Bibi Tries To Hide His Limp
So how is that the current Prime Minister of Israel has been using crutches for the past two months in order to move from place to place, and we haven’t even seen one photo? On Monday, Netanyahu arrived at the Knesset for the first time since he tore a tendon during a soccer match with teenagers during the filming for an international tourism TV show. Netanyahu had a slight limp, yet didn’t make a special effort to avoid the cameras.
So how has Netanyahu been moving around in his home for the past two months? What about on his way to the office or when he’s getting out of his car? Every Israeli recognizes the photograph of the Prime Minister climbing the stairs at the entrance to his office. In the past two months, Netanyahu has been using the elevator, exclusively. In order to get from place to place, he uses crutches, although public has never seen him do so. Netanyahu shared a video on his YouTube channel which shows him sitting with his leg in a cast, so why has he hid his crutches this whole time?
“I’m not diving into the depths of his soul. Maybe he felt uneasy about the situation? The fact that he continued to work and function, despite the situation, is praiseworthy,” said Yisrael Beiteinu’s Moshe Matalon, who is a disabled IDF veteran. “I could never hide my disability, but I respect anyone who acts according to their personal feelings,” he added.
But MK Ilan Galon (Meretz), whose legs have been paralyzed ever since he fell ill to polio at age 7, sees things in a more critical light: “Whoever told him to hide his limp and crutches gave him bad advice. I’ve been limping for 57 years and am not ashamed. You ought to be weak enough to feel the people around you, and strong enough to be the one to improve reality. Limping is so human, and whoever gave him such image-related advice to hide it has no understanding of the media. A man must be ashamed only of his actions, not of a situation that happened to him for which he is blameless. I believe that all disabilities need to come out of the closet, as it is a much more humane and truthful to be disabled than to display a fake perfection as prime minister.”
For more, go to Haaretz.com
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
