Lighter Side:
BIBI'S OTHER PROBLEM
MER - WASHINGTON - 6/16:
Bibi's other problem is a domestic one, a marital one, a personal
image one. And it's not his admission of having had an affair back when he was running for
his job of Prime Minister. Rather, its the El Al stewardess he married, his third time to
the alter incidentally if anyone is wondering.
Sara Netanyahu has abit of a reputation. She's regarded as a kind of
smiling but unstable female bull who carries her own china shop around with her. It's
widely believed she has done such things as hurl shoes at her domestic help, disrupt
high-level government meetings to "consult" with her husband about frivolous
matters, and practically "enslave" her former nanny, who is in fact suing her
for the same.
Israeli TV fans have watched Sara throw tantrums during interviews
-- one time accusing Knesset members of making passes at her and another time denigrating
Mrs. Peres as being so poorly educated she just washes the kitchen dishes and plays cards.
All these little problems with Sara kind of came to a head last
month when Bibi's trusted spokesman, David Bar-Illan, said the following while being
interviewed for the New Yorker Magazine in New York:
"Look Sara is not the most stable woman in the world. Now she
only appears at the appropriate things, receptions for children, things for the retarded,
or the disadvantaged. And it works. It's O.K. Finally it's become boring to Israelis. Had
she run half naked through the streets, it might have been something else, but it's 'under
control'."
After survival questions quickly mushroomed, Bar-Illan is still
around. True, when Bibi left New York last month after a fairly triumphant visit to the
U.S., Bar-Illan was told he wasn't welcome for this trip of Israel's Air Force One. But
that point made, Bibi is well aware that Bar-Illan is pretty valuable to him, having a
similar ability to his own to twist and distort political reality completely out of focus
and without much reference to veracity.
Sara is off to Africa soon, her maiden solo voyage, on a political
remake in anticipation of possible new Israeli elections no longer far away in the year
2000.
And what does all this say about Bibi? That's a matter beyond our
expertise.
[WP and Haaretz sourcing]
