Saturday, July 29, 2023

PM to DM on heart incident: ‘If you don’t get to the hospital in minutes, you die’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Defense Minister Yoav Gallant about the gravity of the heart issues he has been suffering from, following two recent hospital visits for cardiac care, according to a TV report based on lip readers who interpreted muted footage of the conversation that took place on Monday afternoon in the Knesset plenum.

Channel 12 presented the lip readers’ decoding of various filmed snippets of conversations inside the plenum, where lawmakers had gathered on Monday to debate and vote on the reasonableness law, the first enacted piece of legislation from the Netanyahu government’s contentious, contested bid to overhaul the judiciary.

Much of what the lip readers interpreted were partial statements, but some of the lines decoded appeared to underline the extent of Netanyahu’s heart problems, and also to document the failed effort by Gallant to broker a last-minute compromise between the coalition and the opposition on the reasonableness law. Despite Gallant’s efforts, the law, which prevents courts from reviewing the “reasonableness” of government and ministerial decisions, was passed without any eleventh-hour softening. READ MORE