“There’s a reason they’re picking on me. I am the symbol of the Likud,” Knesset member Oren Hazan said on a Dec. 13 Army Radio morning show. His mood was exuberant. He was full of self-confidence as he noted that the reason the media is picking on him and covers him so extensively is because “The prime minister and I are members of the same party. We’re not only colleagues, but friends, too.”
In Hazan’s imaginary parallel universe, “picking on” is just the right term to describe the coverage of all the scandals — the suspicions that he committed a felony, the disdain that he shows for the Knesset itself and his fellow Knesset members, and in fact the entire gamut of his bullying behaviors. On Dec. 3, the State Comptroller’s report determined that Hazan submitted a false affidavit, in which he claimed that he did not spend any of his own money on the Likud primary elections, when he actually spent tens of thousands of shekels of his own money. Under Israeli law, that is a felony with a maximum sentence of three years in prison. It is quite possible that a criminal investigation will be launched against him.
