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From smoking weed to sexual harassment, Israel's Knesset members struggle with scandal

Knesset member Yinon Magal is accused of improper behavior, Knesset member Oren Hazan mocked a handicapped colleague, and Sharon Gal had to resign from the Knesset in order to avoid a scandal.
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At his installation speech as a legislator at the Knesset on May 4, Yinon Magal from HaBayit HaYehudi quoted a verse from Pirkei Avot (Avot a:a), a compendium of Jewish ethical teachings. It tells how the Torah was first handed to Moses at Mount Sinai, who then handed it over to Joshua, who gave it to the Jewish elders, who in turn passed it on to the prophets, who entrusted it with Knesset Gdola — the Great Assembly — a supreme body of Jewish scholars. Later Magal described how he had read the verse to one of his five children, explaining the huge responsibility that the members of the Great Assembly played in Jewish life and their impact to this very day.

In the wake of the alleged sexual harassment affair that was revealed Nov. 24, one cannot but wonder how a person can be so oblivious when he speaks ad nauseam about family values, Jewish ethics and the fantasy of building of a new temple, while allowing himself to behave so offensively toward the women around him. Having been stripped of his position as the faction’s chairman following a harsh nightly tete-a-tete with his party’s leader Naftali Bennett, Magal will be remembered by the public mainly as a joke, whether he completes a full term or whether he decides to step down. Unfortunately, however, the joke is at the public’s expense.

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