Opposition Brings Howler Monkeys To Committee Meeting, Improves Decorum

“Can we get someone to clean the monkey poop off the- oh, sorry again, that’s just the Opposition’s comments on the Judicial Reform Bill. It’s getting so hard to tell the difference.”

Jerusalem, March 1 – Legislators sought to execute a performative stunt today, only to have the move backfire when the raucous animals they brought to the session ended up better-behaved than the regular human attendees.

Opposition lawmakers introduced six howler monkeys into a meeting of the Legislative Committee on Wednesday morning, with the aim of denouncing the Coalition’s legislative agenda and conduct as a loud mess – but the creatures, despite their noise and destructive behavior, constituted an improvement over the everyday functioning of the body, and the government managed to push through its agenda items with less trouble than usual as a result.

Committee Chairman Simcha Rothman had to cite the monkeys only four times for making noise out of turn, compared to an average of twelve times in all the previous meetings of the committee in the last three months. The monkeys flung their own feces and other random objects about the room, but the animals’ actions failed to register as any worse, and in fact several attendees described it as better, than the typical dynamic in the room.

“If MK Liberman would please- oh, sorry, that was a monkey, so easy to confuse,” Rothman stated at one point. “Can we get someone to clean the monkey poop off the- oh, sorry again, that’s just the Opposition’s comments on the Judicial Reform Bill. It’s getting so hard to tell the difference.”

The Opposition’s vociferous objections to Rothman’s comments failed to overcome the howler monkeys’ howling, allowing the chairman to move swiftly through the meeting agenda without registering coherent dissent.

After the meeting, Opposition members acknowledged their tactical error. “Perhaps ravens with just the occasional ‘Nevermore’ would have been a smarter choice,” admitted Merav Michaeli of Labor. “Next time we will also consider flobberworms.”

The incident marks at least the third time in the last ten years that such a stunt has backfired. During the 2014 conflict with Hamas in Gaza, several Arab MKs sought to demonstrate their displeasure with the punishment the IDF was giving the terrorist group’s positions, by setting off fireworks during a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee – but the devices exploded prematurely, before the MKS had entered the room, and deafened them for most of the meeting, impeding their ability to affect its proceedings.

In 2018, Minister of Justice Amir Ohana of Likud sought to disrupt a Yesh Atid faction meeting by releasing small birds in the room beforehand, but the birds escaped and forced him to chase them down. By the time he caught the last one, the meeting had long ended.

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