Teveria Mayor Comments Against Chareidi Community Sparks Uproar

Ron Kobi, Teveria’s newly elected mayor, said in an interview with Army Radio on Sunday that “I want the chareidim to continue to grow – outside of Teveria. Today the chareidim are 22 percent in the city, we can not allow them to reach 30 percent in the city.”

In the interview Kobi, an anti-chareidi activist, continued to incite against the chareidim and expressed the hope that they would diminish in his city. “At every chance that I can stop the construction for the chareidim , I will do it,” he promised. “I want Teveria to remain as it is now.”

His election campaign was accompanied by incitement against the chareidim. In the end, he won nearly 50 percent of the vote in a landslide victory. His campaign focused mainly against the chareidim and he defeated the current mayor Yossi Ben David, who Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu backed and supported.

During the campaign he even used a slogan: “Preferably an Arab city than a Chareidi city.”

Chair of United Torah Judaism faction MK Rabbi Menachem Eliezer Mozes said in response to Ron Kobi: “Your words are a shame and disgrace! Teveria was chareidi even before you were born! Would you dare use the same words about Ethiopians or about Russians? Your words are anti-Semitic and shocking. ”