A new amendment to the coronavirus law is meant to enable the cabinet to prevent demonstrations outside the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem. This is a dangerous amendment that undermines Israel’s democratic character. Virtually its only purpose is to give the cabinet the power to prevent people from protesting in the places where they have been doing so until recently.
Archiv: Haaretz (relevant media)
Putin Investigators Targeting LGBTQs, Navalny, Use Israeli Phone-hacking Tech
Carmil resents a comparison with the NSO Group. “I know the people at NSO and appreciate their know-how, but Cellebrite works in the legitimate world of the police force, whose abilities are closely controlled, unlike the world of NSO customers and others who engage in illegal and concealed activity. Cellebrite is totally on the good side, where court orders are used. We do not make tools for breaking into private entities or espionage organizations.”
God, What Terrible Sin Did We Commit to Deserve Netanyahu?
If it were possible to get an answer from God, I would ask him at this time, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, what sin did we commit to deserve such a heavy punishment?
Tell Us the Truth. Why Does Israel Have a Second Lockdown?
Israel is a banana republic, from top to bottom. The cabinet ministers don’t obey the coronavirus czar, the public doesn’t (fully) comply with the directives, the prime minister lies like he breathes and so on. This has an upside. Contrary to many people’s deep fears, real fascism will never take hold here: Someone will fail to send the fax with the correct spelling of the head of the opposition, or the bus driver for the reeducation camps will fail to wake up in time in the morning.
Jerusalem Police Clash With anti-Netanyahu Demonstrators as Protest Enters 11th Week
Thousands of Israelis gathered on Saturday evening outside the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem and at other locations around the country for the 11th consecutive week, calling on the prime minister to resign in light of his ongoing corruption trial
Netanyahu Has Become All-powerful Even Though Most Israelis No Longer Believe a Word He Says
Outside Netanyahu’s fanatic base, no one in his right mind believes Netanyahu anyway. A poll released on Sunday by Channel 13 revealed that 50 percent of the Israeli public assumes that Netanyahu’s top priority in running the country is to is avoid his upcoming criminal trial, currently slated to start in January. Only 18 percent believe that Netanyahu’s actions stem from love of country and another 14 percent cite ideological differences with the center-left.
I’m at Risk but I Oppose Wholesale Lockdown. Stop the COVID-19 Fearmongering
For too long we haven’t heard on the main news shows the dozens of medical experts who say we are walking on shaking ground that will topple us into a yawning abyss when the state closes down. They’ve made a mockery of Profs. Yoram Lass, Eyal Shachar, Idit Matot, Dr. Amir Sachar and many, many others, hid them deep down under the layers of horror, from which the coronavirus czar sprouted. There are no piles of dead bodies, so many people on ventilators that the hospitals cannot cope, enormous numbers of patients in critical condition forming a bottleneck in the hospitals. And it’s doubtful there ever will be.
Mike Pompeo, Enemy of American Values
(19.07.2020)
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, however, has his eyes firmly set on the future. He is openly campaigning to succeed Trump as the party’s leader and to be its candidate in 2024.
Israeli Police Violently Tackle Haaretz Photographer Covering Anti-annexation Protest
„I tried to film the cops, and then they decided to arrest me,“ said photographer Tomer Appelbaum after the incident, which was captured on video. „One punched me, one kneed me and one shoved my head.“ Some of his equipment was damaged, he said.
The High Court Allowed Israel’s Most Demented Government Ever. Now It Will Get Uglier
The swearing-in will take longer than usual, both due to the emergency regulations and the surfeit of ministers, some of whom won’t have any idea what they’ll be doing in the cabinet. If the event could have a soundtrack it would probably be a requiem – a mass for the democratic rules of the game that somehow survived here for 72 years.
Eleven High Court justices unanimously legitimized the strangest, most warped governing coalition ever engineered in a political laboratory. We’ll never know if the gun pointed at their heads – the threat of a fourth election – affected their judgment.
The Zionist Left Has Paved the Way to the Rise of the Extreme Right
“The disappearance of Labor and Meretz would mean the elimination of the only alternative on the left side of the political map,” writes my contemporary Uzi Baram (“Don’t be so quick to toss out the Zionist left,” Haaretz, January 20). And I ask him: Where were you and your friends during all those years when your camp held power in the country and paved the way for the extreme right that holds power today? They are only continuing the path you began, and doing so openly and also openly saying: “Truly the Lord has delivered all the land into our hands; and moreover all the inhabitants of the land are fainthearted because of us.” But you did and you lied, you did and you deceived.
Israeli Army Sees Chance to Escalate Attacks Against Iran and Its Allies
The immediate theater of friction with Iran isn’t its nuclear program but Soleimani’s legacy of military entrenchment in Syria.
On this score, despite the apparent lull in incidents in recent weeks, Military Intelligence thinks an opportunity has been created to accelerate the pace of attacks against Iran and its allies. And it has urged Israel to seize this opportunity despite its assessment that Iran and Hezbollah will respond militarily if any of their people are killed.
If New Elections Are the Only Way of Pushing Netanyahu Out, So Be It
Attorney General Avihai Mendelblit formally submitted Benjamin Netanyahu’s 3-count indictment for corruption, fraud and breach of trust to the Knesset on Monday. Netanyahu now has 30 days to ask for parliamentary immunity. If time runs out, or if Netanyahu is refused, as currently seems likely, the pending indictment will automatically be formalized, Netanyahu’s three judges will be picked and a date for his trial will be set.
Israel’s Last Chance to Stop the Coup D’état
Unfortunately, history teaches that the current legislative branch has ceased to be a separate entity that can help balance the executive branch; it’s an arm of the cabinet. In effect, of the three branches of modern democracy, only two remain.
Netanyahu’s End: A Frightful Spectacle
Like an obstinate commander who refuses to internalize his terminal condition, he manufactures in his feverish mind divisions and squadrons and sends them to the front. The force commanders surrounding him, whether for fear of his wrath or out of empathy and pity, play along with him. They come and go, pretending to be doing things, pretending that as long as he’s there, there’s hope. He looks at their faces and wonders what’s going through their heads. Who will defect, who will betray. Who will rise against him. …
On Election Day, It’s the Prince of Darkness vs. Israel’s Very Soul
Netanyahu’s unbridled and untethered election campaign outlined the shape of things to come if he wins: The slow and agonizing death of Israeli democracy
Palestinian Citizens of Israel, Please Go Out and Vote the Joint List
The importance and value of the Joint List at the present political-historical junction are greater than the sum of all the human traits, mistakes and flaws of its representatives.
Casting a ballot does not mean recognition of the state that was forced on you, but just the opposite: By voting you are forcing it and its institutions to acknowledge you, as natives of this country.
Activist Assault in Tel Aviv Should Serve as Wake-up Call for Israel’s Ordinary People
But yes, it is newsworthy, because we must continue believing that other ordinary people are reading what we write, people who are not yet speaking out. Maybe something about the gradual nature of the violence rings a bell with them: First they came for the socialists, then they came for the Jews, but we weren’t those things, so we remained silent. Then came the turn for the others, and we continued to be silent. And when thugs attacked us, there was no one left to protect us.
Israeli Left-wing Activist Assaulted in Tel Aviv
On Sunday, he said, he left work and noticed he was being followed. „I assumed they were police who had come to arrest me,“ said Pollak, who is also active in the organization Anarchists against the Wall. „I went into a place where I could avoid them but they got to me and pushed me to the floor,“ he says. He took some blows but after scratching his face with the knife, he says, they seemed to get spooked and fled.
Pollak did not complain to the police because „that is the last entity in the world I would turn to for protection. That’s simply not its job.“
A Win for Deniers of the Occupation
But diplomatic “achievements” like the Bundestag decision are not just a distraction from Israel’s real problems that the Netanyahu government continues to ignore. They also remove a nonviolent Palestinian method of protest, and as a result are likely to cause damage to the future relations between the two peoples and to the security of Israeli citizens. Even those who are not convinced of the purity of the political motivations of the BDS movement must understand that the delegitimization of nonviolent Palestinian protest pushes the Palestinians, who are fighting for their national liberation, toward violence.
Haaretz editorial denouncing Israel’s self declaration as an Apartheid state, although it’s too polite to use the word
FULL TEXT: Haaretz Publisher Schocken Calls for Israelis to ‚Join the Struggle‘ at Nation-state Rally
One of the most significant threats to Jewish nationalism, as expressed in the nation-state law, is Arab representation in the Knesset, according to a portion of the Israeli population. So I tell you, the Arab citizen: Do not give the right-wing government a prize – despair and isolation. You all have the political power to reshape public discourse in Israel by participating in elections. Use it.
And to all the citizens of Israel, from every tribe, I call to join the struggle against the elimination of democracy, to develop an Israeli society, pluralistic and prosperous, with the participation of minorities in the economy and in politics.
US Ambassador Slams US, Israeli Media for Gaza Coverage
That might be a bigger deal, as Haaretz is a major Israeli newspaper, and having a foreign ambassador to Israel publicly condemning an Israeli paper for criticizing an incident that happened inside Israel is likely a diplomatic faux pas, and further presents the US role within Israel as politically aligned with one faction’s narrative.
US-Botschafter kritisiert US- und israelische Medien wegen Gaza-Berichterstattung
Das könnte eine größere Sache sein, da Haaretz eine große israelische Zeitung ist, und einen ausländischen Botschafter in Israel zu haben, der eine israelische Zeitung öffentlich verurteilt, weil sie einen Vorfall in Israel kritisiert hat, ist wahrscheinlich ein diplomatischer Fauxpas und stellt außerdem die Rolle der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika in Israel als politisch auf die Erzählung einer Fraktion abgestimmt dar.