Verbal fighting match breaks out after Likud MK Oren Hazan calls Zionist Union MK Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin "subhuman."
By LAHAV HARKOVUpdated: JANUARY 13, 2016 03:28MKs duke it out in Knesset parking lot
MK Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin (Zionist Union) filed an ethics complaint against MK Oren Hazan (Likud) Tuesday, the day after the latter called her “subhuman” and the two got into a shouting match in the Knesset parking lot.A video Hazan posted on his Facebook wall shows Nahmias-Verbin pointing and shouting, “Don’t come near me! You won’t call me subhuman! Disgusting person! You are the Likud’s punishment!” while Hazan repeatedly tells her to relax and have a drink of water. But more than one person present said the clip was taken out of context, and the Likud MK had been taunting Nahmias-Verbin throughout Monday evening.Late Monday night, a distraught Nahmias-Verbin told The Jerusalem Post that earlier, in the plenum, while she was speaking about the need for “politics of reconciliation,” Hazan repeatedly interrupted her, but she ignored him.More than once, while Nahmias- Verbin spoke at the podium, Hazan demanded that she condemn NGO Breaking the Silence, even though she is one of the lawmakers who signed a petition last month opposing the organization. Breaking the Silence collects testimony from former IDF soldiers, many of whom claim that Israel committed war crimes, and has long been controversial for its questionable methodology, frequently unverifiable allegations, and its practice of airing its claims abroad instead of bringing them to the Israeli legal system.At the exit to the MKs’ parking lot, Nahmias-Verbin recounted that Hazan said to her: “I thought you were human, but you’re not, you’re subhuman.”“I blew up at him. It wasn’t nice.But he crossed the limit,” the Zionist Union MK said later. “I told him the Knesset was better without him [when he was suspended for a month]. I’m not used to being talked to like this.”“I don’t fight with other MKs. I’m not like that. I’m not happy that I shouted,” she added.Nahmias-Verbin said she has no problem working with members of the coalition, and she often does, but Hazan “is impossible to work with; he is a serial troublemaker.”Two other Zionist Union MKs, Yoel Hasson and Revital Swid, can be seen in the video clip. Hasson wrote on Twitter, “Of course it does not represent what happened for 15 minutes. If MK Swid, and I, and Knesset security chief [Yosef Griff] were not there, it could have deteriorated further.”
Hazan did not respond to requests for comment, and wrote on Facebook that Nahmias-Verbin’s behavior was “a horror show by an opposition backbencher... who is trying to piggyback on me to get headlines.”The Likud MK wrote that he demanded that left-wing MKs condemn Breaking the Silence and also Ezra Nawi – a far-left activist who was filmed by a hidden camera bragging that he turns in Palestinians who sell land to Jews, and then they are tortured and killed by the Palestinian Authority.“Left-wing MKs didn’t like hearing the truth,” Hazan said. “Watch, without filters and the biased media twisting the facts, how a serious debate turned into a tantrum... the ugly face of the Left in all its glory.”Hazan returned last week from a month-long suspension from plenum and committee debates, to which the Ethics Committee sentenced him after many cases of name-calling and poor parliamentary behavior. His actions included shouting multiple times at MK Karin Elharar (Yesh Atid), who has muscular dystrophy and is wheelchair- bound, because she had difficulty pressing a voting button and asked the lawmaker sitting next to her, MK Esawi Frej (Meretz), for help.Though Hazan was allowed to vote during that month, he did not do so.Last year, a Channel 2 report alleged that, while managing a casino in Borgas, Bulgaria, Hazan would procure prostitutes and crystal meth for its Israeli patrons. A Channel 10 report alleged that Hazan sexually harassed waitresses at a bar he managed in Tel Aviv.