Leader of the far-right Noam party, Avi Maoz, who will be a member of the incoming government of Benjamin Netanyahu, said in an interview published on Thursday, that he will not allow the Gay Pride parade to take place in Jerusalem.
Maoz signed an agreement to join the coalition as deputy minister in the Prime Minister's Office with responsibility over immigration from Russia, non-governmental education programs and foreign NGOs.
He will head the Jewish National Identity program with an initial budget of NIS 100 million for the firts year, and a further NIS 50 million, in the year following.
"This is a disgrace," Maoz said of the parade. " I did not raise the matter in my coalition negotiations but I do not hide my views," he said.
In the interview, Maoz said he believes he is expressing the opinions of many. “These parades are an offence to the sanctity of Jerusalem and to the public sphere. You can protest if you want to, but not hold an abominable parade in the public spaces of the Jewish state. I feel like I’m expressing the opinion of most people living in Israel.”
Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to release a response to the Maoz interview. "The Gay Pride parade will take place in Jerusalem as it had in the past.
The radical Maoz had been outspoken about his views in the past, when he served as director general in the Housing Ministry, in the last Netanyahu government.
“We grew up in a family unit, a very simple concept,” Maoz said. “A decade go, if you would ask any child what a family was, he would tell you that it was a mother, father and children. We are in the midst of a cultural, spiritual war. Post modernism says that was was the truth is now a lie," he said.
"When a man says I am not a man, I am a women, and when a woman says she is a man, I say fine. So you say but to me that person is weird. There is truth and a lie, good and bad, a family and what is not a family," he said.
He went on to say that he is working against what he believes is threatening Israeli society, including the different concept of family. "I will fight this agenda," he said.
Maoz also talked about the role of women, in his view, claiming women's greatest contribution to Israel, is to marry and have children. "Don't go into the army," he told women.
He had also claimed the Education Ministry was teaching Israeli children "radical feminist perceptions," claiming the ministry was trying to change Hebrew by adjusting male, and female language.
At the Knesset earlier this week, Maoz asked the outgoing education minister if she did not understand what voters had said?
"Parents believe there is a separation between girls and boys on school trips, based on biology and not on how a child defines himself. How long will you hide what you are doing to kids, from their parent?" he asked.
"My government will not harm the LGBTQ community, or any rights of Israeli citizens," Netanyahu said in a statement, after the Maoz interview became public, causing outrage among some.
"We will work with mutual concern for the benefit of all citizens, to improve our lives. That is our mission," Netanyahu said.
This was not the first time that the incoming prime minister contradicted members of his emerging coalition.
In an interview to Bari Weiss on Common Sense on Wednesday, Netanyahu that the overriding policy of the government will be determined by his Likud party, "and frankly, by me," he said.
"Israel is not going to be governed by Talmudic law. We're not going to ban LGBT forums. As you know, my view on that is sharply different [from his coalition partners,] to put it mildly. We're going to remain a country of laws. I govern through the principles that I believe in," he said in response to a question about his far-right partners.