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Late Night at the Knesset

Double entendre gives Israeli education minister the giggles

Israeli Education Minister Shai Piron (Yesh Atid) was thrown by a double entendre in the title of a bill he was attempting to introduce, cracking up the entire Knesset Tuesday evening The Times of Israel reports:

In a video posted on the Knesset’s YouTube channel, Piron can be seen taking the lectern to introduce to the Knesset a bill relating to smuggling in prisons. However, when Piron, who is also an ordained rabbi, reaches the words "insertion of forbidden items," he immediately begins to snicker.

The Hebrew word for insertion — hahdara – connotes both penetration and smuggling.

"What’s so funny, minister?" asks a deadpan MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud), who chairs the debate.

Piron, apologetic, responds "No, no, no," and tries to calm himself.

MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism), seated in the opposition’s back benches, is more direct than Feiglin.

"How is inserting objects in prisons a concern of the education minister?" he chortles.

"I’m beginning to think, what can you insert?" quips Piron, and then finds himself unable to continue amid rising gales of laughter from the benches. "Enough Gafni, stop," the minister pleads.

[...]

"You want to wait a little?" asks Feiglin kindly, as Piron makes further failed efforts to resume reading his text. The minister takes a glass of water, but that doesn’t help either.

In the end, Piron gives up trying to keep a straight face, and instead of making his speech, takes his glass of water and returns to his seat.

A grinning but under-control Minister of Social Affairs Meir Cohen (Yesh Atid) takes Piron’s place and reads the bill, which proposes stricter punishment for those caught smuggling illicit items, and in particular mobile phones, into prisons.