Most news outlets translated Israeli Arab MK Ahmad Tibi's remark, "Tuz fikum u-fikararkum," to mean, "I have contempt for you and your decision," but Arabic speakers know that he actually said something much ruder. There was no respect in his words. The persistent comparison to previous outbursts of cursing and shoving by other MKs is baseless, and stems from the media's insensitivity to the insulting text, and to the object of the insults. The cursing incidents the media cited in comparison with Tibi's rant were specific insults directed at this or that MK. However, Tibi's poisonous remarks -- which the media happily and ceaselessly repeated just days after protesting loudly over discrimination against women -- touched on the basest and most chauvinistic component of our society. Tibi's refusal to use Anastasia Michaeli's full name while emphasizing several times her first name seemed to communicate that the Russian-born MK has no identity, and is no more than a sexual and ethnic stereotype. This is not a case of a specific insult directed at a specific person, as has been the case with other Knesset outbursts, but an insult directed at an entire sector that Michaeli represents. How would we have reacted if he had remarked on the skin color of Ethiopian immigrants, or used any other despicable stereotype? Would we, then, also take it lightly, or perhaps find justification to remove him from the Knesset for more than merely a week? Tibi is a master at guilt-tripping the Israeli Left, including well-known journalists, as he did this time when he claimed that the Knesset Ethics Committee was out to get him because of its members' right-wing views. Not so. His remarks rested purely on a racist platform, and furthermore, he tried to give himself the air of a witty Knesset member who bravely champions the Arab cause, at the expense of Michaeli and many other women. It was no coincidence that the sharp-tongued MK quoted Voltaire's complaint that his words had been twisted by the logic of fools. As far as he is concerned, we're all fools who fail to grasp his own penetrating wisdom, and therefore distort his meaning. The truth is that his remarks were actually reminiscent of another Voltaire quote: Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
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Tibi's comments were fueled by the prevalent macho Israeli sexism directed habitually at women who come from the former Soviet Union. Something having to do with the world's oldest profession. Tibi played dumb, as though the explicit sexual innuendo in his remarks was unintentional, but his short tirade was replete with sexual references: "Anastasia spills" (which in Hebrew also means to ejaculate); "She has banged pipes," and the words deep cup, which not only have a sexual innuendo in Hebrew, but also sound very similar to a crude Arabic curse. The high concentration of these references in such a short text indicates that Tibi knew full well what notes he was playing.
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