Gantz-Netanyahu deal ends 17-month political crisis; Gantz: “We prevented a fourth election”

Posted on April 19, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
The deal is done: Netanyahu, Gantz ink coalition pact
by Gil Hoffman
April 21, 2020

Israel will soon have a new coalition government after an agreement was signed on Monday evening between Likud and Blue and White, putting an end to a 17-month political stalemate that resulted in three elections. As part of the deal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has served as caretaker prime minister since December 2018, will remain prime minister for another 18 months and then will be replaced in October 2021 by Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, who will serve as vice prime minister in the meantime. Netanyahu will become vice prime minister under Gantz after that – but if he leaves the Prime Minister’s Office sooner, Gantz will take over. READ MORE

JERUSALEM POST Benjamin Netanyahu to meet Naftali Bennett to woo Yamina into coalition Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met by video conference with Yamina leader Naftali Bennett for an hour-and-a-half on Wednesday evening, amid threats from the right-wing party to remain outside the coalition.

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“Tel Aviv University report, released every year before Holocaust Remembrance Day, shows an 18% spike in attacks against Jews last year, warning that the pandemic has threatened to amp up incitement even more”

Posted on April 19, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

YNET NEWS
Experts: Coronvirus brings spike in anti-Semitic sentiments
by Associated Press
April 20, 2020

…“Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant rise in accusations that Jews, as individuals and as a collective, are behind the spread of the virus or are directly profiting from it,” said Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, an umbrella group representing Jewish communities across the continent. “The language and imagery used clearly identifies a revival of the medieval ‘blood libels’ when Jews were accused of spreading disease, poisoning wells or controlling economies.” READ MORE

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“Initially, IKEA’s Ingvar Kamprad was happy to cooperate with Elisabeth Åsbrink’s book on his Jewish friend. Then she found a 1943 file showing he’d been a Swedish Nazi party member”

Posted on April 19, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Letters reveal curious tie between Jewish refugee and Nazi-admiring IKEA founder
by Renee Ghert-Zand
April 20, 2020

A decade ago, Swedish investigative journalist and author Elisabeth Åsbrink was given an IKEA box containing more than 500 German-language letters a man named Otto Ullmann had received from his parents, aunts and uncle before they were killed by the Nazis. The fact that the box was from IKEA was not coincidental. Hidden among the missives was the astounding revelation that Ullmann’s life as an Austrian Jewish refugee in Sweden during World War II intersected with that of the late Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA and one of the wealthiest men in the world. READ MORE

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Yom Hashoah 2020

Posted on April 19, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
Virtual Holocaust memorial plaques in thousands to be projected on Birkenau gates
April 21, 2020

Although the 2020 March of the Living will not take place on Holocaust Memorial Day due to the coronavirus pandemic, an estimated 10,000 people have participated in the organization’s virtual memorial-plaque project. The plaques will be projected on the entrance gate to the Birkenau death camp on Tuesday as Holocaust Remembrance Day begins across the Jewish world. The virtual project launched last week, under the slogan “NeverMeansNever” READ MORE

To draw in sand the most horrific period in Jewish history is a privilege mixed with great pain. I stand over my table of sand with trembling hands, my heart beating heavily, knowing as I have known all my life that I was there with them always in my heart and in my soul. — Ilana Yahav

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“Asked why the series is so popular, co-creator Avi Issacharoff noted that a large amount of the show’s dialogue is in Arabic”

Posted on April 19, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

ALGEMEINER
Latest Season of Israeli TV Series ‘Fauda’ Becomes Massive Hit in Arab World
by Benjamin Kerstein
April 22, 2020

The Israeli television series “Fauda” is already a global hit, but in a remarkable turn of events, its third season has now become the most-watched show in the Arab world. According to Israel’s Channel 13, the intense series, which depicts the activities of an Israeli undecover anti-terror squad, is the most-watched Netflix program in Lebanon, sixth in Jordan and third in the United Arab Emirates. Television viewing around the world is at an all-time high at the moment because millions of people are confined to their homes due to the coronavirus pandemic. READ MORE

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Thomas Friedman “seldom missed an opportunity to highlight criticism of the Jewish state, especially from Israelis who insisted that its “occupation” was immoral”

Posted on April 19, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
Thomas Friedman’s political fantasy
by Jerold S. Auerbach
April 17, 2020

In a recent New York Times column (April 7), Thomas Friedman listed his preferred choices for various posts in a Joe Biden administration. Among those serving in his fantasy government would be Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the pro-Palestinian leftist whose uninformed and invariably hostile comments about Israel have verged on anti-Semitism, as ambassador to the United Nations…Growing up in “a rather typical middle-class American Jewish family,” Friedman identified himself as a “three-day-a-year” Jew until the Six-Day War ignited “my Jewish identity.” After three summers as a kibbutz volunteer, he conceded, his identification with Israel had become “insufferable.” READ MORE

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Perhaps coming to your town: “National Guard’s raison d’être is not policing a domestic populace. Striking the requisite balance will be a tremendous challenge, undertaken beneath an intensive media glare”

Posted on April 19, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

SECURITY MAGAZINE
Can the National Guard Protect America?
by Benjamin Anthony, Cade Spivey, and Richard Kemp
April 18, 2020

…While some have been dismissive of the role of the [National][Guard, the continuation of life without a paycheck may well result in events that hammer home the seriousness of the security task at hand. A 2018 federal survey noted that approximately 40 percent of Americans lack the financial means to weather an emergency expense of more than $400. Given that businesses have already been closed or negatively impacted for weeks, and that American workers have been furloughed — industry by industry — those 40 percent are already far beyond the $400 watermark of a financial crisis. In fact, they are already drowning. READ MORE

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“President Trump and Senator McConnell may be tempted to tell the Democratic states, like Illinois, to get lost. Mr. Stoll offers an alternative approach — using the sudden federal financial leverage “to demand policy reforms that would diminish the long-term structural dysfunctionality” of the mendicant states”

Posted on April 19, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

NEW YORK SUN
State Bailouts: ‘Beyond Galling,’ ‘Shameless,’ Too
Editorial Board
April 20, 2020

The drama of profligate states using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to seek federal bailouts to paper over long-term mismanagement has finally found a Pavarotti — the editorial board of Chicago Tribune. It uncorked this morning an editorial calling pleas for as much as $40 billion in federal lucre for Illinois “shameless,” “dishonest,” “beyond galling.” And it was just getting tuned up. We share the Tribune’s sentiments, not only in respect of Illinois but New York as well. And not just those two. “Every member of Congress should carefully scrutinize pleas from states whose unbalanced budgets, embarrassing credit ratings and vastly underfunded pension systems predated virus outbreak,” the Tribune reckons. READ MORE

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Netanyahu announces easing of health restrictions

Posted on April 16, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
Coronavirus: Regulations eased up, certain stores reallowed to open
by Rossella Tercatin, Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman and Tzvi Joffre
April 18, 2020

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Saturday night a partial release of the restrictive measures imposed by the government to contrast the coronavirus outbreak. Among other, Netanyahu announced that certain type of stores facing the street will be able to open, sports activities up to 500 meters will be allowed and praying with a quorum in open spaces up ten people keeping a distance of two meters from each other will also be permitted again…Among stores that can open are electronics, furniture, house supplies and computer, as long as they are accessible from the streets and not in closed spaces and as long as they abide by the guidelines. READ MORE

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“The prominence of Arabs in Israel’s health system reflects an effort by many to move into the mainstream, despite decades of discrimination and marginalization”

Posted on April 16, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
In Israeli war on coronavirus, Arab doctors rush to the front
by Joshua Mitnick
April 16, 2020

…Though Arab doctors, nurses, and pharmacists have over the past decade become a familiar presence at Israeli hospitals and state-supported HMO clinics, the pandemic has shone Arab Israeli citizens in a new light: as essential foot soldiers and field commanders in the country’s struggle against the virus. That elevated stature comes, ironically, at a particularly fraught moment in Arab-Jewish political relations. Even as Arab Israelis, one-fifth of the population, have strengthened their parliamentary representation via a new alliance, the Joint List, they repeatedly have been the objects of hostile campaign rhetoric from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. READ MORE

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