Presidential Candidate Grills Ex-President Saakashvili for Anti-Semitist Statement
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Thursday, November 22
The Georgian Dream ruling party-backed presidential candidate Salome Zourabichvili has grilled former President Mikheil Saakashvili, who called a Jewish PR specialist Moshe Klughaft “Moshe the Jewish crook” during his interview for Rustavi 2 private broadcaster on Tuesday.
Saakashvili stated that the ruling party paid more than one million GEL to “swindler Klughaft” to help them in the second round of presidential elections.
“This statement is unequivocally anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism in all its forms should be condemned and never be tolerated in Georgia. They are absolutely unacceptable coming from the former president of this country.
“Anti-Semitism has never been a feature of Georgian politics and should never become so. Georgia is known around the world and in Israel for not having experienced anti-Semitism for centuries. Georgia is a country where Georgians of Jewish faith have lived side by side with fellow Georgians of all faiths and have been allowed to worship free of hate, discrimination and pressure,” Zourabichvili said.
Zourabichvili stated that the statement is an insult to Georgia and of Georgian values.
“As a presidential candidate, I take pride in Georgia’s tradition of tolerance and its culture of openness. As the future president of this country, I intend to uphold those values and take all necessary steps against anti-Semitism, hate speech and all forms of religious or ethnic discrimination,” she claimed.
Thirteen Georgian NGOs have also condemned Saakashvili's words and called upon him to refrain from making such statements.
They also referred to his team, the United National Movement party, to also condemn the statement by Saakashvili.
Zourabichvili and the United National Movement presidential candidate Grigol Vashadze will run in the election runoff on 28 November.
In the first round of elections, Zourabichvili received 0.9 percent more votes than Vashadze.
However, as none of them were able to gain at least 51 percent of votes, the runoff was scheduled.
