First-time Knesset members Yehiel Tropper (Blue and White), Meirav Cohen (Blue and White) and Gadeer Kamal-Mreeh (Blue and White) delivered their inaugural speeches in the Knesset plenum on Tuesday and presented the issues they plan to advance in parliament.
 
MK Tropper mentioned in his speech that his grandmother Hana had made Aliyah to Israel with his grandfather Shmuel “out of purely Zionist motivations,” and “lived the force of Zionism until the day she died.”
 
“She always reminded us to appreciate our country and not take it for granted. She knew to remember all that we occasionally forgot: the miserable and incomplete life of Jews in the Diaspora before good people founded the state, and to be impressed each and every day by the magnificent enterprise that was established here, and which is maintained and continues to grow here.”
 
MK Tropper added that “Over the past few years, there has been a continuous and worrying erosion in the concept of mamlachtiut. A combination of interests, political and personal considerations, radicalization and harsh rhetoric are forming cracks in Israeli mamlachtiut. The broad Israeli center, which is supposed to carry the banner of mamlachtiut, suffers constantly from a sense of inferiority. It should be said in a clear voice: restraint and mamlachtiut are not a compromise. Restraint has always been [an essential part] of Zionism. Pragmatic idealism. A worldview of the center. It is not a bit of the right and a bit of the left. It is the understanding that agreement and the shared good are more extensive than the disagreements. It is a sober, moral and idealistic outlook on this amazing project called the State of Israel.”
 
“It is possible to be a patriot and be moved by the flag and anthem, and at the same time promote equal rights regardless of religion, race or gender. It is possible to fight for allowing every person to live according to his/her beliefs while looking for connections with the Haredi public and the Arab public, out of a sense of profound partnership. It is possible to support entrepreneurship, creativity and a free economy, yet fight for strong and established public systems, workers’ rights and social justice,” he said.  
 
MK Cohen dedicated her speech to the struggle against elder abuse and exploitation, and mentioned several elderly people, including some Holocaust survivors, who had been swindled out of hundreds of thousands of shekels by various companies.
 
She said the Campaign Against the Exploitation of the Elderly, which she leads, has dealt this past year with hundreds of cases of elder exploitation. “Each of these cases remains etched in my heart and motivates me to take action, and it is on behalf of those people that I am here,” MK Cohen told the plenum. The frequent cases of elder exploitation in Israel “should concern us,” she said. “Something in us has been damaged. If we behave so cruelly towards the generation that raised us and built this country, then we have lost our way.”
 
“I expect and hope that in the fight to eradicate this ugly phenomenon I will find partners from all the parliamentary groups which comprise this House. I believe that caring for the elderly population should be the common denominator of us all.”
 
MK Kamal-Mreeh, the first Druze women to ever serve as an MK, said, “This is a historic moment for me. You are listening to my inaugural speech, the first female Druze member of Knesset Yisrael. This is a great honor for me, and a great challenge.”
 
She said that as the country progressed, it absorbed millions of new immigrants, “yet somehow we, the Druze, natives of this land, who built this country together with the Jews, have been left behind. We are behind in almost every field.”
 
“It is very worrying to see how the leaders of the country, with gradual, calculated yet dangerous measures, are changing the character of our country; how its judicial institutions are attacked; how the basic principles on which it was founded are being trampled,” MK Kamal-Mreeh said.
 
“I was amazed to see, as a news anchor, how I opened the edition every evening with the various cases against the prime minister; how the concepts of bribery, hearing and indictment took over the public discourse. I am amazed to see each time anew how ‘beautiful terms’ such as the French law are slowly being seeped into our consciousness; and how [these terms] are wrapped in baseless arguments and then dispatched to the public. It begins with the repeal of the limit on the number of ministers, the ‘override clause’ and the immunity law, and slowly, while some of are not even paying attention, we get a tyrant in the making. I will fight this as an MK and, first of all, as a citizen of the state."
 
Addressing Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, which was passed in the 20th Knesset, MK Kamal-Mreeh said, “We know we live in the nation state of the Jewish people. We respect the state and its symbols, but we do not understand how the word equality is absent from this basic law; how I or my children are not mentioned in it.”
 
“Look at me, those who legislated the nation-state law. Look at me, Avi Dichter, the advocate of this law; look at me, prime minister; am I a citizen who is not worthy enough in your eyes to be mentioned and to receive equal civic rights in the state of the Jews? Are my parents, who raised me on the love of this land, second-class [citizens]? Does equality for the widows and orphans of the 431 fallen Druze IDF soldiers exist only in the cemeteries? I am ashamed. We were told that the nation-state law was symbolic, that is has no practical implications, but this is false. We were told equality is anchored in Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, but the wise people among us know that this is also false. My first bill will be an amendment to the nation-state law.”