Peretz: Union boss with a dock worker's mouth
צילום: מיכאל קרמר
Peretz blows top at Labor HQ
The firestorm within Labor refuses to die down; debate about the unification of One Nation and Labor send flames even higher
TEL AVIV - Histadrut union boss and One Nation party leader Amir Peretz threw a fit Tuesday when he learned that a legal technicality prevented him from jumping lists and running for Labor chairman.
“You contemptible piece of trash, you human filth, you nobody. Who are you to prevent me from running?” Peretz screamed at Labor legal advisor Eldar Yaniv, in a meeting at the party’s Tel Aviv headquarters.
According to a legal paper prepared by Yaniv and presented to central committee members at the beginning of May, Peretz could not run for chairman unless his tiny party first unifies with Labor.
That could be done in a day.
The complications
However, Peretz first needs the signature of Knesset Member and current Labor faction leader Eitan Cabel before the two parties unite, and Cabel has refused to do so without permission from Yaniv and party treasurer Moshe Cohen.
Hence, the Tuesday meeting.
Peretz met for three hours with Cabel, Cohen, and lawyer Yossi Katz to see if the Labor leader could sign off on unifying the two parties. However, Yaniv and Cohen said it was impossible without the okay of the Labor party convention, only scheduled to meet at the end of the month.
At that point, Peretz exploded with curses and stormed out of the meeting, slamming the door.
Sources close to Peretz said he just called Yaniv "a liar."
Not the first time
Just yesterday, Peretz got into another verbal sparring match with Knesset Member (and former Mossad chief) Danny Yatom who fired off at each other during a party meeting.
The circus began when assembly chairman Yatom, referring to a scandal over some phony Labor party membership applications linked to the Peretz campaign, mentioned the forms had not yet all been checked.
“You don’t scare me,” Peretz responded. “I don’t care one bit about your party assembly.”
Yatom shot back, “You’re a pipsqueak, a nobody. You don’t belong here. Who are you anyway? The only projectile that’s flown past your ear is a ping-pong ball. You never went out on night patrols in the army.”
