‘Answer like a good girl’: Likud’s Zohar hurls abuse at coalition whip Silman

The Knesset Arrangements Committee was again the scene of jarring arguments Monday, with opposition lawmakers throwing insults at the committee chair, during a meeting on extending the so-called “family reunification” law for Palestinians.

When MK Idit Silman of the Yamina party, who also serves as coalition whip, tried to convene the meeting, she was shot down by Likud faction chair MK Miki Zohar, who had entered the meeting late and demanded to be updated on what he had missed.

Told by Silman to ask his colleagues sitting next to him rather than interrupt the entire debate, Zohar said, “Who are you anyway? Answer like a good girl.”

“I won’t answer you ‘like a good girl,'” Silman shot back. “You came late… you come late and yet you disrupt the committee. You should be ashamed, Miki Zohar.”

Later on during the meeting, Zohar apologized to Silman for his comment, saying it came “in the heat of the moment.”

Lawmakers from the coalition, including Blue and White’s Pnina Tamano-Shata and Labor’s Ram Shefa, condemned the remark as “chauvinism.”

The comments came just days after MK Meir Porush, from the opposition United Torah Judaism party, called Silman “a little girl.”

“Don’t call me a little girl, I’m not a little girl,” she fired back at Porush during last week’s heated committee meeting.

Responding Monday to Zohar’s comments, Silman said on Twitter that the “kindergarten tactics” being used against her were not random and were part of “a clear method with a guiding hand.”

Silman has been the target of threats over the last month, as some on the right have accused her and the rest of the Yamina party of betraying the right by forming a unity government to oust Benjamin Netanyahu after 12 years of rule.

She said Sunday that she had received phone calls and text messages with explicit threats to the lives of her and her family earlier in the day.

“The threats against me and my family are the result of the planned and unprecedented attacks by opposition members. Put an end to this dangerous and unceasing incitement,” she said in a statement.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid called on the opposition, now led by Netanyahu, to condemn the threats, saying they crossed a line.

“The threats against the lives of Idit Silman and her children are a red line and I call on all members of the opposition to condemn them,” Lapid tweeted. “Disputes between the opposition and coalition are logical and accepted, but messages to her cellphone are dangerous and a crime.”

Earlier in the month Silman faced a wave of protests outside her home and repeated threats as Yamina decided to join a coalition with seven other right-wing, centrist, left-wing and Arab parties.

Netanyahu, Lapid spar over reunification bill

The debate on legislation extending a law barring Palestinian family reunification was held Monday after it was pulled from the agenda a day earlier due to an ongoing dispute that threatens its passage.

The provision, which has been renewed annually since 2003, blocks the automatic granting of citizenship to Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens. The new government is internally divided over the issue, and while most opposition lawmakers support the law in principle, they have refused to step in to back it, in the hopes of embarrassing the new government. The current legislation expires on July 6.

The coalition and opposition heads on Monday traded strong accusations over the law. At a Yesh Atid faction meeting, Lapid called on the opposition to “come to its senses” and vote in favor of the extension.

“Be an opposition to us, the government; don’t be an opposition to the State of Israel and to Israeli citizens,” Lapid said.

Lapid added that when he was in the opposition, he supported the Palestinian spouse order on the grounds that it was necessary to guarantee Israel’s Jewish character and prevent terror supporters from moving to Israel.

In his Likud faction meeting, Netanyahu said he will only back the extension, if on the same day, the government passes a quasi-constitutional Basic Law on immigration to Israel, claiming the temporary order — which he extended repeatedly for more than a decade — was insufficient.

“If the government cannot pass this law, it has no right to exist,” said Netanyahu, whose successive governments similarly didn’t pass such a law for over a decade.

Coalition party heads responded by saying in a statement that “Netanyahu cannot let go of his bad habit of trying to paralyze the country; we prefer to focus on creating solutions.”

At a meeting of the Knesset Arrangements Committee on Sunday, Silman postponed the vote on advancing the bill to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee when it became clear that there was no majority to do so. Members of the opposition began shouting in response: “Cowards, cowards, cowards!”