Israel’s new finance minister, Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid, gave his first Knesset speech as a cabinet minister on Monday, April 22, the opening day of the parliament’s spring session, and in defiance of longstanding tradition, he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. Longtime Knesset observers say they can’t remember ever hearing such a frontal, direct confrontation with the Haredi parties from the Knesset rostrum.
Beforehand, the session heard six opposition motions of no-confidence, including several attacks on Lapid’s government budget proposal. Meir Porush of the opposition United Torah Judaism party (the seated man with the white beard; to his right, with a black beard, is UTJ’s Moshe Gafni) complained about the impact of the budget on Israel’s security and also charged that the government was “starving children.” Instead of defending his budget proposal, Lapid delivered a stinging, sarcastic attack on the Haredi parties.
If you understand Hebrew, it’s worth watching. In fact, even if you don’t understand Hebrew well, you can watch it while following along with my translation, which appears after the jump. Lapid’s exchange with the Haredi lawmakers goes up to 7:15. After that he begins to respond to a no-confidence motion of MK Moshe Mizrahi of Labor. I stopped translating after a few sentences of this exchange, because it starts getting into budget technicalities.
For context, you can read this Haaretz report on the proposed cuts in government budgets for Haredim. Also worth reading: this column on the speech and its fallout by Jerusalem Post commentator Ben Caspit, as well as we this one by Haaretz Jewish World writer Anshel Pfeffer on the challenges facing Lapid and this one by Haaretz columnist Carlo Strenger looking at ways Lapid and the Haredim can find common ground. But above all, watch Lapid, Porush and UTJ’s Israel Eichler go at each other. It’s great theater.
And my translation:
The speaker of the Knesset, Reuven Rivlin, told Israeli reporters that the controversy over the mention of Jerusalem in the Democratic National Committee platform had “far-reaching significance” in harming the relationship between the Obama administration and Israel.
The deputy speaker of the Knesset disagrees.
In a conversation this morning in my office, Shlomo Molla, a member of the centrist Kadima party, argued that Israeli politicians should stay out of the American political fray.
“It is in the Israeli interest to be outside the American election, outside both sides’ propaganda. The president is the American people’s choice. It is not the Israeli people’s choice,” he told me.
Furthermore, he said it really doesn’t matter what American parties think about what is first and foremost a question for Israelis.
“Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” Molla said. “We decided that. I don’t mind if Democrats or Republicans say what they will. It is our decision.”
When I raised Rivlin’s remarks, Molla acknowledged their differences. “Rivlin is seventh-generation Jerusalemite,” he said of the speaker. “That’s his view. That’s okay.”
The Likud-Kadima agreement to form a unity government and cancel the early election makes all the sense in the world for Kadima. It’s arguably the smartest move by any Israeli peace advocate in a long time.
Newly minted Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz, who ousted Tzipi Livni in a primary upset just two weeks ago, inherited a party with 28 seats Knesset seats. It’s the largest bloc in the current house - one seat more than the Likud in the 120-seat legislature. But Kadima was headed for a crash in the coming snap elections. Polls showed Mofaz winning just 11 seats in September, the same as center-liberal newcomer Yair Lapid. Labor Party leader Sheli Yacimovich was polling at 18 seats (up from the 13 Labor won in the last election, which dropped to 8 after Ehud Barak’s defection). Thus the total center-left bloc was headed for 40 seats. Netanyahu was polling at a commanding 30 seats, and with Avigdor Lieberman pulling 15, plus assorted religious and far-right factions, Bibi was headed for a second term that would take him through 2016 essentially unchallenged.
By joining a unity coalition, Mofaz gives himself another year to build up a following and establish himself as an alternative to Bibi. From his perspective, his two rivals for leadership of the center-left, Yacimovich and Lapid, are not serious candidates. Both are former television journalists with little to no leadership experience and only the fuzziest familiarity with foreign and security policy. Mofaz is a former army chief of staff and former defense minister, active in civilian politics since 2003, highly regarded as a team leader, manager and policy wonk on domestic and security affairs. There have been talks in recent days about bringing the three together to form a joint list to oppose Bibi, but no agreement as to who would lead.
What specifically does tonight’s deal gain for Mofaz and Kadima?
Outrageous and, yes, hilarious: Knesset member (and onetime Arafat adviser) Dr. Ahmad Tibi got himself suspended for one week from Knesset debates (though not from votes) for reading an outrageous little poem he had made up in honor of fellow lawmaker Anastasia Michaeli. Michaeli, a member of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, was herself suspended for a month on January 9 after pouring a glass of water on fellow lawmaker Ghaleb Majadleh of Labor. Tibi immortalizes the incident by stringing together a bunch of word-plays and insults, ending with:
Anastasia, who has run amok, poured a glass [kos] of water on her colleague, and therefore I will call the child by its name: Kos amok.
Here’s Tibi:
Haaretz translates the full poem (except the last two words) here.
A clip of the water-pouring incident after the jump.
Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, flush from its victory in the boycott law debate, plans to bring another gag-rule bill to the Knesset floor for final vote next week, Ynet reports. The bill would create a Knesset investigative committee to examine the funding of “leftist” NGOs that “delegitimize” the Israeli army. Members of the Likud are trying to convince the party to hold off to let the passions over the boycott law cool down, but so far Yisrael Beiteinu is adamant, Ynet reports.
The Anti-Defamation League, by the way, became the first major national Jewish organization to criticize the boycott law. ADL issued a public statement today saying it is “concerned that this law may unduly impinge on the basic democratic rights of Israelis to freedom of speech and freedom of expression.” Also on record: the smaller but feistier Labor Zionist organization Ameinu, which called the bill “merely the latest round of the battle that the current government of Israel is waging against the democratic foundations of the State of Israel.”
A Yisrael Beiteinu lawmaker, Alex Miller, appears to be the first individual to sue under the boycott law, the Jerusalem Post reports. He announced today that he plans to sue lawmaker Ahmed Tibi of the United Arab List for a one-minute speech Tibi made to the Knesset Tuesday morning in which he protested the new law and said his party “calls on the public to break this law, boycott settlements, their products, and Ariel, take apart Ariel and send away its residents. They have no right to live on occupied land.” Does parliamentary immunity figure in here? Does Miller care?
Miller lives in Ariel, a city of 30,000 that sits, unlike most other urban settlement blocs, deep in the heart of the West Bank, providing the biggest single headache to negotiators drawing maps of prospective Israeli-Palestinian compromise.
I’m still reeling from the news yesterday that the Knesset passed the anti-boycott law. It’s reassuring to know that it’s not just Israelis on the left that are outraged by this. In this morning’s Maariv, Ben Caspit, one of Israel’s most prominent and influential columnists, tears into the new law, expressing much anguish — you can read the original Hebrew or a translation. He is not, by any stretch, sympathetic to boycotts, which he calls “childish” and “fairly silly.” Caspit was in fact the first Israeli journalist to publicize the findings of the right-wing group Im Tirzu, which painted an ominous picture of the human rights NGOs operating in Israel. This is no knee-jerk leftie. He’s just shocked about what happened yesterday:
The idea of a boycott law was not born in sin, but the baby itself yesterday emerged into the world as a bad thing. Yes, I too think that Israeli companies that won tenders to build in the Palestinian city of Rawabi on condition that they boycott the settlements should suffer from government sanctions. The government has the tools to do this. And I also think that theaters that receive government funding cannot boycott Ariel. In this matter too, there are tools to handle this. But when this law is also applied to private people, and when the determination as to “what is a boycott” is taken away from the court and given to bureaucrats, and when private citizens can be convicted for voicing their opinion, based on the determination of those bureaucrats and also to sentence them to pay compensation even without proving damage, this is fascism. This is a blatant and a resounding shutting of people’s mouths. This is a thought police. There is no choice but to use this word. Fascism at its worst is raging.
The Knesset gave final approval to the Boycott Bill after a stormy debate. Here is the Ynet.com report (in Hebrew). Here is the Jerusalem Post report (in English).
The final vote was 47 to 38, according to the Haaretz.com report.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not present for the debate or vote. Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin was present but did not vote. Ehud Barak’s five-member Atzmaut caucus stayed away after informing the coalition that it could not support the legislation. Netanyahu was reported over the weekend to be considering putting off the vote by a week, after intellilgence affairs minister Dan Meridor warned that passing it on the same day that the Quartet foreign ministers were meeting in Washington would cause diplomatic damage. The Quartet is meeting today to discuss ways to prevent a unilateral Palestinian statehood declaration at the United Nations this fall.
The bill outlaws economic, academic or cultural boycotts against Israel or Israeli institutions in Israel or in territories under Israeli control (that last in acknowledgment of the fact that according to Israeli law, the areas of Judea and Samaria, aka the West Bank, are not within the State of Israel). Initiators of such boycotts are subject to civil damages that may be recovered by the target of the boycott, without connection to any actual financial damage that may have been incurred.
More from the Haaretz.com report:
Even if you don’t agree with the aims of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement, there is great reason to be concerned about what is transpiring in the Israeli parliament at this moment (for Hebrew speakers, live proceedings can be seen here). Debate is underway over a bill that would impose harsh punishment and financial fines on anyone engaged in the nonviolent protest tactic of boycotting, directly or indirectly, Israeli goods or institutions (even if the boycott is not successful).
This is an odious law for the ways in which it chills free speech in Israel — if democracy’s greatest test is its ability to allow the harshest criticism, whether the flag burners or the boycotters, Israel will be failing if it passes this law.
But what makes it even worse is that it purposefully conflates protest against the occupation with protest against Israel. The text of the bill, courtesy of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, defines a “a boycott against the State of Israel” in the following way: “deliberately avoiding economic, cultural or academic ties with another person or another factor only because of his ties with the State of Israel, one of its institutions or an area under its control, in such a way that may cause economic, cultural or academic damage.” (emphasis mine)
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