Israel News for 11-16-18
Coalition Crisis
Education Minister and Bayit Yehudi chairman Naftali Bennett is demanding to be appointed defense minister after Avigdor Lieberman resigned from post earlier this week. He claims to want “to get Israel back to winning ways” [sounds familiar?]. He said, “The mindset over the past several decades has been—to avoid contact with an enemy … The enemy in turn interprets it as a fear of confrontation. The fact that we began to believe that there is no solution to the issue of terror is very dangerous. But there is something that could be done. There is a solution. When Israel decides it wants to win, we will win.”
Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon and Interior Minister Aryeh Deri have both urged the Prime Minister to call early elections, since the withdrawal of Lieberman’s Yisrael Beyteinu party from the government has left the coalition with only a one vote majority in the Knesset.
The Ultra Orthodox parties are also leaning towards having new elections, since the tenuous coalition puts their Draft Law bill in jeopardy, which would result in yeshiva students getting drafted into the IDF — something they are vehemently against.
In all likelihood there will be new elections in which, according to a new poll, Netanyahu’s Likud party and the Haredi parties will lose seats, while Yesh Atid and Bayit Yehudi will gain.
For further reading click here and here.
Jerusalem Mayor
The winner of the Jerusalem mayoral election, Moshe Leon, had the full support of the Ultra Orthodox Sephardic Shas party. This is clear from the video of Leon with Shas party leaders, including Aryeh Deri and Rabbi Sholom Cohen. Leon is seated with a white kippah.
To watch video click here.
New Photos
28,000 public-domain photos extracted from public and private archives in Israel are now available on Wikimedia Commons. The released photos include images documenting the early days of the Jewish settlement in what later became the state of Israel. Some examples: the graduation ceremony of the first batch of Jewish air force pilots taken in 1939 in the British airport that preceded Ben Gurion International airport, Israel’s main aerial gateway; Jewish British Army recruits training for battle in 1941; and an outdoor Torah class in 1920s’ Jerusalem.
The photos were all taken before 1947 and are at this point, according to Israeli law, free of any copyright protection or restrictions.
To see a few examples of photos click here.
