Deborah Amos:
Today, what you saw was members of parliament brought the fight to the floor of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, Naftali Bennett was the first one to speak and he couldn’t do it. It was very clear that it was organized. There were Likud members who were shouting. There were other people from the Orthodox ultra-Orthodox parties who walked out. I mean, in shouting so loud that Naftali could not speak, it was supposed to be a 15-minute slot. It ended up being almost an hour. Eventually, there were ushers who escorted the loudest out of the chambers, but it was chaos in there. And finally, Bennett said something like, the strength of your screams reflects the strength of your failure. He got into the fray as well then. Next up was Netanyahu, which was a flame-throwing speech. He essentially called Naftali Bennett a liar, a vote thief, a danger to the state of Israel that he would be too weak to stand up to the Americans, to the Iranians, even to the Palestinians. And he essentially said, we will be back and we will be back soon. We’re not going to shrink back and be quiet. This is not a presidential system like ours where the president goes off to Texas and is quiet. That’s not how this works. So Netanyahu will remain the head of the opposition and he will be as loud as he has been, as divisive as he has been. Now, there are some commentators here who say that is exactly what may keep this coalition together and keep them in their seats because they have this guy who is right over their shoulders and will yell at them for everything they do. And it may keep them together. You know, if you don’t hang together, you will hang alone.
