Deputy Minister for Development of the Negev and Galilee Ayoob Kara on Monday called on Western democracies “to stop their intolerable procrastination, which allows the Assad regime to continue its massacres.”

Ayoob Kara, who is also a Likud MK, was visiting a tourism fair in the Druze villages, addressed the Syrian issue and declared that “the massacre committed by the Syrian regime in the town of Hula, where children and women were murdered, demands of the free world to take action and stop the intolerable lip service and foot-dragging which enables the Assad regime to continue the massacres, and, on the other hand, strengthens the presence of Al-Qaeda and other extremist organizations which exploit the vacuum left by Western countries, to take over the cities and strongholds of the opposition.”

More than 100 civilians, including many children, were killed since Friday in bombing by the Syrian army in Hula, a town in central Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR).

Deputy Minister intends to hold a meeting on the Syrian problem with President Putin during his visit to Israel next month.

A Druze, Kara is one of the most outspoken conservative Knesset members, and a strong supporter of Israel. He opposed the uprooting of thousands of Jews from Gush Katif, Gaza, is a hawk on the Iranian nuclear threat, and supports Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria.

With one exception, Labor MK Raleb Majadele, all the non-Jewish members of non-Arab Knesset factions are Druze.

On the eve of Yom HaShoah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet on Tuesday adopted the recommendation of the Prime Minister, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, Deputy Minister for Senior Citizen affairs Leah Nass and Knesset Finance committee Chairman Moshe Gafni, and decided to increase the budget for the basket of services for Holocaust survivors, setting it at NIS 225 million for 2012.

The Cabinet also decided that more than 8,500 Holocaust survivors will receive a NIS 580 supplement to their monthly support payments (which are currently between NIS 2,000-7,000) thanks to the NIS 50 million increase in support payments for needy Holocaust survivors.

At the start of Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “Today’s decision adds to the many actions we have taken in recent years on behalf of holocaust survivors. We want to remember those who perished, the six million brothers and sisters, and heed the lessons of the Holocaust in order to ensure the future of our people.”

According to Deputy Minister for Senior Citizen Affairs Nass, there are some 200,000 Holocaust survivors currently living in Israel, 70,000 of whom lived in concentration camps and ghettos. “In recent years, we have succeeded in reaching 120,000 survivors, helping them utilize their rights and receive the Government assistance to which they are entitled.”

Finance Minister Steinitz noted that the budget for the Holocaust Survivors Rights Authority, headed by Ofra Ross, currently stands at NIS 2.9 billion, up from NIS 1.5 billion in 2005, and added that the Rights Authority is currently dealing with almost 90,000 Holocaust survivors, up from some 51,000 in 2005.