Genderist (radical feminist) and leftist Knesset members are piling on MK Oren Hazan (Likud), who finds himself under a severe media attack after a Channel 2 investigative report accused him of arranging drugs and prostitution services for clients in a casino hotel he ran in Bulgaria before running for Knesset.
The genderist MKs, in particular, are incensed at the prostitution-related charges.
MK Rachel Azaria of the Kulanu faction, a member of the coalition, said that if the report is true, Hazan cannot remain a Knesset member. “The information revealed in the investigative report about Oren Hazan is very disturbing,” said Azaria, who was a prominent crusader against the Jewish concept of complementary gender roles (“women's exclusion”) as a member of the Jerusalem Municipal Council, before her election to the Knesset.
“The possibility that a member of the Israeli Knesset was involved in gambling, drugs and trafficking in women, creates a situation in which he cannot really represent the Knesset, and serve as Deputy Knesset Speaker, and generally makes one doubt whether he can serve the Israeli public in our house of representatives,” she said, adding as a caveat that all this was relevant only “if the report is true.”
"Trafficking in women is one of the most serious evils taking place in the world today, and it is not for nothing that there is a special committee in the Knesset that deals with this issue,” she noted. “The personal example that his alleged deeds give the Israeli public in general, and youth in particular, is very problematic, to put it mildly,” Azaria stated.
'Hazan the pimp'
Meretz Chairperson MK Zehava Galon wrote on Facebook that Channel 2 reporter Amit Segal's exposé about Hazan “does not constitute entertaining and piquant gossip.”
"If the details that were revealed are true, and Hazan did, indeed 'arrange call girls for his clients,' I am not even the least bit amused. Pimping in women is a moral and human low and whoever does this has no place in the Israeli Knesset,” she stated.
An Arab member of Galon's party, MK Isawi Frej, said: “This evening we learned that a person who is no less than a pimp is serving in Israel's Knesset.”
Hazan should stand trial, he said, and must be fired from the Knesset: “I have turned to Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein and the House Committee Chairman MK David Bitan, to expedite the removal of MK Hazan's immunity, to make it possible to put him on trial. I hope that Likud will take action, at the same time, to expel the pimp Hazan from its ranks, and force him to resign from his position as MK.”
Yet another Meretz MK, Michal Rozin, asked Edelstein to fire Hazan from his position as Deputy Knesset Speaker. “It is unacceptable that a person who, according to the media reports, served as a pimp for prostitutes, and apparently mediated between them and the casino clients, will serve in a representative role as Deputy Knesset Speaker. Hazan's face is the face of 'the ugly Israeli,' and it cannot be the face of the Israeli legislature.”
Hazan denies the allegations regarding drugs and prostitutes, and is threatening legal action against Channel 2.