An amusing exchange took place between chairman of the opposition Yair Lapid and Finance Committee chairman Moshe Gafni on Monday, when in a rare collaboration, Lapid attended a committee meeting to support a vote nullifying tax exemptions for a Christian messianic organization.

Lapid said that his support of the measure was not due to opposition toward Christianity but against missionary activities among Jews, which is against his belief in the continued existence of the Jewish people after so many of them were decimated in the Holocaust.

“I came here to say that at times, collaboration crosses the standard political lines. And for those of you who believe in life after death, you have regards from my father,” Lapid said, causing the committee members to burst out laughing.

Lapid was referring to his late father, politician Tommy Lapid, who held extreme anti-religious views but nevertheless, supported limiting the activities of missionaries, partially due to the fact that he was a Holocaust survivor.

Gafni then described how he was once invited to a political program about missionaries together with Tommy Lapid. Despite arriving at the program ready to express his outrage against missionary activities, he ultimately couldn’t get a word in edgewise since Lapid dominated the show, decrying missionary activities and engaging in fierce debate with missionary representatives on the program.

“He was a Holocaust survivor and he said: ‘It’s not enough that you tried to destroy us in Europe? You’re coming here and again not allowing us to live?'” Gafni said.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)