I’d Rebut My Opponents’ Calling Me Effeminate, But I’m On My Period

By Isaac Herzog, Chairman, Labor Party

The battle for leadership of the Labor Party is heating up – primaries are next week, and the campaigns of the various candidates have taken on an urgent tone as each tries to secure enough votes. Predictably, and unfortunately, some of the rhetoric has taken a nasty turn, with my rivals trying to depict me as a weak and effeminate incumbent. My strong leadership speaks for itself of course, but I have also refrained from responding to those insults because I’m having my period right now.

You can be sure as soon as my uterine lining stops effacing itself and leaking out my nether parts, I will once again roar into the lead with commanding aplomb and decisive energy that will convince Labor voters to once again place their trust in me as the only credible candidate capable of posing a real alternative to Netanyahu. But it will take a few days. It’s just that time of the month.

Not everyone gets so incapacitated by menstruation, I know. But I have managed to get this far in life despite the handicap, and do not foresee it posing a barrier, neither to my continued helmsmanship of Labor nor to unseating Netanyahu in the next election. Besides, the next election might happen after I hit menopause, in which case all this will be irrelevant.

The insults, of course, will not help. Amir Peretz, Erel Margalit, Avi Gabbay, and the others will have to find some more effective strategy to unseat me. I have the advantage of incumbency, plus my special intuition. Also, you do not want to get on my bad side, or scorn me. Hell hath no fury, etc.

I do like to think that after two successful terms as head of both Labor and the Opposition, I have dispelled any doubts that someone of my gender can perform at this level. Whether or not I end up securing a third term at Labor’s helm, I have demonstrated that I can hold my own against the hyper-masculine former generals and security types who have dominated Israel’s political leadership for decades.

That means others can, too. Much in the way Hillary Clinton inspired girls to aim for the highest office in the land, I hope I have sparked in the imaginations and ambitions of youngsters in Israel the real possibility that they, too, can rise to the highest electoral heights – irrespective of the fact that my uterus is disintegrating inside me as we speak.

Excuse me; I must go powder my nose.

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