No insults, pleads Israeli politician

JERUSALEM -- An Israeli politician wants 68 insults -- from Nazi to poodle -- banned from the Knesset.

Ethics Committee chairwoman Colette Avital has circulated the list to her colleagues, suggesting that the words should be banned under threat of reprimand and suspension.

"There is more verbal violence now than in the past," said Avital, a longtime diplomat who served as Israel's consul-general in New York and joined parliament in 1999. "The public is getting tired of us."

Avital, recently named chair of the Ethics Committee, instructed the committee's secretary to scan debate transcripts and compile a list of offensive epithets.

The secretary came up with 68 -- from blood-drinker and boor to fascist, filth, eye-gouger, Jew-hater, Nazi, Philistine, terrorist, traitor -- and poodle.

Her fellow politicians say they have been known to use strong language, but do not want to be censored.

"Parliament is not a manners school," one of the offenders, Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, grumbled Thursday.

"It's a place where people argue, get heated up and then go out to the hall and drink coffee together."

In the early days of the Knesset, Israel's founding fathers would lapse into Yiddish in the heat of battle, branding a rival "vagabond!" or "nish gitter!" -- roughly meaning "no-goodnik."

Over the years, Israel's political climate has grown more divisive, pitting Arabs against Jews, religious against secular, immigrants against veteran Israelis.

Speeches are often drowned out by shouting legislators leaping out of their seats, pointing fingers and running about the chamber.

In a survey commissioned by the Knesset, fifty percent of respondents said they were embarrassed by the parliament, while 17 percent were proud. The poll of 1,145 Israelis had a 2.9 percent margin of error.

Avital said she might agree to condense the list to only truly inflammatory words.

"If I call someone a poodle, I don't think this is terrible either," she conceded. "But I don't think in the Israeli Knesset we should call each other Nazis."

However, Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Arab lawmaker said he does not need protection from insults and will keep calling his political rivals "fascists" and "racists" where appropriate.

Lawmaker Yosef Lapid, a secular rights crusader who frequently goads religious lawmakers, said freedom of expression must not be curtailed.

"The righteous are more dangerous than the sinners," he said, managing to put down Avital without using a single word on her list.