The announcement of an early election in the past week by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brings to an end the 18th Knesset, the longest serving parliament in the past two decades.
A report in Ma’ariv has revealed some of the more stomach-turning goings-on during the four-year session.
In September 2011, the carcass of a stray cat was found in one of the large soup pots in the cafeteria kitchen, which led to the kitchens being shut down temporarily.
The speaker of the Knesset called it “a serious incident”, while the caterer responded that “returning to work after a two-week break, our workers found the carcass. We were amazed that in one of the most secure sites in Israel, stray cats are allowed to wander unchecked around the site.”
A few years earlier, with a different catering company in place, an anonymous Shas member complained after finding a cockroach in his meal only a few days after pest controllers had visited the site.
Shas MK Yitzhak Vaknin recounted the incident: “I sat with this person who had a cockroach on his plate. He pointed it out to us. I saw the cockroach — it was no longer alive, it was cooked. This is very bad. There is a halachic issue here. This is an issue of insects, vermin, and unclean creatures. I called the kosher supervisors to come and see.”
