[UPDATE: Keen-eyed readers will notice the speech below was not delivered this week, but back in April, which I should have known, since we blogged about it already. Oops! Still, with Lapid in the news again this week for a lengthy interview with the Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth, in which he says that he has been pushing Bibi to be more proactive on peace talks, maybe it’s worth another look.]
Which country’s parliamentary proceedings are most likely to give rise to a subtitle that reads [general chaos]?
If you guessed Italy, not bad. But in this case, it’s Israel.
Yair Lapid, the new finance minister, gave his maiden speech in the Knesset this week. (The speaker referred to it as his “virgin speech,” which led Lapid to quip that it had been some time since his name and “virgin” had been mentioned in a single sentence.)
But the real meat of the speech — a subtitled highlight reel of which was helpfully compiled by Tablet’s Yair Rosenberg — was his spirited exchange with some haredi lawmakers. The crosstalk and shouting gets so intense at one point, translation becomes futile. Not too many right honorable gentlemen in this room.
