Publisher of the left-wing Haaretz newspaper Amos Schocken has stirred up controversy with a tweet he sent out Monday in which he referred to Orthodox Jews as "carriers of a most serious disease that could destroy Judaism."
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Schocken posted in a thread started by a different Twitter user, Hacapitalist Hazoem ("the outraged capitalist").
Schocken's tweet reads, "Once, the Left found the state and the religious [Jews] were normal people, who helped it. Today, religious Jews are carriers of a most serious disease, which could destroy Judaism and make it something monstrous."
After responses to his tweet in the same threat accused him of incitement, Schocken wrote, "I'm not looking for a pet 'dos' [Orthodox Jew], and the Orthodox today are no awakening, but rather a serious disease of condescending, arrogant, and racist exclusivity by Jews (a generalization that may not be justified for all of them, but is certainly justified for the politically significant part of them)."
MK Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionist party, tweeted, "When religious Zionism was a pet that 'helped' the lords of the lands on the Left, it was great, but when the Left got tired and lost its way and religious Zionism continues in its stead, carrying Zionism on its shoulders, then it's carrying 'a serious disease'… What condescension.
"Amos, we've thrown off, thank God, the need to earn grades from you and people like you. We'll take it from here," Smotrich wrote.
The original poster called Schocken's remarks "antisemitism dripping with self-hatred" and wondered what would happen if Smotrich or right-wing activist Itamar Ben-Gvir would use similar language when referring to Arabs.
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