On Sunday, Minister of the Economy Naftali Bennett wanted to send the army into the ports in the event of a strike; now he wants to "exterminate" them, but wraps this in the form of a pun. In the latest post on his Facebook, he wrote, "That's it. The ants are impossible. I came home and realized that something had to be done. They're in the kitchen, the living room, the guest room. The whole house is filled with ants. I called in the exterminator."
In Hebrew, the word for "ants" and "ports" is the same - nemalim. The reference to workers at Israel's seaports and their unions is unmistakable. Within 13 hours, Bennett's post had 11,000 likes and 700 shares, and the numbers are steadily climbing.
Bennett targeted the ports during the election campaign, when he called for a fight against powerful unions. On Sunday, Bennett said that he had drawn up a plan, "Code 1981", which featured sending the IDF into the ports in the event of a wildcat strike over the government's plans to build a new private-owned port. The plan's name was inspired by US President Ronald Reagan, who broke the air traffic controllers strike that year.
In response to the Facebook post, Bennett's office said, "Bennett came home from work to find a lot of ants on the tiles, and he wanted to share this with the surfers. In general, a bit of humor harms no one."
Labor market sources, especially at the seaports, are not laughing. A member of a port's workers committee told "Globes" today that he respects Histadrut chairman Ofer Eini's request to avoid responding to the government's initiatives in the ports, but that he wished to make a brief comment anyway. "I fear for Israel's fate with such a minister in the government. I strongly hope that this man is not serving on the security cabinet and making decisions. The port is less important."
The post is causing an outcry on the Internet. Prof. Yoni Yona of the Labor party responded with an especially brutal post of his own, entitled, "Ethnic cleansing at the ports," saying, "Bennett's invitation to exterminators to exterminate the ports workers marks an escalation in Naftali Bennett's battle against these workers. Bennett is stringing himself up from a high, monstrous, racist tree; his inspiration is fed from the racist Nazi strategy which held that if you want to prepare the ground to physically harm a human group, first symbolically shove it into the animal world. That is exactly what the Nazis did. They realized that if they could instill in the public the belief that there are no Jews, Gypsies, and other inferior people as part of the human race, but infectious rats, mice, cockroaches, which threaten the purity of the Aryan race, then it would be possible to win support to destroy them.
"Fine, let's not exaggerate. Bennett doesn’t intend to physically exterminate the ports workers. He only wants to harm their salary conditions. How does he propose doing that? He intends to propose a reform which will turn them into contract workers, or maybe prisoners in a labor camp. And if the prisoners - inferior animals - rebel, then call in the exterminators, the soldiers, and the trained dogs and set them against the 'ants' who entered the kitchen, living room, and guest room. That's how you carry out ethnic cleansing of 'ants'!"
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 23, 2013
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