Yesh Atid and Bayit Yehudi promised something new, but MKs excelled at recycling old antics and proposals in the Knesset’s summer session. Still, a record number of female MKs left their mark.

‘There’s nothing new under the sun,” King Solomon wrote thousands of years ago, and he may as well have been talking about the Knesset. MKs and parties come and go through the legislature, and at the close of the 19th Knesset’s summer session, it seems like their tactics and ideas never change.

Rising stars Finance Minister Yair Lapid, leader of Yesh Atid, and Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of Bayit Yehudi, took the last election by storm. The Yesh Atid campaign said, “We’ve come to make a change” and promised new politics, while Bayit Yehudi’s slogan was “Something new is beginning” – but neither was able to pull it off on a parliamentary level.

There are 48 new members of the 19th Knesset, and the first haredi-free coalition in a decade, and yet, there wasn’t much going on that was new and original in the summer session that ended this week – except for a generous dose of girl power. Continue reading