27 Nissan 5780
21 April 2020
SPECIAL NOTICE
Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, continues this evening until sundown. Last night’s audience-less ceremony on television was extraordinarily moving as six Holocaust survivors told their amazing stories of survival and lit torches remotely. At 10 am this morning, Israelis stood for two minutes in remembrance of those murdered.
The News on the Israel Street
The daily Corona update . . .
5 pm Tuesday: There are now 13,883 confirmed cases of Corona in Israel. 113 people are on ventilators. 181 Israelis have died. 4,353 have recovered. Check the breaking news ticker above for further updates.
In the past few days, there have been some remarkable stories of patients recovering from the virus. Yesterday, a man who had been in a coma and on a ventilator for 29 days suddenly revived. His story, however, is an anomaly. About 80% of those on ventilators do not survive.
Some good news today are that the lottery is returning on Wednesday at 10:00 am., and Ikea is opening across Israel tomorrow.
TODAY’S BLOG
Israel’s New Government:
An Unmistakable Shift To The Left
What does the new government mean for the direction of Israel?
Before we answer those questions, let’s look at the government’s basic parameters:
1. The government will last for 3 years.
2. PM Netanyahu will continue as prime minister for the next 18 months. During this time, Benny Gantz will serve as Defense Minister and “Deputy Prime Minister.”
3. If the Israel Supreme Court disqualifies PM Netanyahu from forming a government because he is under indictment, the agreement is void and a new election will be called. PM Netanyahu would remain prime minister until the new election.
Returning to our original questions, what does the new government mean for the direction of Israel?
In four major areas, we will see an unmistakable shift to the left:
1. Benny Gantz is replacing Naftali Bennett as Israel’s Defense Minister. As we have often observed here at OneIsrael, Gantz was utterly incompetent as the Chief of Staff of the IDF. One only has to look at his performance during the 51 day war with Hamas in 2014 to see how he continually put our soldiers at risk with his passive, “humanitarian” approach.
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As defense minister, Gantz can be counted on to further neuter IDF soldiers in combat situations and pursue a hesitant regional policy based on not destabilizing “our neighbors”. Insofar as the Palestinians are concerned, he will embrace Hamas and the PLO as “partners for peace.” In Judea and Samaria, he will reverse Bennett’s efforts to stop illegal Palestinian construction in Area C and will also attempt to reverse any gains made by the Jewish community in Hevron.
Gantz will actively object to any attempt by Israel to declare sovereignty over the Jewish communities in the area. As you probably know by now, the agreement with Netanyahu calls for Israel to begin the process of declaring sovereignty on July 1–if the mapping of the communities in Area C is completed and if the Americans agree. However the agreement does not call for Gantz to support this move; it merely states that Gantz must be consulted–and that Gantz cannot veto the move toward sovereignty (he can certainly vote and speak against it in the Knesset and elsewhere).
2. A Gantz appointee will become the new Minister of Culture and Sport. This may seem like a relatively minor position, but in fact, it is a position that sets the tone for what happens in the country. Movies, theater, concerts and other entertainment events fall under the purview of this minister. One of the people most hated by the Israeli “left” in recent years has been the current Culture and Sport Minister, Miri Regev.
An ardent Zionist, Regev has been reviled as a “racist” because she attempted to stop the government from subsidizing such things as plays and movie festivals which extolled Palestinian terrorists. You can be sure that Gantz’s choice for this position will return to unmitigated support for the ultra-leftist Israeli “arts.”
3. Amir Peretz, chairman of the Labor Party, will become the new Economics and Welfare Minister. He will attempt to do nothing less than turn Israel away from a capitalist economic system to a socialist one. There will be millions of shekels spent on such wonderful sounding programs as social equality.
4. Another Gantz appointee will become the Minister of Justice who will do everything within her or his power to reverse the initiatives put in place by Ayelet Shaked. As you may remember, Shaked took it upon herself to “conservatize” the Israeli judiciary–or at least to bring some semblance of balance into a judiciary system that had become a haven for leftists. In particular, Shaked started a process to bring some conservative justices to the Israel Supreme Court.
How successful the new Gantz Minister of Justice will be is difficult to gauge because it appears that Netanyahu has at least maintained a balance of interests on the Judiciary Committee in the Knesset.
In sum, Gantz and his 17 member party have been given 16 Ministries including defense, foreign affairs for half of the term, justice, immigration and absorption, culture and sports, communications, agriculture, strategic issues, tourism, social equality, and diaspora affairs.
As you can well imagine, dear reader, the “right” in Israel feels that it has been sold out. Members of Netanyahu’s own Likud Party as well as those in the Yamina Party (the party of Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked) are angry at the disproportionate number of ministries that Netanyahu handed over.
Yamina is so incensed that it issued a statement today that it is now leaning toward not joining the Coalition and remaining in the opposition. The statement said that “Netanyahu has shown us the door.”
So, has Netanyahu shown the door to the “right’?
Against the four points above, we do have a few points of light:
1. Yariv Levin will be the Knesset Speaker. Levin is one of the most “right” of Likud members. He will presumably be able to control much of what happens in the Knesset.
2. Netanyahu is committed to sovereignty and possibly annexation. As we noted in previous blogs, he is determined to carry through on this because of his commitment to President Trump. He cannot afford to leave Trump hanging out on a limb.
3. The right will retain control of the Education Ministry which determines the curriculum for Israeli schoolchildren. The importance of this should not be understated.
In sum, the sovereignty point is a huge one, but the tilt of this government will be to the left.
Whether this government will come to pass is still open to question. As soon as the agreement was announced yesterday, three groups filed petitions with the Israel Supreme Court to disqualify Netanyahu.
The Court immediately accepted the petitions and called on Netanyahu and Gantz to appear in Court to answer the objections of the petitioners. We shall shortly see what the Justices rule.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.