Knesset fashion police ban miniskirts

The Knesset has issued a revised dress code for employees and visitors, banning miniskirts and short dresses, officials said Wednesday.

The new conditions apply to all employees including custodians, parliamentary assistants, permanent employees, students and interns, according to The Marker.

“Entrance to the Knesset is permitted only in appropriate attire (no tank/spaghetti tops, cropped tops, shorts or three-quarter length trousers, ripped trousers, shirts with political slogans, short skirts and short dresses, flip-flops or open-back clogs). These rules apply to adults and youth aged 14 and over, ” a notice on the Knesset website reads.

“This a not a new code but, rather, a revision of a previous dress code, which circulated several weeks ago, and is intended to clarify, as much as possible, the ambiguity that existed in the past — while expressing sensitivity and attempting not to hurt the feelings of our visitors and guests,” Yotam Yakir, a Knesset spokesperson, told the Times of Israel.

A Knesset source told TheMarker business daily that the only change to previous regulations was the miniskirt rule.

“In the few weeks since the additional regulations, we have only had one incident where we had to ask a visitor to change her clothing, which she complied with and accepted completely,” the source said.

The source added that the Knesset fashion police would only enforce violations committed by their own gender.

“We have decided that female guards will comment on women’s dress and male guards will comment on men’s dress,” the source said.

In 2007, the Knesset declared jeans and sandals verbotten, though two years later then-Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, now the president, lifted the ban.

A record 33 of the Knesset’s 120 lawmakers are women, but earlier this month the Knesset came under fire over complaints that a new synagogue in the parliament could only fit about half of them, to say nothing of the hundreds of other women in the building every day.