal than his critics from the Left are.

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