Content area
[Yitzhak Rabin] cannot escape the sharp contrast between the visibly-intense partisanship of yesterday's raucous Knesset debate and another parliamentary event a few hours earlier, halfway around the world. President Bill Clinton was accorded great bipartisan courtesy when he made his State of the Union address. Indeed, Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich announced it was his "high honor" to introduce Clinton.
Sources say Rabin admitted privately that he favored a national address on television this week over an appearance in the plenum, because he believed that in the Knesset, hecklers would not allow him to finish a single sentence.
Rabin regularly briefs the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. But he has walked out of the plenum on a number of occasions due to jeering, and insists he is so fed up he does not want to address it anymore.