Knesset won’t discipline MKs filmed in shouting match

The Knesset Ethics Committee on Wednesday said it would not discipline Likud MK Oren Hazan and Zionist Union MK Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin over a verbal fracas in the Knesset parking lot last month.

Hazan and Nahmias-Verbin both filed complaints with the committee, each accusing the other of provoking the confrontation.

“Although this incident disgraced the Knesset, it is an isolated one, and the committee has not found reason to take a side in the ‘he said she said’ game and impose disciplinary sanctions on either of the Knesset members,” the committee said in a statement explaining its decision.

Nahmias-Verbin said the January 22 outburst began when Hazan “started yelling at me, unprovoked, that I am subhuman.” Hazan, meanwhile, accused Nahmias-Verbin of calling him a “zero,” and “garbage” and “the punishment of the Likud.”

In a recording of the argument aired Wednesday by Army Radio, Nahmias-Verbin can be heard calling the scandalized Likud MK a “disgusting dog,” an outburst the committee could have seen as negating her claims that Hazan antagonized her.

At the time, Nahmias-Verbin said she became enraged when Hazan called her “subhuman,” but, in the new recording, Hazan can be heard saying “you’re not a human being,” which in Hebrew suggests bad manners or indecent behavior.

The recording was among the evidence submitted to the Ethics Committee, along with a video clip of the argument recorded by Hazan.

Hazan had filmed parts of the argument on his phone, and posted the clip to his Facebook page with the caption: “The ugly face of the left in all its glory.”

In the video, Nahmias-Verbin can be seen screaming at Hazan: “Don’t call me subhuman. Everyone thinks you are the punishment of the Likud.”

The Likud legislator responds, “Ayelet, don’t get angry. Have some water. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down. I can’t hear you. You aren’t screaming loud enough. Don’t you know how to speak in a dignified manner?”

Both lawmakers can be seen being held back by Knesset employees in the parking lot.

After the incident, Nahmias-Verbin took to Twitter, saying that when Hazan “refused my demands to get away from me and not speak to me, and even followed me to the parking lot, I responded harshly.”

“And yes, with yelling. These were the screams of 118 Knesset members,” she said, alluding to Hazan’s notoriety in parliament and his checkered past.

On Wednesday, Nahmias-Verbin apologized for the incident, and said the remarks were made in the heat of an argument.

Since entering the Knesset last year, Hazan has butted heads with numerous lawmakers and mocked one for her disability. He was suspended for a month in December from parliamentary and committee debates following a series of complaints leveled against him for ethical wrongdoing.