Moshe Feiglin Video

Moshe Feiglin on Son's Condition on Israel Evening News
15 Av 5770 / July  26, '10


 
 Transcript of Film:

Announcer: Since his son was critically injured in a car accident, Moshe Feiglin finds no rest. The life of the right-wing activist who is known as a professional trouble-maker for PM Binyamin Netanyahu now revolves only around the struggle for the life of his injured son. Our reporter, Nadav Peri, met Moshe Feiglin for a different type of conversation.

It's a different world, a totally different world. It is not intensive care, just the opposite.

Yesterday David Feiglin was moved to the children's rehabilitation ward in Tel Hashomer, and with him, his parents, who do not leave his bedside.

Here there aren't beeping monitors and noise and another emergency every minute.

After a month in intensive care in the Schneider hospital, wavering between life and death, now they have managed to stabilize the condition of the 16 year old youth.

Man: All the best, may you have blessing and success. May we hear good news, with G-d's help.

Thank you.

Now the parents are waiting for him to open his eyes and regain consciousness.

A car made a serious traffic violation and rammed the car that he was in off the road, and he…from what I understand they smashed into an electric pole.

The first reports of the son's accident caught him on a routine day in Tel Aviv. As soon as he heard of the accident, Moshe Feiglin got in his car and drove to the hospital. During those moments, he had no idea of the seriousness of his son's condition. If he had turned on the radio during those minutes, he would have known.

It was on all the media for an hour while we still did not know.

The media reported that your son was injured while you did not yet know?

That he was seriously wounded, while I did not yet know. Yes.

Since the accident, he has set aside the public activism that has made him such a well-know figure, one of the most prominent spokespersons of the Right in the past fifteen years –

Will the Likud once again be a Likud of disengagement, a Likud of expulsion?

Even in the difficult moments of his life, he continues to cling to faith in the Creator of the world and to remain optimistic, but without trying to escape reality.

What did I say after a while? We got a full-length film.

We are still in the coming attractions, more or less.

Someplace in the promo.

Are there tears in this film?

Of course, of course, what a question.

There is crying, there is…
There is the need to enlist a tremendous amount of emotional strength. A lot of emotional strength. It is not simple.

I remember the first time that David blinked his eye once.

When was that?

After a week or two.

We still need a lot of prayers, he is still unconscious.
But that was tremendous joy. And then I asked myself, what about all the times that you blink all day long? Do you also say thank you then?

For years he represented, with fluency and determination, an assertive, if not hard-line – ideology.

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Now the tragic circumstances have made him re-think the method of conduct that typified him during his years as a political activist.

You get a different perspective on people as people.

I think that in the past I slipped, not that I wanted to, I never looked for it, but the dynamics led me sometimes in the past to the personal aspect. And today, in a more conscious way, I run away from that.

These circumstances bring upon a person unusual meetings that would probably not take place under other conditions. Never mind the fact that the son is hospitalized just a few meters from the building in which Ariel Sharon, another bitter enemy against whom Feiglin fought throughout the years, is hospitalized. Think of the number of Arab doctors who treated the young David Feiglin in the last four weeks.

Could it be that you got a different perspective on our neighbors?

As human beings, they are excellent people. Truly excellent people. But the essence of the conflict remains the same. When you receive help from an Arab doctor, then yes, then you realize, you feel it in your gut.

Did you enter into political discussions with the Arab staff or you didn't get into that?

A drop, a drop – a tiny bit. With a lot of mutual respect – a lot of mutual respect.

While David continues to struggle with his head injury, Moshe Feiglin plans his gradual return to life and if we can judge by his words, the tragedy that he experienced changed him, softened him.

Look, just like David is rehabilitating, I also have to rehabilitate, because we all have a role.

You are remaining in public life.

Definitely remaining in public life and remaining in the Likud. And I hope that I will find the way to channel my activism from within it in a more serene manner. I am not fighting against anybody.

The tones suddenly sound much different than the tones that we heard from you, for example, a few months ago when there was the vote in the Likud Central Committee.

Yes, that's right.
I hope that, as a result of this extremely not simple trial that I am experiencing, I will find some things that I can improve – to relate less to people's shortcomings and more to the reality that I want to change. I don't want to fight against anybody. And that is in David's merit. David has done good for me.
 

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