UK prime minister stands before broken Knesset
David Cameron's speech in the Knesset was lost within the battle at the plenum for three major bills, with the opposition boycotting the hastened debates and the public not understanding the significant issues at play.
Though this week’s Knesset debates occurred in the shadow of the opposition’s boycott of the coalition, one particular image will remain engraved in the collective memory. It is the image of British Prime Minister David Cameron standing at the Knesset podium. It is hard to tell if he was embarrassed or amused as he looked out over the ruins of what should have been a festive session in his honor.
Cameron received a detailed explanation before he arrived. He was told that his visit coincided with one of the most tense and turbulent days in Israel’s parliamentary history. Nevertheless, he still looked lost when he was forced to hear Chairman of the Labor Party and leader of the opposition Isaac Herzog dragging him into the intricacies of our local political squabbles, boasting to him that the coalition is tense and nervous because of him, and addressing him directly to inform him that Ministers Yair Lapid and Avigdor Liberman are “people who run one-man factions like a dictatorship.”
Cameron was forced into being an extra at the pivotal moment in a show of opposition power, which ultimately achieved nothing apart from putting its leaders in the media spotlight. On the contrary. If measured in terms of its consequences, all it really did was divert the public debate from the significant issues that lay behind the protest to the act of protest itself.
Herzog met Cameron in person. It is regretful that Herzog did not ask him to learn more about the very effective opposition tool called a shadow cabinet. This tool may require more work and efforts, but it is worth the trouble.
