Tel Aviv mayor slammed for cutting Judea and Samaria off Israel’s map
Several leaders from Judea and Samaria expressed rage following reports that Tel Aviv’s Mayor Ron Huldai had given schools in his municipality maps of Israel that did not include Judea and Samaria and showed the Green Line as Israel’s border.
Israelis participate in a march to celebrate Israel’s 71st Independence Day near Havat Gilad in Judea and Samaria on May 9, 2019. Photo by Hillel Maeir/Flash90.
Gush Etzion Regional Council head Shlomo Ne’eman stated Tuesday that Huldai “refers to a line that is not relevant either to the reality on the ground or to the Israeli public consciousness.”
“Let’s recall that Huldai, who tried in the previous elections to appeal to the national arena, failed and resigned because he did not receive the trust of the general public in the Knesset elections, now, he is trying from his seat in Tel Aviv to establish the consciousness regarding the inheritance of our ancestors,” Ne’eman charged.
Huldai planned to run for the Knesset in the 2021 election as part of a new left-wing party named The Israelis but later announced that the party would not run, having failed to reach an electoral agreement with other parties.
However, “in one thing Huldai is right,” Ne’eman said, “in that he raises the need to apply sovereignty to Judea and Samaria, in which tens of thousands of Jews live as second-class citizens when any mindless person can decide to remove them from the map at any time.”
Oded Revivi, the head of the Efrat Council, said that the students of the schools in Efrat will visit Tel Aviv during the coming school year “even though the mayor of Tel Aviv doesn’t like us that much, as it turns out, or sees us as non-legitimate residents of Israel. We will come (without a passport) to get to know the first Hebrew city… we will learn where It all started… sorry, mistake, it started a little before… in places like Efrat, for example, with Rachel the Matriarch. Whenever we come to Tel Aviv to visit, we will remember where it all really started. Thanks to Huldai for reminding us.”
According to the Haaretz daily report on Huldai’s plan, the Education Ministry told the municipality on Monday that it can’t use the map, “not even as a poster on the wall.”
