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A year ago this week, Israelis took to the streets and felt that they had saved Israeli democracy. What became known as “Gallant Night,” not because of any gallantry, but after the defense minister whose firing Benjamin Netanyahu had just announced, wasn’t exactly the victory the tens of thousands protesting around Netanyahu’s house in Jerusalem and on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv, hoped for. Netanyahu and his coalition would continue trying to assault Israel’s limited and fragile democracy. In many ways they still are. But it was still a pivotal moment.
The outpouring of public anger, backed up the next day by the announcement of a general strike, forced Netanyahu to stop in his tracks, agree to convene talks with the opposition over a more consensual judicial reform and ultimately rescind the firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant who had warned that he couldn’t vote in favor of legislation that was dividing the Israel Defense Forces.
It wasn’t the end. After a couple of months, the talks broke down, the coalition passed legislation eliminating the High Court’s use of the reasonability standard to hold the government to account and six months later, the High Court ruled, by the smallest of margins, that it was unconstitutional to deny its use. It was ultimately a victory, since the court’s powers remain unchanged, but only thanks to a majority of relatively liberal judges on the bench. Now two of them have retired and Justice Minister Yariv Levin, frustrated at the way his plans to eviscerate the judiciary have come to naught, is refusing to allow the appointment of new Supreme Court judges.
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282828 MARCH
28 march 2024The United States welcomes the Palestinian Authority’s establishment of a new cabinet and says it will look to this government to implement much-needed reforms.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller notes that several members of the new cabinet are from Gaza, in line with Washington’s desire to see a PA government that is more representative of the Palestinian people.COURT AMD YASHIVA STUDENTS
In a dramatic step, the High Court of Justice issues an interim order barring the government from funding the monthly stipends of at least some ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students after April 1, as the legal framework for deferring their military service will no longer exist.
Yeshiva students who did not get a military service deferral after July 1, 2023, and who have not presented themselves for conscription will now be ineligible for the monthly stipends, the court rules.
Those who received exemptions before that date will still be eligible, although their stipends will also likely be shortly cut off if the government does not pass a new legislative framework for them to obtain military service exemptions.
Tens of thousands of haredi yeshiva students receive monthly stipends for their yeshiva studies, and these payments are of critical importance to the ultra-Orthodox political parties.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu writes to the High Court of Justice requesting a 30-day extension to the deadline for presenting the court with a plan to increase ultra-Orthodox conscription.
This is the fourth extension the government has requested in the last 24 hours to the court’s deadline for the state to file its response to petitions demanding the immediate conscription of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.
Earlier today, the state requested a two-hour extension to tell the High Court how it will resolve the issue, after requesting a half-day extension at close to midnight on Wednesday night. The original deadline for the state to file its response was March 24, but the state then requested a three-day extension, which the court agreed to.
Having blown past these deadlines, Netanyahu personally pens a letter to the court today saying that “considerable progress” had been made on finding a formula to resolve the decades-long legal and societal quandary but that the government needs just another 30 days to draw up this plan.
The prime minister says that because of the ongoing war, his government has been unable to dedicate the necessary time to finding a solution to the longstanding problem.
Netanyahu adds that the arrangement being formulated would establish “tracks and frameworks which would allow those enlisting to preserve their lifestyle throughout their service,” adding notably that it would also “ensure that those for whom ‘their Torah is their trade’ will be able to study Torah.”
“For these reasons I request from the honorable court that it not make a decision on the issue of enlistment and all the questions connected to it for the next 30 days, in order to allow us to finally formulate the agreements and complete the professional staff work and regulate the necessary tracks and frameworks,” Netanyahu tells the High Court.SEXUAL ASSAULT BY HAMAS
The IDF has released new interrogation footage of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist who appears to confess to raping an Israeli woman in a kibbutz in southern Israel during the Hamas-led October 7 onslaught.
The terrorist, Manar Qassem, who was captured by the IDF earlier this month in Khan Younis, says he is a member of Islamic Jihad’s naval forces.
In the interrogation carried out by the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504, Qassem is asked what he did on October 7, to which he provides a detailed response.
Qassem says he entered Israel through a breach in the Gaza border fence between the Khan Younis area towns of al-Fukhkhari and Khuza’a, armed with a handgun and two grenades.He says that as he reached the unnamed kibbutz, he entered the closest home, where he encountered a woman who was startled.
“I took her and threw her on the couch,” Qassem tells the interrogators, recalling in detail what she looked like and what she was wearing.
“The devil took over me, I laid her down, started undressing her, and did what I did,” he says.
Pressed by the interrogator as to what he did, Qassem responds by saying: “I slept with her.”
Asked again, Qassem says “I raped her,” according to the IDF. The audio in the footage is unintelligible at some points, due to the military censoring the voice of the interrogator.
“She pushed me, it didn’t last long… Two minutes. Maybe a minute and a half,” he says.
At that point, according to Qassem, two members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades entered the home and put the woman together with her mother for a short while, before taking both out of the house. It was not immediately clear if the woman is alive.
Qassem says he was left alone and decided to head back to the Gaza Strip. He says he heard gunshots, and then shot one Israeli man near him, before throwing one of his grenades and fleeing the kibbutz.
The IDF says the footage is “further proof of the onslaught of murder and sexual violence by the terrorist organizations on October 7th, in an attempt to make the voices of those who can no longer tell be heard.” -
THIS IS ENORMOUS. MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE GD BRIDGE
Israel’s High Court ordered on Thursday a freeze on funds for yeshivas that fail to send their students to military service.
The injunction is the latest in last-minute legal and political wrangling, which has reached a boiling point with the court deadline expiring Thursday.
The cabinet decision exempting draft-age ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students from conscription is set to expire on Monday, April 1, after which the state would be required by law to recruit them.
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29 MARCH 2024
UKRAINE
Frank, Dana (3/29/24) “Ukrainians are like children, waiting for someone to save us. Israelis are more like adults, working together.” Haaretz.
- I am just astounded at this headline. I am astounded that a Ukrainian would say it and I’m astounded that Haaretz would publish it.
- First of all, Israel is getting billions in weapons and support from the US. At the moment, Ukraine is getting nothing. Does the last two years look like people “waiting for someone to save” them? I don’t think so. Ukrainians have fought, died, improvised, struggled. Their fate is the fate of Europe and the rest of the democratically leaning world.
- The woman quoted, according to the article, is a psychologist, a psychologist treating among other people, returning soldiers for PTSD. What does she tell them? Oh, just grow up? Pull yourself together?
- This woman has not fled Ukraine, she is part of a “ball team of moms” who flies back and forth between Israel where she has a home and Ukraine. She has, however, gotten her children out of Ukraine including a son who is soon to turn 18 and would be subject to the draft.
- I’m sorry, but that doesn’t sound to me like somebody who is “working together” with the rest of Ukraine.
- I do not see how she can look at herself in the mirror, face another Ukrainian, return to Ukraine. I cannot explain it and I cannot understand it.
- Who would make such a flippant statement, during a war, to a reporter? Who would even think this who knows what is going on in the world.
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NEWS NOTES
Trump is exploiting the death of a police officer. Let’s just hope he doesn’t come out the front door selling sneakers and bibles.
The UN is reporting a surge in sexual violence in the gang dominated society of Haiti. Gangs have not only taken over government offices and police stations, but have looted banks and hospitals. The State Department has announced it is sending equipment, including weapons and ammunition to “Haitian security forces.” (Note: I’m not sure who this might be and sounds a lot like further arming gangs.) The United States has evacuated some stranded citizens. (Note: Leading right-wing news to report yet another “invasion” of undocumented people supposedly sent to Guantanamo to await being secreted into the United States by Democrats.)
After grudgingly admitting that ISIS had attacked in Moscow, Putin (along with some left-wing podcasts) blames the Ukrainians. Putin has put Russia’s economy on what Hanna Notte calls in the New York Times (NYT) a “solid non-Western foundation” and secured “sanctions-proof supply chains,” which largely insulate it from Western pressure. It has ensured a supply of weapons from Iran and North Korea. On Wednesday, Russia struck Kharkiv with aerial bombs for the first time since 2022 (See Notte, Hanna 3/29/24 “Putin’s Next Escalation is Coming.”
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The Real Reason Haredim Don’t Want Their Children to Enlist in the Israeli Army
by Nehemia Shtrasler, Haaretz, 3/12/24
When will we start to tell the truth about the Haredim? When will we stop hiding behind political correctness? It’s time we recognized that the ultra-Orthodox simply don’t see us. They teach their children to despise secular Jews. They do not recognize the state, they are anti-Zionist; to them, we are simply a cash register that must be robbed.
The Haredim view the secular government as a foreign government that they are commanded to exploit and deceive, to lie to it and to extort as much money from it as possible.
They see the state not as the beginning of the redemption, but rather as a direct continuation of the exile. In eastern Europe it was the gentile landowner they had to get along with, now it’s the government. That’s why they don’t have a problem with not fulfilling any civic duty: teaching the core curriculum, working, serving in the military. So what if the Mishna says that everyone, even a newlywed couple, must take part in the event of an obligatory war.
When they are asked, in private conversations, why they don’t serve in the military, they are astonished: “Why should we enlist to fight in the wars that you launch? You want to fight, you can serve. We are not willing to sacrifice our children for your state.”
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Over the years they have come up with all kinds of reasons to avoid conscription. This time it’s the nonsense uttered by Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef: “Without the Torah, without the yeshivas for married men, there would be nothing, there would be no success for the army. … The army succeeds thanks only to those who study Torah, the Torah is what protects us.”
First of all, who needs this kind of protection? After all, 631 service members have died since the war began. Perhaps they were killed because the “Torah studiers” weren’t actually studying, but were only “enrolled” at a yeshiva? Or perhaps they had committed so many sins that God rejected their studies?
The second argument that Yosef gives for the draft evasion is also funny. He says the Haredim are Levites, who are exempt from military service. Apparently he has knowledge of ancestry and race research. It actually seems to me that the Haredim are members of the tribes of Gad and Reuven, about whom Moses said: “Shall your brethren go to the war, and shall ye sit here?” – which shows there have always been draft dodgers.
We can learn about the Haredi attitude to Israeli soldiers from remarks by two prominent leaders of the “Lithuanian” – non-Hasidic – stream. Rabbi Dov Landau prohibited yeshiva students from attending military funerals or even making hospital visits to wounded soldiers. Let them die in peace, what does he care? Rabbi Yisrael Bunim Schreiber said that IDF soldiers are like “garbagemen,” and “it’s none of our business, the ones who are killed… They have no connection to us, they are not our brothers.”
It’s time we realized that the real reason for Haredi draft evasion is the blunt and straightforward desire to protect their children’s lives. The Haredi lawmakers are elected in order to make sure that no military funeral procession ever leaves from Bnei Brak.
Their job is to guarantee that Haredi mothers and fathers will continue to sleep well at night, while secular and non-Haredi religious parents shake in fear every time the doorbell rings. All the other arguments are just a charade. Therefore, the secular response must be no less sharp and clear: Conscription of all of the Haredim, at the age of 18, without exemptions, without tricks and without contrivances like “alternative civilian service.”
The problem is that as long as Chamberlain is prime minister, it won’t happen. He’ll let the Haredim stay in their cities of refuge, without working, without enlisting, and receiving billions in return, to boot. And all on one condition: that they continue to be loyal to the governing coalition. After all, staying in power is the only thing that the most despicable man in the history of the Jewish people cares about.
I do have one good thing to say about Rabbi Yosef. It was 22 years ago that Sara Netanyahu said that unless her husband remains prime minister, “We’ll move abroad, and the whole country can burn.” Yosef only threatened to move abroad. He is not yet setting us on fire.
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Netanyahu asks High Court for 30-day extension on Haredi draft, touts ‘considerable progress’ on plan * Travel warnings issued for Turkey, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan
— Read on www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-march-28-2024/
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