(Israeli) Labor MKs say they are sick of (party leader Amram) Mitzna

The Jerusalem Post ^ | 24 February 2003 | GIL HOFFMAN

[anotherview]

Feb. 24, 2003 Labor MKs say they are sick of Mitzna By GIL HOFFMAN

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After only three months on the job, Labor Party Chairman Amram Mitzna has already overstayed his welcome and many Labor MKs cannot wait for his ouster, senior party officials said, following a Labor faction meeting on Monday that erupted into a shouting match for the second day in a row.

While Sunday's meeting was stormy from the start, Labor MKs talked peacefully for two hours on Monday, before Mitzna began insulting the MKs and blaming them for the party's downfall.

Mitzna's erstwhile rival, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, pleaded with Mitzna to stop blaming him publicly for the deaths of Israelis killed when he was defense minister. He vowed to serve Mitzna faithfully if he would stop saying that serving in the previous government doomed the party.

Other MKs also spoke about how they would be willing to help Mitzna rebuild the party in the opposition, and the need for unity in the faction.

But Mitzna rejected the MKs offers of goodwill, charging that if they would have given 10 percent of the effort they were pledging during the election, the party would not have fallen so far.

Mitzna said he reserved the right to say anything and reiterated his opinion that joining Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's coalition caused the party irrevocable harm. Upon hearing this, Ben-Eliezer left the meeting and slammed the door behind him.

"Why do you have to keep on doing that?" MK Ephraim Sneh asked Mitzna. "Enough already. We want to be your faction, but it cannot continue this way."

MKs Shimon Peres, Shalom Simhon and Avraham Burg backed up Sneh, with Burg advising Mitzna not to act like Ehud Barak, who constantly insulted Labor's MKs and ended up losing his job.

After the meeting, MKs said they are fed up with Mitzna's behavior. They accused him of behaving like a general and acting infantile by blaming everyone but himself.

According to the party's constitution, leadership elections must be held within 14 months of a loss in Knesset elections. It is still unclear when the election will be, but MKs said they are already counting down the days.

[ambrose]

hee hee hee.... know the saying about never getting in the way of an enemy that is in the process of hanging himself?

[goldstategop]

Amram Mitzna is unelectable and an Extreme Leftist with a Napoleon complex. In any other country a leader who led his party to the showing he brought it to in Israel in last month's elections, would have been shown the door. Labor's MKs realize that as long as he heads Labor, Israel's voters will never again trust the party with the Prime Minister's Office. This may just the reality check needed to push the party back to the political center. It would be sweet if its Bolshevik-Shi'ite Wing went the way of the Oslo lemming mindset it embodied with which it intended to herd the Jewish State over the cliffs with to national suicide.

[Marines981]

Sick of sniffin butts eh?