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[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.
COMMENT
YESTERDAY'S pandemonium in the Knesset reinforces an embittered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's belief that the plenum is a zoo.
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.
In private conversation this week, Rabin made clear that he wished a little more of Washington's treatment of its president would rub off on Jerusalem.
One senses that after having to deal with Knesset opponents and protesters incessantly shouting at him since the Oslo Accords were signed, Rabin has become more contemptuous of those who bait him.
Having won a Nobel Peace Prize and been toasted around the world as a great figure of the 20th century, Rabin finds it even more demeaning to be subjected to howls of derision at home. He is becoming increasingly furious at having to deal with messy aspects of Israel's often shrill and disorderly democracy.
In private conversation, the prime minister sounds particularly scornful when listing some of his most vocal opponents in the Likud, who charge that he doesn't care enough about security.
Rabin starts ticking off the personal military backgrounds of several of his critics, saying they have gall to criticize him, when their own records are so poor. He charged some in the opposition with being "deserters" or "fascists."
To be fair, it should be noted that his views about his own cabinet ministers are not exactly laudatory, either.
These rivals and others charge it is undemocratic for him to avoid addressing the Knesset plenum.
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.
The prime minister is surely correct in believing that the public is not well served by circuses in the plenum. But the alternative should not be the avoidance of public scrutiny.
Instead, like in the US, he should subject himself to regular televised press conferences, at which he would be forced to respond to questions on political, military, economic, and social issues.
Rabin's willingness to do this would demonstrate that he is serious about wanting American political culture to rub off on Israel. And it would certainly serve the people better than confining himself to making angry remarks about rival MKs.
(Copyright 1995)